40 x 30 Oil Portrait for Critique

[Chris Saper]

Dear Paul,

Welcome to SOG and thank you for the opportunity to view your painting. With respect to your inquiry about edges, my general thought is to think of the way that edges function to support the composition and the center of interest in a painting...they never work in isolation, but in conjunction with other tools you use, like sharp changes in value, color intensity, placement, etc.

I think that you have strong lights and strong darks to move the eye around the painting well, and your sharp edges reinforce this kind of movement. However the large dark negative space at the upper left tends to weight the painting disproportionately, so that is looks like the figue may sink into the southeast quadrant. This is strictly a compositional issue. There are several ways to deal with this, such as re-cropping, or adding a balance (subordinate) in the dark quadrant. I like the light on the chair and feel that this could be part of an eyepath that moves through the upper left. As I have visited this issue many times, I have found that by doing a 3-value thumbnail sketch before I begin can save lots of later aggravation.

This response may be a bit afield from your request, but it is often difficult to look at one aspect, such as edges, in isolation. Best wishes to you.

Chris