Thread: Critique Please
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Old 02-06-2002, 10:26 AM   #6
Steven Sweeney Steven Sweeney is offline
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Location: Stillwater, MN
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Yoshiharu,

You have developed greater mastery than you give yourself credit for. Many artists with years more training and experience than you have, would take great professional pride and personal satisfaction in being able to produce as delicately beautiful a piece as this.

The drawing is, in a word, perfect. I see no line or shape that does not read as both accurate and graceful. It is not easy to capture both qualities. The simplicity of the drawing itself is the source of its eloquence.

Given the monochromatic coloring thus far, perhaps you intended the piece at this stage to be an underpainting for a more developed work. As I try to visualize how that may progress, it seems to me that to proceed even a little further will require a substantial commitment to a lot more work. For example, though I think it would be interesting to see the effect of some color in the background, I realize that that would disrupt the very sensitive balance that now exists between the background and the lights in the figure and clothing. As soon as you move one part ahead, the entire piece will have to "move with it".

You will paint hundreds of pictures to perhaps a more advanced state of "finish" but that does not make this one "incomplete" in any way, and right now in this piece you have an extraordinary record of a moment not only in your daughter's life but in your artistic development. I think you should present it in its present form to yourself, as a gift, and preserve it so that your daughter will have it some day.

Best wishes,
Steven
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