My Teddy

[Leslie Ficcaglia]

Originally Posted by Carol Norton

Leslie, the other advice that helped was your emphasis on the importance of drawing accuracy. I was shocked when you said that I had tilted the head more than is shown in the photo??? "What?" I said. "Let's go back and look at THAT again!" Lo and behold... I sure had. Bill Whitaker spent two whole days on drawing correctness in his 2004 workshop.

Well, LOTS to work on. And that gut hunger that I feel, my patient mentors, is what creates this unquenchable thirst for improvement. I WILL be back.

Carol, thanks for taking the suggestions in the spirit in which they were meant! It's so much easier for the objective viewer to see things like the tilt of a head or a smaller eye, and I'm glad you didn't mind the comments. We get so wrapped up in our paintings that we miss those details while we're working on them, and then when someone points them out, or we come back to the work after an interval, they pop right out. I usually do a somewhat detailed drawing in thinned oil on the canvas before I begin to add color, and that's also a good stage for checking on angles and proportions and other relationships.

Especially when you're doing work for your own edification rather than for a commission it is possible to use a less than perfect resource, and it helps if you have a series of photos you can scavenge better parts from. But you can get away with that only after you've got some experience under your belt. Terri Ficenec just pulled it off in her skater painting, where the child's right hand was fuzzy in the reference photo but she managed to make it work anyway.

Are you going to work on this painting any more, and if so, will you share your progress? I think it's a great start.

[Carol Norton]

Leslie, as scarey as it was to put that painting out there, I knew that if I didn't ASK for help, I wouldn't get it. I don't want anything to get in the way of my learning.

#1 I WILL do that detailed drawing on canvas first - with thinned oil. It can always be wiped down and redrawn.

#2 I am continuing to work on the painting to put into practice the suggestions that I received. So far, the tilt of the head that is off, is throwing everything else I am attempting to correct further off. (ex. The light between and on the cheek on the painting's left side.) Here's another big lesson: I have worked longer on this painting BECAUSE the initial drawing was off and every correction is requiring ANOTHER correction getting down to the point that the only way to correct is to do another painting or scrap it
SO, to answer your question, YES I will post it IF it doesn't look worse and NO if it is a "paint over" and I don't do another.

#3 Does anyone know if the wet sanding technique I read about in this forum DOES work on a New Traditions panel? Bill Whittaker gave a wonderful demo in one of the posts and mentioned an ABS panel or something like that but didn't directly answer Linda's question about the New Traditions panel. I have ridges in some very key places in this painting that will keep me from painting with accuracy.

Thank you again, for all your very special help, Leslie, as I not only took all the suggestions in the manner that they were intended, but am grateful for them.