A piece I ruined. An experiment with Eastern Arabic numerals
 

Arabic numerals are the 10 digits (0,*1,*2,*3,*4,*5,*6,*7,*8,*9) they were transmitted to europe in the middle ages, by Arabs in North Africa and the Middle east, It spread around the world through european trading.
the*Eastern Arabic numerals*(٠‎ -*١‎ -*٢‎ -*٣‎ -*٤‎ -*٥‎ -*٦‎ -*٧‎ -*٨‎ -*٩‎)* are the numerals used in the Middle East today. And those are the numerals I used in this painting.

The Idea was to combine a realistic portrait with these numbers, using them as symbols of mathimatical beauty & precision that exist in everything around us.

Because this is an oil portrait, I'm posting It here, but in order for you to see what was in my head I'll be posting a couple of tiny 5x8cm scribbles I did in pencil along with progress pics.

the idea was not complete...I needed to experiment more. But I didnt get the chance....I started it on the 25th of january 2011.

I would either try and fix it or paint another. Feedback would be nice.

Right before I ruined it
 

This was what it last looked like before i had to repaint it.

The woman is beautifully painted. I leave it for the artists to find where you can improve or not.

Competition
 

I think the background is stealing the show. I find myself having to force my eye back to the woman.

That portrait is gorgeous. And, I agree the background is stealing the show.

Why don't you use this piece as a test to see how to handle the background. Use different treatments/colors and see which one looks best. I think you might try glazing and scumbling lighter colors over those deep saturated colors to push them back.

I think the problem with the numerals is that you're going for mathematical beauty and precision but they're not painted precisely. You almost need templates or something. Get them razor sharp. THEN push them back.

I agree with Cindy that glazing a mid tone neutral over the background shapes would help unify the painting and bring the focus back to the figure. Nicely done figure, though!

Agree with the above comments - portrait is looking great but the background is over-powering it. It's visually distracting, but in addition I think it works against your concept to have the numerals so obvious. It seems to me that mathematical structures that underlie the beauty of nature do not reveal themselves to us until we look for them, and then we see them everywhere. Or perhaps they fleetingly come into view and then disappear again. This is just a thought, but maybe there's a way you could use varnishes with different levels of gloss to paint the numerals over a more monochromatic background, so that depending on the position of the viewer, they would glint into view in the light and then disappear again.

Redesign
 

Cynthia, Steven, Cindy, Michele, Lewis,
Thank you all for the great feedback,
It took me a while to answer, I was depressed for a week had a freak out episode,
Acted like a little girl, a nice person helped me out, it was a mess...
I'm just kidding.

Yes, the background is distracting, probably due to the fact that I stopped working on the figure and focused exclusively on it. I didnt have a clear clue what to think about the design so I kept working on it, It seems I lost sight of it along the way. I wanted those colors to show and be very prominant but also find a way to get my eye on the figure 1st then the background, Correct me please if I'm wrong but what If I used different colors that are much more brighter than the ones in the background, wouldn't that get my eye to focus on the portrait 1st? Balance things out maybe? The reason why I reworked the portrait is that it didnt feel like it was lit by the sun...at least thats what I felt, and I was thinking that if the figure in the white dress was lit by sunlight it would capture my gaze. It would be great to know your thoughts about it.

Cindy, I'll definitely try that after all I am going to repaint the whole thing on a new canvas so using this as a test piece is a great idea I also agree that the numbers are problematic.

Due to the size of the picture (20.5x30.5cm) I had to eyeball them. I already had them designed with special proportions on small thumbnails i made, I wanted them to be precise but i also wanted them to be Imperfect...everything around us including ourselves are mathamatically perfect but its the Imperfections that makes it all beautiful.

So I based my dimentions on Fibonacci sequence. In a thumbnail I'll be posting here to illustrate my thinking, I drew the a triangle I rotated 3 times around its center (dimentions 3x5cm). I was trying to design a motif.

I definitely need to be more precise while painting them to be how i imagined them to be.

Lewis,
Dude i never thougth of it that way, you gave me a great idea to think about while I'm repainting this.
And yes I wanted them to show...I wanted this piece to show those hidden structures because once you see them everywhere you'd have a deep appreciation of its overall design, its complexity and at the same time its simplicity.

Probably, It seems so simple because it's hidden from our gaze.....

I think i was unable to fully show that in this piece...but hopefully once I redesign it it would be better.

I don't see how it could. With brighter colors, probably what would happen is that the eye would go first to the bright colors, then to the figure to rest their eyes. Then back to the bright colors. We can't help but look at them first.

I really like Lewis's suggestion - tone on tone. You could even do gold leaf for the numerals (but that's really expensive.)