Janeen
 

This is my first attempt at taking resource photos. I have been reading everyone's posts and I think? I have captured a good one to work from.

I am itching to do a painting of my friend Janeen. She came over the other day to play me her new song. I just had to grab the camera and take a shot.

I like the idea of a keeping the cool background with the warm colours for the flesh and guitar. Is it suitable to start working on it?

Here is the cropped version and the full length - are any of these suitable?

Ngaire,
The images posted are so tiny, it's hard to see what you've actually got there. Any chance you could post them bigger?

Terri I have made it a little bigger, but I seem to go over the 100kb. I am still learning how to do it. I did it at 72 dpi. When I went larger the kb's went up to 12000. How do you guys get bigger without going up in Kb's? I read Cynthia's post about images and it is under 600 x 400

Sizing
 

Hi Ngaire -

It only allows 400 wide, so if you have a long photo, it reduces everything accordingly.

I have the same problem, I get around it by resizing (pixelwise) in Irfanview (free off the web) or photoshop, or anything else. Then saving it and opening with Paint and saving again.

For some reason opening and saving again in Paint compresses the kb dramatically without loosing definition. I would do the whole process in Paint but there is no way of telling it exactly what pixel size you want to resize to.

It's probably a long winded way about it but it works really well for me :sunnysmil

Carolyn

Sorry to say it, Ngaire, but personally, I wouldn't paint from these photos. The biggest issue I see is that the light is very frontal -- was the flash turned on? If you've read through the photography threads you've probably seen many artists suggest that the first step is to turn the flash off and pose the model near a window so there's natural light coming from slightly off to one side. The lighting in these photos has also given you oddly pink coloring to the skintones too.

The second issue I have with these photos is that you can't see the model's face.

And finally the angles of the limbs seem very awkward to me. It reminds me a bit of Picasso's blue man with a guitar, which you may love, but isn't the direction I'd go in for a traditional portrait.

Thanks Julie, Carolyn and Michelle for your input.

She moved into this position naturally. I don't think the flash was used and there was a side light coming in, there was an open window to her right as well as behind her.

That's ok Michelle about not being a resource photo to use. I thought maybe as a figurative one instead of portrait? It is hard to choose the relative positions of the subjects that would be good paintings to work from. Back to the drawing board.

Hopefully, here is the closeup of the face.

Hi Ngaire,

If she's a good friend of yours, maybe she will sit for a couple of hours for you, maybe playing the guitar as you sketch or paint her?

I often ask friends to sit for me and I give them a photo of the drawing and take them out to lunch as well. If I work fast then I don't feel as guilty about not paying them. :)

Thanks Linda for your suggestions. Since moving here only at the beginning of this year, I am only establishing a friendship with her to date. I hope to ask her soon to sit for me, but I don't think she has the spare time.

I often wonder when I do ask her to sit for me, would she expect that I actually make the drawings realistic. I am still a student of realism and I have not accomplished this feat yet.

Ngaire, remember, she isn't paying you and you don't have to meet any standard whatsoever. Take all the pressure off yourself! You don't have to satisfy her. That's the beauty of not always having to do commissions.

The problem with drawing your friends is that there is some pressure to flatter them, but I have this problem with self-portraits as well. :sunnysmil