Goldie Locks

[Janel Maples]

Hello,

This is a reference I created for my next portrait that I thought I would share with you to get some feedback.

I did not see this lovely little girl's hair before accepting the task, but I am looking forward to the challenge.

What I would like to know is if this composition looks all right. This photo is actually three different photos, cut, cropped and pasted together to get this composition which I thought was nice. The original photo with the facial expression I like the best (and what you see here) has shoulders that were shrugged way too high, actually touching her face. (I asked her if she had a boyfriend) If you look closely you can see the white reflective light from her shirt just below her jaw. I will have to pay attention to that so I don't paint that. The body was taken about 7 shots later so the position of her head and hair were pretty much the same in both shots and the lighting was really close. The third photo was just to introduce more background, she wasn't centered the best.

I took her photos in front of my North East facing dining room windows around 11 in the morning.

Well, let me know what you think.

And thanks for any help you may give.

Janel Maples

[Mike McCarty]

I think this would make a wonderful painting. My only suggestion would be to pull her a bit more to our left in the frame.

[Janel Maples]

Good point Mike,

I re-worked it in Photoshop and you are absolutely right.

See, I knew I needed more eyes. I just didn't think it would be to point out something SO obvious.

Thanks.

[Michele Rushworth]

Gorgeous! I'd also put quite a bit more background around her, in addition to Mike's suggestion.

[Jean Kelly]

Beautiful reference, Janel. I'd take everyone's advice and paint it in a heartbeat.

Jean

[Chris Saper]

Janel,

You have done a wonderful job with the pose and lighting! This will be a fantastic painting!

[Janel Maples]

Jean, Michele and Chris,

Thank you, thank you and thank you so much. I felt pretty good about it prior to posting, but it still feels wonderful to know that others have favorable opinions about it as well. I will go with the suggestions made for more background from Michele and an itty bitty move to the left from Mike.

Keep your peepers open for the results coming soon.

Thanks again!!

[Kimberly Dow]

I just want to say that after seeing this I realize I need to get better in Photoshop! How in the world does everyone get such great references from different shots? When I try to put mine together you see all the edges. I've got a laptop with a touchpad instead of a mouse - wonder if that's it?

[Janel Maples]

Kimberly,

For what it is worth, this particular cut and paste job for me was done on my laptop with a touch pad. I have done them with a mouse and I prefer the touch pad, myself.

When I do this kind of stuff, I do not use Photoshop, I use another program called PhotoSuite. It has different functions for the task. They are: 1) Shapes 2) Edge finder, where you touch close to the edge and the program finds the edge for you and you can adjust as needed, 3) Free hand, where you touch points around a shape and again, you can adjust your points as needed.

Now something like the one I did above, I didn't get too picky about because it is something I will be painting. If I wanted to work on a photo that I would be framing (as I did for our family Christmas photo of 13 people) I would look for areas to hide edges, such as in the hair and make a really irregular edge so it would be harder for the eye to pick it out and follow.

My Christmas photo was put together from 5 different shots and it turned out really nice.

Good luck.

Janel

[Joan Breckwoldt]

Janel,

This is a lovely reference photo, thanks for bringing my attention to it. I would enjoy seeing some in progress photos of this portrait as it progresses, if that's something you would consider.

thanks,

Joan