[Chris Saper]

Hi Jennifer,

I have come back to your painting several times, in order to consider what suggestions I might have.

Given the history of this photo, you have done an admirable job with one of the most difficult resource photos I've ever seen. It looks like you have handled the foreshortening properly, as there is fortunately not much distortion in your source.

I think that the orange background is quite overpowering in its saturation. However, I think the value of the background works well, especially as it begins to approach the darkenining of the distant leg. The orange tones are carried throughout the skin tones, so there is little temperature relief; you may want to introduce some.

As you have recognized, the sharp lines are grabbing too much attention; it's hard to avoid this is an isolated silhouette, so you need to find deliberate places where the edes can be of differing hardness, even lost; there is probably a little too much reflected light on the blue crotch of her leotard. The forward foot has lots of hard edges, too, which makes it compete with the face for attention.

You might want to recheck the drawing of the musculature that forms the silhouette, most notably the arm on our left. Check also the shape of the silhouette of her head. I have the sense that her skull is coming to a point at the top, and that the features are perhaps a little too large for the size of the head.

The last point I would make is to look carefully at the "J"-shaped curve that is formed by the torso/hip/upper leg portion on her right. Rather than showing a concave curve, the line is more likely to consist of a series of convex shapes which together create the sense of a curve, but without concavity. I'll try to show you what I mean here in a detail. Perhaps you already have done this; if so with apologies, it just doesn't show on my monitor.