MaryLynn in Pastel

[Meredith Wagenknecht]

Hello there! I'm a new user of this forum and would like some feedback as to : pastel technique, proportions, placement on paper, and background (I'm always at a loss as to what to do for the background...I usually do a "smooshy" shadow of color where no specific background is required). Any input would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!!

[Mark Gil]

Very nice work, Meredith. This piece looks very much like oils. Very smooth and relaxed. As far as the background, because you already have the sofa/chair as part of the picture, I think it would be best to include the background that was actually there. If the portrait were without any furniture, then your background would be fine. Maybe darker grays towards the outer edges and hints of dark green here and there would be pleasing. I would love to see some of your pencil portraits. Good work.
Mark Gil

[Meredith Wagenknecht]

Mark...Thank you so much for the compliment! I will apply your suggestions to one of my next projects, for sure. Unfortunately, I haven't done any portraits in pencil..that is, not a "traditional" portrait. My first art career was as a fashion illustrator, and I worked almost exclusively in pencil, photo-realistically, a la George Stavrinos, a popular "big-time" fashion illustrator of the early '80's. So, it wasn't until I tried portraits in 1991 that I even attempted color. Also, now that I look at my picture posted here, my camera wasn't very good, and neither was the scanner. I sure hope it looked better on your screen than on mine! Again...many thanks! Mer

[Steven Sweeney]

A classy set-up, very well rendered. You're obviously an observant and accomplished draftsperson. The sheen in the dress fabric is nicely understated but suggestive of richness and elegance.

Some miscellaneous thoughts as I work around the piece:

-- The overall colour presentation is very cool in temperature, almost without relief. A couple of days ago the red ink jet on my colour printer clogged and for a while I got green and lightly pink reproductions of one of my still-life paintings. (It was actually pretty interesting, very artsy, no doubt MOMA would have agreed to handle them for me.) That's the impression I have here. The furniture and background are of course contributing to that, but first in order would be, I believe, to get some life's blood into your flesh tones. Certainly you're going to have some cooler passages, but in order to be effective they need to be vibrating against warmer passages. The lighting here is greatly exacerbating the problem, as its cool "headlight" strength is overpowering the flesh tones -- so much so that some of your highlights in the flesh are virtually the same hue and tone as the white sofa fabric. It appears, especially from looking at areas like the shadow under the chin, that you may have worked from a flash photograph; if that's the case, then this is one of the hazards to be mindful of.

-- The contrast between the lighted chin and jawline and the shadow underneath on the neck is too great -- it's separating her head from her neck. Probably start with darkening those areas on the face, as well as the too-bright highlight areas on the neck below the cast shadow. The shadow in the temple on the viewer's right is very dark as well, seeming out of tonal context. Perhaps something to look at first, though, is whether the cheek area on that side shouldn't be considerably darker as it turns away from the light and approaches the hair.

-- Overmodeling, especially with too-bright lights, in the face around the mouth has created a two- or perhaps even three-chin effect. Even if there's "some" of that going on here, I suggest that a flattering flattening of the tones in that area would put you in grateful stead with this portrait subject.

-- Where the pearl necklace passes into cast shadow as it rounds the neck, it will be influenced by that shadow just as is the neck, rather than remaining brilliant white.

-- Even allowing for the long fingernails, I think the fingers taper a bit too quickly. There's a round fleshy pad underneath that distal joint of the finger. Also, the dark shadow on top of the middle finger, right next to the ring, is causing some distortion in that finger.

I was hoping by this time to have had the universe offer me some intuition about the sofa and the background. Drat -- I'll just have to wing it. I think the colourlessness of those areas is draining the piece of a lot of warmth and energy and richness that it could have. I'm not set up here to PhotoShop this to see what, say, a gold sofa fabric and a maroon background would do. (I'm visualizing a dark, rich background contrasting with the fleshtones in the shoulders.) I mention those hues simply as temperature complements to the cool-green dress. Many other possibilities exist, of course. Finally, I think the style of the sofa -- especially that target sized circle shining brightly right in the foreground, is problematic.

I'll quit there for now and see how this goes over.

Very nice work overall,
Steven

[Karin Wells]

I like this...you really draw well.

My best suggestion would be to always remember to illuminate your subject with (only) a single source of light. The shadows thus created become an important design element (both on the figure and in the background) and they do add weight and substance to a painting.

As to backgrounds, they work better if you can integrate them with the foreground by finding and losing edges...i.e., to avoid that "cut out" look. (Chris Saper began a thread on this subject.)

Also, think of a background as an opportunity to really make use of your "negative spaces." For example, if you had not cropped the elbow on the left, and let some (background) space flow around it, perhaps the background would have become a more interesting design element.

[Lon Haverly]

I personally like the simple background in this subject, because the subject has such nice elements - My eye goes to the velvet, the hair, the eyes. Very nicely done. My only suggestion is to look for some base color to tone down the flesh tones. Varying the dark detail color is good, too. Just switching colors now and then gives a more believable touch. And the single source lighting is a good comment. You are a perfectionist. The work on the hands tells me that.

I love the simplicity in the hair, and the lovely texture in the velvet. Nice job!

[Meredith Wagenknecht]

Thank you Steven, Karin, and Lon!!

I really appreciate the input here...This portrait is an older one...nonetheless, I will take to heart the advice given, and keep it in the back of my mind as I work on the next one.
Steven, my husband IS set up to Photoshop this, so I'll have to ask him to "tweak" the colors for me...I'll let you know how it looks with color changes. It's funny you mention her hands...I drew the subject's fraternal twin Janie just before this one, and their mother asked me to tone down the realism in Janie's hands! I'll have to submit that one here so you can see what they were like before adjustment...I took the picture of the drawing before smoothing the hands, but not after. Thanks agin for the kind and helpful words!

Meredith

[Steven Sweeney]

It's funny you mention her hands...I drew the subject's fraternal twin Janie just before this one, and their mother asked me to tone down the realism

Don't make too much of any one item I mention. I'm usually just thinking out loud and inviting you to look at something again with me. It may well be that things are exactly the way you want them, and that's fine with me. As for the tapering fingers, I'm sitting here with a catalogue from the Ingres "Image of an Epoch" exhibition. It's hard to find many portraits in the catalogue in which Ingres hasn't tapered the fingers so much that they're generally twice as wide at the knuckle as at the fingertip. His "Madame Moitessier, Seated" (which happens to be used on the dust cover of the catalogue) depicts this tapering in quite extreme degree. If memory serves (I'm no art historian), that was actually a convention during at least one period.

I'm not sure what "toning down the realism" would entail, though perhaps there was a feeling that the hands in that other piece were too detailed or overmodeled, so that too much attention was being drawn to them, or some of the "femininity" was lost through the harshness of such effects. A male subject's hands can have a lot more "realism", such as in the gnarly knuckles, stretched tendons, and prominent veins shown in the piece I posted in the "Introduce Yourself" topic. (And believe it or not, I actually had to "tone down the realism" a bit in these old farm kid's hands just to get that look.)

I think you'll have fun PhotoShop-ing the image. (Be sure to work on a copy, not the original!)

Steven