Please critique

Pam Phillips · 01-24-2002, 09:52 PM

I'd appreciate any comments on this painting, which I hope I've attached properly. My resource was photos I took of my daughter playing a mandolin. I was inspired by a painting by Berthe Morisot of her daughter, and I used a similar pose and sustituted a blouse with a pushed up sleeve for the turn of the century dress.

Daniel Arredondo · 01-26-2002, 04:45 AM

Dear Pam

Your colors and values are great. The painting is very nice. Just a few suggestions.

1. the mandolin's body and stem do not seem to be facing the same direction.

2. If the figure was shifted just a little to the right the composition would be better. I usually place my unstretched canvas on a foamboard with a few extra inches in width and height from it's intended size. This allows me to adjust the position of the figure right, left, up or down as needed when I finally stretch it. One note of caution, if you have vertical and horizontal items in your painting, don't do your detail on the painting until it is stretched.

Hope this helps.

Daniel

Cynthia Daniel · 01-26-2002, 09:45 AM

Pam,

Very beautifully painted! I love the softness of it. I agree with Daniel that a little more space on the left would have been good. The main thing for me is I find something a little distracting about the shirt. Maybe someone else can pinpoint what it is for me. Maybe it's pulling my attention too much (the color?). Maybe it's the triangular opening at the bottom. Or perhaps some hint of femininity in the top would resolve this for me? I'm not sure.

Pam Phillips · 01-26-2002, 11:49 AM

Daniel,

I'll study the mandolin again, per your suggestion, Daniel. As to the position of the figure, I'm not sure, but I had to crop the image in a little because the photograph was crooked, and so there might really be more space to the left. Also, I borrowed a mid-range digital camera to photograph the painting and this image is somewhat faded and fuzzy.

Daniel Arredondo · 01-26-2002, 12:10 PM

Cynthia

I believe the shirt problem may be at the collar. She has her head forward and the collar seems to sit too far back causing more attraction than necessary. The nature of the shirt may make it exactly as you painted it.

Daniel

Karin Wells · 01-26-2002, 12:47 PM

Nice work. I really like this portrait, especially the delicate skin tones and the color overall. The curve of her back lends to the overall design.

I realize that this is very subjective but my one suggestion would be to leave a little more space above her head.

Close cropping a photograph seldom bothers me, but in a portrait, I feel that the figure needs "some breathing room." It is also a good opportunity to make more of the abstract compositional element of negative space.

Pam Phillips · 01-26-2002, 02:20 PM

Karin,

First of all, thanks for your comments. The amount and construction of the negative space is something that I am becoming much more aware of. When I first started painting it was all I could do to tackle the subject and the background was an afterthought. Now I'm feeling much more comfortable about handling the person and so I am looking forward to focusing more on the negative space.

Steven Sweeney · 01-26-2002, 10:13 PM

I like the "captured moment" aspect of the painting, the look about the subject that she's not thinking about the fact that she's being photographed or painted. That lack of self-consciousness seems to me to be an especially nice quality to depict in a younger subject.

Speaking to a couple of matters raised by other observers, the neck and head stock (into which the tuning machines are fitted) are indeed considerably out of alignment with the instrument body. This can be an extremely tricky aspect of drawing such an item. I've used my grandfather's violin in still-life work, and getting it right -- the curves, the angles, the foreshortening, and that bedeviling scroll -- can be a real test of your eye and your patience. You mentioned reference photos (plural) and that might have contributed to the misalignment, if slightly different views of the mandolin were depicted in the various photos.

In any event, the good news is that, if you're inclined to made modifications, they may not be as difficult as it seems at first glance. I suspect that a number of subtle changes in drawing and lighting would eliminate most of the problem. (It's going to be a lot trickier to describe than to do!)

The head stock is the most detailed and the most work to change, so I'm looking for other possibilities. The first thing is the line of white binding alongside the fretboard, up where the neck joins the headstock. Physically, that line must continue perfectly straight until it joins up with the section on top of the sound body, beyond the joinder of the neck to the body. But if you put a straightedge alongside the higher section of binding, you'll see that it's angled quite steeply down, so that it's actually "aimed" almost as much toward the back of the instrument as toward the front. That's contributing greatly to the appearance of misalignment between the neck and the body, and its correction will likely contribute as greatly to a more accurate representation.

Then, to better align the headstock with the body, look at three areas for slight modifications on the sound body. The round parts of the sound body on either side of the neck joint are called "upper bouts", and the bright white binding on the bottom edge of the far bout is, for one thing, too bright, considering its location in the shadow, but also too bright with respect to the illusion that you're trying to create, that it is receding. Darken that section of binding considerably.

Then in the extreme lower left of the painting, you've tried to follow the curve of the lower bout too far. ("Bout this much too far," I might say, but that would be silly, as well as an insufferable distance to a punchline.) From this perspective, the curve of the binding around the bottom edge of the bout wouldn't be that gentle and full; the turn into the bottom of the instrument would be relatively quite sharp. And the side of the instrument, where it turns into the bottom, wouldn't end in an extended curved surface strongly influence by light, but would end abruptly -- in fact, it would end right at the line where you have the dark shadow meeting the reflected light. And that line will be close to parallel to the neck joint at the top of the body -- right now those two lines diverge considerably, and that's what's making the body twist out of alignment.

Apologies for the tedium of the detail. If you can follow it, though, I think you'll get a lot of effect out of quite small changes.

Lastly, on the mandolin, there's too much light on the back. It's possible that there might be a small bit of reflected light along the binding edge, but the area closer to the girl's body would be in shadow. That too will push that part of the instrument back and up, in the direction of the alignment you're after.

The shirt doesn't trouble me. The color complements the orange-red hair, and the casualness of the style both looks like something this girl would wear and fits in with the "unposed" quality I mentioned earlier. I would have a look at the front edge of the shirt and the area next to the mandolin. The material seems to bulk out here unexplainably (I would have expected to see it inverting into creases and folds), and there's a misalignment in the edge, comparing the point where the shirt meets the bottom of the hand to where it reappears above the wrist.

I suspect that the crown of the head is too prominent. The distance between the bottom of the chin and the top edge of the hair on the crown seems very long. Cover up that dark shadow on the top of the hair, and I think you'll see more of the typical "skull" shape. Of course, if this anatomical feature in fact is correctly depicted with respect to this subject, then that's the way it is.

Lastly, I would slightly darken the background value in front of the face, to increase contrast with the very lighted face and create depth, pulling the figure out of that background a little more.

You've inspired me to get my son to sit down with his new electric guitar and let me make some preliminary sketches and take some photos. Thanks!

Steven

Pam Phillips · 01-27-2002, 09:25 PM

Thanks Steven. Your detailed description, as you suggested, is a bit much for me to follow, but I've reviewed the photos. I'd forgotten to mention that I purposely altered the shape of the bottom of the mandolin to make it more picturesque, but the alignment of the body and the neck are the way I see it in the photos. I did add reflections to the back because I felt they were needed, similarly I added light and color to her face, arm and hair, which were charcoal grey in the photo. Good luck with your son and his guitar!

Pam Phillips · 03-07-2002, 10:01 AM

I painted this from a photo I took when my daughter was about 8 yrs old, with the idea of doing a portrait. When I got the film developed, it was one of those, what was I THINKING of moments, all those stripes! I recently found the photo, and now that I've been painting or drawing every day, I welcomed the challenge. I painted the top white first, and with the paint still wet I added the stripes.

Any suggestions are welcome.