[Will Enns]

Mike,

I don't consider myself qualified to critique your work, and I hope you won't shoot me straight down for writing this.

I would like to offer my observations as a practice session in critique, and I hope you will view them in that light. If by chance I should spot some small flaw that you were unaware of (as if!), I would gladly accept a 'well done,' which I will frame and hang next to my computer screen.

I find a powerful tool for self-critique is sizing the reference the same as my work, and placing them side by side on my screen. This encourages the flaws to reveal themselves.

I've taken the liberty to resize your images thusly - I hope you forgive me. I resized them accurately by measuring the exact distance from the outer edges of the irises. I found the features were placed very accurately.

As someone said, the likeness is there, and many clients would be more than delighted with it. But if it is to hang in the Louvre, a stiffer test will probably be applied. So I will look for flaws.

1) The first that reveals itself to me is that the heighth of the face appears short. This isn't true, but is an illusion caused by the way the chin is rendered in the drawing. In the photo, the model's chin is up, and you can see the underside of it - not so the drawing. I believe you could shade in the fatty area below the lower mandible toward the throat to resolve the problem.

2) To my view, the nostril on our right appears larger and should be made to recede more by darkening. Also, it appears to be lower, but this may be resolved by correcting the size issue.

3) Judging from the photo, this model takes a great deal of pride in her eyebrows. They appear carefully groomed and arched, while in the drawing, they look like simple curves drawn on a flattish surface. The more obvious problem is the one on our left, which in the photo, starts lower and remains straight and wide, then as it advances over the ridge of the brow, it narrows and curves downward as it recedes toward the hair.

4) The fatty area just under the upper edge of the eye socket on our left is also lacking information. As it stands, the eye appears to sit flush with the eyebrow above it. If you were to shade it more heavily where it meets the eyelid, it will recede 1/4" and be just where it should be. The right eye will benefit from a similar treatment, although it is less obvious.

5) The hair can be a tricky test of our skills, even a simple style like this one. I find I must treat each lock of hair as a separate entity, and you may have to resort to this approach as well. I'll address only the one on our left at the front. In the photo, it advances slightly up and away from the forehead, then as it falls to the level of the cheekbone, it recedes toward the shoulder, and is nearly horizontal where it is cut. Since it's curving directly away from us, we can't draw it as a curve - must describe it with shading. The more it curves away, the darker the shading. I believe similar treatment of the rest of the hair will result in a very attractive painting.

I will post this now, and in the morning I will probably ask myself who I thought I was, giving advice to my betters. Then I'll delete the whole thing and hope nobody noticed.

If you should read this before I recognise my own folly, I hope you forgive me for practicing my critique skills on you.

Respectfully,

Will