Portrait of Alicia

[Valerie Gudorf]

Alicia is the lovely teenaged daughter of one of my best friends. This is my second attempt at a pastel portrait. I groped about quite a bit trying to establish a likeness and am not entirely happy with the result (will there ever come a day when I'm happy with one of my paintings?). I tried to incorporate everything I learned in Chris Saper's book, Painting Beautiful Skin Tones, but frankly, I never felt like I knew what I was doing.

Honest feedback would be well appreciated.

[Valerie Gudorf]

Here is the reference photo. It doesn't show the eyes very clearly so I had to paint what I knew to be there. Unfortunately, I opened the back of my camera too early (I thought the film had been completely rewound back into the cannister) and a few of the shots got partially exposed. This is one of them. Fortunately, the head and shoulders escaped the distortion.

[Sergio Ostroverhy]

Nice composition! May be some more pictures with close ups, so that we can see the details?

[Valerie Gudorf]

Thanks Sergio,

I'll try to rephotograph and get some close-ups. Despite the fact that this portrait is obviously "underwhelming" (judging by the response I've gotten so far), I would really appreciate receiving some constructive feedback.

[Richard Huante]

Hi Valerie,

Just browsing the site and I saw your nice painting. Thought I'd drop my suggestion(s).

The girl's eyelashes appear fuller in the photo; you might try a broader stroke to create that impression on your piece. This will also make the eyes look more relaxed (closed), and the highlight will be very small.

The face reads too warm overall on my monitor. Some cool lights will solve this.

Her left (our right) nostril seems kind of flat, appearing to face directly at us. A cool tone in the same value should help it turn away.

Try a deeper value for the shadow under the chin/lower cheek. The form will be more defined.

The sweater hue seems a little intense, detracting attention from her face, though your actual painting might not be this way.

Your drawing/draftsmanship seem to be fine, and you did beautiful rendering of the hair. Hope you can use these tips. Your friend and her daughter will be impressed, I'm sure. OK, I'll shut up now and get back to watching my Diamondbacks game.

Regards,

[Valerie Gudorf]

Richard,

THANK YOU for the carefuly considered comments! I agree that the flesh tones are problematic. They are a bit too warm, compared with the photograph. I seem to have given her a tan somewhere along the way (or perhaps, sunburn). However, everytime I tried to cool down the skin tones, they seemed to get dull and the facial planes flattened out. I could never seem to find the right pastel stick for the midtones and highlights. I suspect that it's more indicative of my lack of knowledge, rather than a lack of the "right" colors.

I tried to edit out some of the makeup she was wearing in the photograph. She has on a considerable amount of eyeliner and mascara. I feared the heavy makeup would detract from her youth and obscure the eyes in general if I rendered them as seen in the photo. Also, I had read that eyelashes are easily overdone in a drawing or painting. But now, I may have to go back and revisit my treatment of this area.

Her nose gave me no end of grief. I agree that something certainly looks askew. Believe it or not, this the best I've managed to make of it so far. It looks to me as if the entire lower left side(her left) nasal wing, area above the lip and lower cheek turn toward the viewer. Very disconcerting!

The color of her shirt is indeed very aqua, isn't it? I thought at the time that it accentuated the color of her eyes. Should I darken the value and gray it down, or should I just desaturate the color a bit and leave it the current value?

As for the area of the neck in the shadows, I was afraid my reference photo was lying to me by overdarkening the shadows. I've also been rather perplexed about which colors to use in this area.

I would be greatful for comments from others on the forum also. Feel free to alter the image in photoshop or some other imaging software to illustrate how I might improve this piece, if you'd like.

[Holly Snyder]

Hi Valerie,

Your painting is accurately drawn and nice as is, but as Richard said it would really stand out with the application of cool tones. The overall warm orange of the face tends to blend together too much, and also blends in with the similarly warm background.

You could use a lighter, and much more muted version of the blue color of her sweater to hit some of the highlights on her face. The color you have on her eyelids might work. Also try changing the hue of red on her face to add interest. For example, in the photo, the red above her ear, by her hairline, is different than the red at the fold between the cheek and the mouth. Now that may simply be due to the printing, however, in general having red that is more magenta, or blue, or orange in places adds interest. Chris Saper is a master at that. I've learned a lot just studying the paintings in her book.

Darken the neck a little, so the face will pop out more, use a grayer version of the orange that's there now, perhaps with the addition of some blues or magentas.

If you bring some of the blue of the sweater into the face, than the sweater won't stand out so much, but you should still probably gray it down a little. The hair is also nicely drawn, but would benefit from the addition of some cool tones.

Hope my comments aren't too general to be of use.

Regards,