First of three.

[Sharon Knettell]

Allan,

I think most of us would love to have this Danish beauty to paint. She is lovely.

I think you, as has been mentioned, have a lovely light touch with color. However your work suffers from a weak range of values. Squint at your photo reference and you will see what I mean. You have flattened out the tonalities, by not accurately rendering your values. You seem, except for the white to have all middle light tones, with some dark accents.

One of the most daunting tasks is to paint a back-lit head successfully. You have to paint it darker than your mind tells you to do. Since it is Summer, do some quick color studies of your daughter outside. Squint to see the values and open your eyes wide to see the color.

You have over emphasized, as Mike has pointed out the modeling of the nose. Squint again and see how much softer the nostrils are.

[Allan Rahbek]

Thank you Sharon,

I know that I probably have a false idea about keeping the colors light and strong. This must be a bad habit from painting watercolors, but will of cause not be any excuse in portraiture.

I admire high contrasting portraits, but find it hard to do. This is something I must practice.

I am working on the third portrait of Camilla, in higher contrast, so ma by I can come over that limitation.

Thank for your frank critique, I really appreciate it.

Allan

[Sharon Knettell]

Allan,

Somewhere in portrait hell there is someone who will shoot me for telling you this. It will help you with learning values.

Take a piece of transparent plastic. Place it over a good color print of Camilla. Mix the tones to match the values right on the photograph itself. I will help you quickly learn values. It helped me because I was also afraid of making skin-tones too dark. Mine were always so pasty.

There is a downside to this. Depending on it to much will result in photographic color and not developing your eye. It is a good jump start however on judging values. That is why I always recommend doing studies if not the whole thing from life.

Good luck!

[Allan Rahbek]

Sharon

I will try that.

My printer is not very good so I did the paintings by printing out a gray scale photo to measure from, and looked at the monitor for the colors. It is placed on a chair just above the palette. I have build a box around the lap top so that I can see the screen even when the sun shines in the room through the skylight window, facing west, or the lamp is on in the evening/night.

Probably it would be easier with a real photo.

Allan

[Allan Rahbek]

I have been softening the shadows, actually I have almost repainted the face.

Allan

[Terri Ficenec]

Hi Allan! I like this version much better, it's more true to her.

[Sharon Knettell]

Much better, Allan. Softer and richer.