Grand mother
 

Hello everyone,
this is one of my last work. She is my grandmother at the age of 80.
What do you think about this paint?

Bye, luca.

Hi Luca,

I like this very much! Is this done in oils? What size is it?

This has a lot of character in it, and I like the way you faded her far shoulder into the background. From this portrait, your grandmother seems to be a very strong woman.

Hi Brenda,

The size is 40 x 30 cm oil on canvas. I forget to write this important information. Yes, she was a very strong woman, her husband died during 2nd world war in Naples leaving my grandmother with five sons.

Tomorrow if you want I could post a close up of paint.

Bye, Luca.

Hello,
i post a close up of right half of face. Any comment is precious for me.

Thanks, luca.

For future paintings, I think you'll be much happier with the results if you work from photos that were taken with the camera flash turned off.

Hi Luca,

I like the color harmony in this painting. The different blues work well against her grey hair.

Ciao Luca, finally someone from home!!!

Guess we are not really allowed to speak Italian, though. This is an interesting work, but you have room for improvement.

Remember a few basic things, for example that white is never pure in real life, and that the colour of the background often influences the skin colour, so in this case for example you might find some blue in the skin, especially where it turns away from us. This will help to unify the subject and the background.

Also consider colour temperature, shadows are normally warm, lights are cooler.

Maybe too much all in one go, just keep going, this is a promising start.

Ilaria

Dear Luca,

I think you have many positive things going here, although I can't underscore strongly enough Michele's comment - flash photos, like the source in this portrait, obliterate nearly all of the essential visual information you need to do your best.

The lights in your image seem to be pretty compressed, so that the shirt collar appears to be uniformly white, as do the whites of the eyes. Modeling with value and color will help make both more three-dimensional in appearance. The wrinkles in the front of your Grandmother's throat are so strongly painted that it's hard to overlook them - this is another temptation with a front-on flash, that you will paint everything that the photo shows you, just because you can see it in the photo. The highlights in the eyes are another example.

I think that your photo is giving you false information about skin color as well, as the different skin tones look more like varying shades of the same brown, rather than incorporating the subtle change sin color and temperature that you would see in life.

I very much like the attitude of your Grandmother, and the placement on the canvas. I think that the best thing you can do for your next portrait is to work on getting your resource material under your control so that you have the opportunity to do your best work - it's hard enough to paint what you see, and impossible when you can't see things at all. By spending as much time as possible working from life, I think you will gain much skill in interpreting your photographs.

Good luck, look forward to seeing your next work!