Laura

[Alexandra Tyng]

Actually, Marcus, I was referring to the photo of the painting, not reference photos. I think the reference photo is fine. Sorry to cause a misunderstanding. I'd love to see the real colors in the painting.

[Chuck Yokota]

Cheryl, Alexandra, and Marcus,

Thanks for your comments and suggestions. I have made a change to the eye so it is not open quite so much. I see what you mean about the hair looking like a single solid mass; I'll have to think about how to change that.

The color balance on the photos of the painting is off, and the background is a lot less saturated than it appears on my monitor. I'll take some new photos this morning and try to get truer colors.

Thanks again for taking the time to respond.

[Chuck Yokota]

Here are new photos

[Allan Rahbek]

Chuck,
what a nice subject and light !

I think that you could get a better color balance in the painting by reinforcing the light effect.
The light is warm yellow / orange and is reflected in the hair. Since the hair is also yellow /orange it will only reflect those colors and that will be the colors dominating the shadow areas on the left side, the eye, cheek, nose and chin areas.

See, this will introduce a fairly good part of warm colors in the composition to balance the colds.

Allan

[Garth Herrick]

Hi Chuck,

So many good responses! Allan has a good suggestion about color. I hope to not come across as too heavy handed, but I think a few tweaks can help this a lot.

The color relationships suggest her skin color is rather too cool, compared to her lips and her hair. Photographs can throw these cues off at times, and one has to look at an example of a life model to make sense of photographic colors.

I would also recheck the shapes in her face: mainly the jaw line and the angle of her nose structure.

I hope this helps and good luck with this commission!

Garth

[Chuck Yokota]

Allan, Garth,

Thanks for your comments and suggestions. This has been helpful to understand how to get a better color balance in the painting.