Formal
 

I was excited to do a pastel, and put my brushes down for a while. So I took one of the references most everyone liked, to play with, from my "First Formal" thread in resource photo critiques.

Please note this is in progress, and is not finished. Comments are welcome and I thought it would be interesting to get opinions of the roughed in gloves and the "whiteness" leading to how they work with a three-value composition.

I would consider this a figurative piece as opposed to a portrait.

Thanks,
Beth

24 x 14.5 inches, on Wallis paper.

I know those flowers need a lot of work.

Here is the close-up.

This is the reference photo plus added extras and explainations.

This is the progress I ended up making today.

I have tried to recreate the white in the art as an example with Photoshop along the (our) left edge. I think it is important to try and get the color reproduced correctly with this one, but I am not sure I have.

This is the close up, which I lightened a bit with "curves".

The best suggestion I have for improvement is to work on the likeness in the face. I think most of the areas look pretty good as is, but when you put the photo and the painting side by side like that you can see some glaring differences in the face.

In the photo, her face is a bit longer. That is, the distance from chin to hairline is longer in the photo, whereas the distance from hairline to top of hair is shorter in the photo. But of course it's not as simple as raising the hairline, because that just gives her a longer forehead which isn't the answer either. I don't know if you want to get into messing around with the facial features or not, but that's the best suggestion I can make.

Overall it looks very nice. And as you pointed out, it's more a figurative piece than a portrait, so perhaps you're not too concerned with getting an exact likeness.

I'd call the painting "White Gloves" since they still do stand out so much.

I'd downplay the way the fabric bunches up near the hip on the left side of the photo. It's confusing and detracts from the form underneath.

(A word on the likeness: her face in the photo is much wider across the jaw, in addition to being much longer, as was pointed out in the previous post.)

Here is the latest with the suggestions above.

Thank you all for your input!

Here is the close-up.

The right underside of her chin (on our right) is too large and full. This is mostly due to having too much reflected light there. The reflected light on the underside of her jaw nearest the viewer has been painted as too large an area, too bright and too cool in color. It is also in the wrong position and needs to be moved up and left a bit. Those changes will help you with the symmetry of the face.

Also, her face is too wide across the cheekbones. You've chosen to emphasize the cheekbones more than is really shown in the photo of your daughter (which she might approve of) but it harms the likeness.