Portrait of L. Diane Johnson from Plein Aire Magazine

[Tony Pro]

I am new to this forum... this portrait is 85% done and will be appearing in the first issue of Plein Air Magazine. Please see their website for more info on the magazine. It's going to be a wonderful publication. Very Classy!

www.pleinairmagazine.com

Anyway, any comments would be great!

Best
Tony Pro

[Michele Rushworth]

Very bold and dramatic, with a strong characterization!

Reminds me of many of Sargent's oil sketches of his friends. It looks pretty much "done" to me, other than the lower parts of the near shoulder and arm area. What were you planning to change?

Thanks for posting the link to "plein aire magazine". I'll be doing more landscapes in the future and I'm always interested in seeing examples of plein aire work, in particular.

[Tony Pro]

Thanks for the input. Sargent is my hero so it's nice to other people can see it come through in the work.

She is wearing a scarf so I am going to play that up a bit more and then finish out the rest of the shirt a bit, it's little too loose.

Then I have some subtle flesh tones to take care of and that's about it.

I don't really enjoy painting from photos as I prefer life painting but Diane lives somewhere back east and I have never met her before so this really presents difficulties.

I will post the finished product when done.

Tony

[Tony Pro]

Okay,

I hated the first time around on this painting, so I ended up completely repainting the head and reworked the shirt as the collar was way too big. So here is the painting at about 98% done.

Tony

[Allan Rahbek]

Hi Tony,

I believe that you have a point with the big collar, like Sargent who always did something weird to trigger the curiosity. It also adds to the light masses in this relatively dark picture. But are you going to change the shape of it so that it doesn

[Tony Pro]

Hi Allan,

I am going to drop down the collar to get away from the weird tangency.

I usually grey down the warm tones with black to get my neutrals; sometimes I use viridian. Sargent and de Lazslo used Rose Madder and Viridian and white to get his flesh tones -- up the Rose Madder for warmer tones and up the Viridian for more neutrals.

Thanks for the input.

Tony

[Chris Saper]

Hi Tony,

You have beautiful edges and color harmony at work - Ms. Johnson is one lucky painter. Perhaps we wll all have to take up plein-air painting to see ourselves on your canvas. Sigh.