|
FT Pro, Mem SOG,'08 Cert Excellence PSA, '02 Schroeder Portrait Award Copley Soc, '99 1st Place PSA, '98 Sp Recognition Washington Soc Portrait Artists, '97 1st Prize ASOPA, '97 Best Prtfolio ASOPA
Joined: Jun 2001
Location: Peterborough, NH
Posts: 1,114
|
First of all, you have a beautiful photo reference to work from and this should be a lot of fun to paint.
But your underpainting is much too thin. Your paint must be buttery, very thick (think peanut butter, and completely cover the canvas.
The underpainting is your opportunity to clearly establish light, shadow and the halftones, i.e., the smooth areas of transition from light to shadow. This can only be done in thick paint. Save your "painterly" brushwork for the upper layers where it will show to best advantage.
Secondly, your range of values is much too great. No dark should be more than a 50% grey value. Check out my underpainting demo elsewhere on this forum...it is of a BLACK dog and you can see how dark the paint gets. If your underpainting gets too dark, there will be "no place to go" when you begin with the color layers and those dark areas will become "dead."
|