|
Dear Pat
This is a very nice beginning. It is soft and warm and cheerful. You have a very nice sense of the slight plumpness in the boy's face, and it's a very nice likeness.
With the mouth, I think that the bottom lip works well. You have a nice sense of it stretching over the bottom teeth and the edges are softened in places so that the bottom lip looks part of the skin of the face.
The curves on the underside of the top lip, though, are a little too exaggerated - if you compare them to the photo. They need to be straightened out a bit. And there is some space around the teeth where both lips join at the edges (where there are the gaps between the teeth at the sides of the mouth). It is indicated by a darkness. I wouldn't paint each tooth and the gaps between in detail at the edge, though, but just suggest the space by softening the edges (i.e no sharp lines or edges). And also by bringing the tone of the white of the teeth at the side of the mouth down to a darker colour too would help suggest that space.
Also the lips look a little too wide. They are, perhaps, not too wide, but the sharpness of the edges where the lips join make a kind of arrow effect, which makes your eyes move outwards too much: thus the feeling of the lips being too wide.
|