[Chris Saper]

Dear Mai Ly,

As I look at your painting, there are a couple of basic observations that come to mind. They are the same elements I consider in looking at any painting, long before I evaluate drawing, color harmony, likeness, etc., because without them, even the best drawing or most beautiful color cannot make a painting successful.

I look initially at what I consider to be fundamental underpinnings: first, the center of interest or focal point...what it is you want your viewer to see; and second, the value pattern that creates a design to support the center of interest. These are things that I feel are missing from your painting, and I will confine my remarks to these items.

To try to show you what I mean, I've (loosely!) sketched the value pattern of your piece. It is largely populated by isolated areas of dark, small islands that don't connect into larger forms. There are two very dark areas. Because the triangularly shaped darkest dark not only lies next to the lightest light, it has a relatively sharper edge, and it is an eye-grabber. As a result, this odd little area has become the unintended visual center of interest to this work.

The two figures compete with each other as secondary areas. I have seen a number of "mirrored" paintings where the figures are backed up against the edges, relatively equal in size, like bookends, leaving the relatively blank mirror to dominate the center space. From a compositional standpoint, it makes the most sense to treat such images as either a two-figure portrait or a unified single subject, where the reflection is clearly insubordinate to the subject, or vice-versa. In "Getting Ready", my eye doesn't know where to go, so it floats from the triangle to the frame to the tissue boxes and out of the frame where the hair of the figure on our left forms a tangent with the edge of the picture plane.

Strong design is essential to a strong painting, whether portrait, landscape or abstract. I also think it is the most difficult to do well. One of the things that helps me the most is to make small value sketches in three values, then five, to see how well the image "reads." I wouldn't dream of starting the detail unless I can first resolve the design. I think this would help you, too.