"Dee"

[Mark Gil]

Please critique. Yes, she has a gold tooth. I'm not sure about the background. Thanks, Mark

[Mark Gil]

Close up.

[Steven Sweeney]

Mark,

I have to admit that I'm increasingly reluctant to comment on finished, signed and framed work, because there's no working surface left upon which to consider and try out the suggestions.

I guess I'd say here, in any event, that I would have gone for a darker (dark chocolate, perhaps, or even a deep violet, complement of the "yellow" color of brown) background, so that there could have been more values and hue activity in the face, which is now essentially monochromatic, with a couple of scallops of extreme highlight. I'll bet there are lots of darks and a range of halftones, blues and oranges visible in the subject's skin that aren't shown here, because you're fighting to keep the face dark and brown against the almost white background. The absent color ranges affect not only the face, but the possible shadow areas in the neck. (Why, after all, would a portrait subject's neck appear brighter than her face?) The reticence at range is also leaving the blouse looking flat. There is little form, few folds, not much of the variation in color and value that we'd expect to see.

I've seen enough of your work to understand that you have a definite style, and I do not mean to fault it in any way, but in this case, I think the bright background is visually and thematically a count against your subject. I also believe that some further attention to the mechanics of form would greatly enhance your final work.

Last notes, in the close-up, the upper teeth at the sides of the mouth appear to be chomping down on the lower lip, from which they ought to be far removed. The teeth, as a structural whole, are a form, and will have highlighted and shadow areas. Back teeth just aren't going to be convincingly bright in a portrait.

There's also perhaps a compositional issue with the dead-center placement of your subject.

I'm trying to be critical in the best sense of the practice, simply to have you look at things anew in light of the comments.

With all best wishes and intentions,
Steven

[Mark Gil]

Thanks so much, Steven, for your critique. You never leave anything out...that is sooo helpful to me. The teeth for instance; I never noticed the problem with them until you pointed it out. I knew about the background color problem, but she's seen the painting as it is and insisted that I not change the colors. I'm not sure what I would have gone with anyway. You mentioned composition - where should I have placed her to better please the eye? Does it depend on which way she turned?

Thanks,
Mark

[Steven Sweeney]

You mentioned composition...where should I have placed her.

I have a tape of poet Robert Bly reading one of his poems from some 20 or 30 years earlier, and upon being queried about the meaning of a particular metaphor, he admitted that he didn't have any idea what he was thinking of at the time.

Perhaps what I was thinking of in vaguely commenting on composition was that I would have liked to see the effect of having the subject's body turned just a bit and then backed up slightly against the side of the composition, so that the center of the face (which I'm visualizing as still being essentially "face out" in orientation) didn't coincide with the center of the canvas. Perhaps an almost imperceptible tilt of the head toward that centerline. A slight turn in the body might have also helped in developing more form in the blouse (with foreshortening, more varied light effects, and so on). It's easy to say, a little harder to visualize, and almost impossible to be certain of without actually seeing the compositional alternatives in real life. Hence the vagueness of my suggestion.

I suppose my comments about the background were influenced somewhat by many of the portraits done by SOG artist Simmie Knox. If you haven't browsed through his gallery, you might want to. I find it amazing how his choice of very dark backgrounds brings so much opportunity into the execution of flesh tones in dark-skinned subjects.

I admit that I've never painted Black/African-American subjects. My color comments were based on observation (as of Knox's work) and remarks made elsewhere on site by Peggy Baumgaertner and others, and by Chris Saper in her book (page 54).

I do hope that I didn't put you off with my comment about critiquing a finished piece. I'm sure you understand when I say that I always feel kind of bad about noting, say, a drawing error, if I know that the work is done and delivered and there's no chance to reconsider the area in question.

All that being said, I want to add that as I returned to this portrait several times in this process, I always liked the many things that are "right" about it. It's fun for me to kind of already like the person just based on a special quality or character displayed in the portrait, and that's always a big "right" before we even get into the critique.

Cheers