Hi Judson,
The hand looks unnatural to me. There is something awkward in the placing of that hand.
For some reason, when you portray yourself with a T-shirt with an image of, in this case, Darth Vader, I tend to automically search for some sort of connection or meaning between the figure, or the expression of the figure on the shirt and the person who is being portrayed. Something like this can have an unwanted comical effect.
The shadow of the head on the back wall has a disturbing dark line on the left. It doesn't look like it belongs there. In a composition like this I would also try to avoid sharp lined shadows like that on the back wall.
Do you use flash while making source-photographs? The quality of your work depends a whole lot on the quality of your source-material. My advice: Don't use flash for source-photographs!
This thread may be of great interest to you (Especially the part about 'Rembrandt lighting):
http://forum.portraitartist.com/show...hp?threadid=56
All of your portraits on your website seem to have been painted on white or very light grounds. Why not try a middle tone? Most of the time now you are painting away the white of the canvas instead of actually putting all of your energy in the modelling of the faces. Most of the old master-portraits are painted on middle-toned grounds. It could be helpful to you to use an underpainting.
http://forum.portraitartist.com/show...p?threadid=794
Try to think in colourschemes. The red of your clothing is a colourscheme that's different -but it is in relation- to the colourscheme of your face on the portrait. And so is every object or part of your painting in relation to anything else on the painting. On most of your portraits I see colours put there which do nothing to enhance the quality of your composition or the colourschemes of your work. The purple on the baby-portrait is too bright, the blue in the background of the girl in the chair is too bright too, a dark and cool grey would have worked better. Then the background would have receded instead of getting the attention it gets now. One mistake people easily make is thinking that the colour blue automatically recedes to the back. A bright blue may get more attention than a weak red.
Try to create more accurate drawing in your paintings. Many of the faces you painted seem to be distorted in some way or another.
Your compositions seem uneven. I guess you paint directly on the canvas instead of constructing the composition carefully before you start to paint. My advice is to scan your source photographs in the computer and to create the composition before you paint, so this will be better planned and prepared. You can trace the planned composition on the canvas using a projector or something like that, if necessary.
So to sum it all up for you:
1. Better source-photographs
2. Better compositional preparation
3. More accurate drawing
4. A better approach of the painting process ( darker ground, underpainting, careful modelling of the top layer)
An underpainting started on a middle tone makes the colours of the portrait more in relation to each-other, and an underpainting helps to get an accurate drawing, better composition and a good division in darker and lighter values.
My advice is to make a lot of head-and-shoulder-pieces, to practice how to create a better portrait of a face. Once you have worked that out, you can move towards larger compositions.
A last remark: When you want to make use of this Forum, it's best to show a source-photograph and your painting so we can compare. A close-up of the face is also very helpful.
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