Portrait of John G.
 

Hi, this is my first painted portrait, also my first commissioned painting. John died of AIDS 3 years ago and his brother a co-worker at my day job asked if I would paint his portrait.

Oil on canvas 24" x 18".

I think it's OK for a first, but far from where I want to be.

Please be completely honest, I will take your comments to heart and push myself to improve.

Blessings, Dave

David,

Congratulations on your first commission!

I would spend some time on edges. Yours are all uniform. You need to find some soft ones, lost ones...etc. It will immediatly take your painting from hard outlined (which can give a cartoonish appearance at times) to something more real.

This is terrific for a first portrait!

Hi Dave,
Congratulations on the commission!
I like your warm palette. I agree with Kim

Hi Dave,

I, too, am very impressed by your portrait. I think you did a great job. It's especially difficult doing a posthumous portrait from reference photos that you did not take yourself, and may not have been taken in lighting that works well for a painting.

I agree with Kim, and I wanted to add that color would be an important aspect to work on simultaneously with edges. The color in the shadows relates directly to the background, because the background is really the space around the figure. If you had used a greyed midtone, for instance, it would follow that the shadow side of the skin, clothing, hair, etc., would all have some of this greyed midtone in them. In your painting, the blue of the shirt in shadow is very blue; the orange of the skin in shadow is very orange. If you had some orange in the blue, the shirt would be more shadowy. If the orange of the skin had some blue in it, it would be more shadowy. Tied in with this, if there were both orange and blue in the background, the complementary colors would grey the background, make it "airy," unify the color scheme and make the figure sit in the space.

This is just a simplistic explanation; there are a lot more subtleties to be explored and a lot more possible solutions, but I am confident that you will "get it." In relation to what Kim was saying about edges, when you have similar colors in the background and the shadow side, this makes it possible to soften the edges on that side so that the form "turns" into shadow.

Alex

Thank you, Kim, Jerome and Alex. I agree with all of the critisism, there is nothing I would defend about this piece exept for the likness, which is quite good.

I've had the opportunity to paint with the TSPA for the last couple months and have improved in each area mentioned.

I'll post more for critique as I finish them.

Blessings, Dave

I agree with all the above, this is very impressive for a first portrait. Good luck with the next ones.! Janet