Marina
 

This is a life study done in three sessions. I do not plan on taking it much further but always welcome comments from this distinguished forum.

Hello Jeanine,

I'm admiring this elegant life study for its muted color scheme and the subdued colors in the face. It looks like you had a wonderful time with the feathers, not only for catching the highlights throughout the mass but also for capturing the shadows of the feathers on the skin.

I wonder if it frustrated you to discover that you had cut off the hands of this life painting. This kind of thing happens very frequently in life work - an artist is in so much of a hurry to get the face and skin down that the composition planning is rushed. You might be thinking to yourself, well, it's just for practise, but then you may find yourself with a very respectable painting with a big compositional flaw.

Here's what I do: if you know you're going to want to include more than the head and shoulders, plan for it at the very first session. Using relative sight sizing, estimate the size of your head and make marks which correspond throughout the body to that measurement. Give yourself at least a three inch margin at the bottom to set in the arms and hands, a little "fudge" room. Spend the first few sessions building up the head. When you are somewhat satisfied with the direction the head is taking, remeasure the head and make new marks on the body. The head tends to grow as you work on it and your initial measurements will probably be somewhat off, sometimes very off.

I'm in the middle of a long life sitting right now and this is what I'm doing to try to keep those arms on the canvas.

The other solution is to give up halfway through, wipe down and vignette the head and shoulders.

Nice to see your work again, Jeanine!

Composition Question
 

Thank you for noticing the fun I had with this, Linda!

The plan from the beginning was head and shoulders. The arms were developed to show the shadows and a little bit of gesture. I never got the feeling of cropped hands which are way off the canvas. Other painters in our group did vignette the arms, but I felt it important to represent them loosely.

So here is my composition question: Where does a head and shoulders composition end and a three-quarter begin? Should the crop remain above the elbow or else include hands?

Thank you for your thoughtful comments,
Jeanine