Anna

[Michael Fournier]

Well, I will be very short on this. I see two main obstacles that are giving you trouble. One seems to be a lack of planning (or a appearance of it). The composition is very nice but your choice of cropping is less then desirable. Always try and avoid cutting off hands and bare arms legs or feet. Now if you cropped, or used a vignette to soften the cropping, then it could work better. The second obstacle is your lighting: the form on the dark side of the face is not well defined, and it is obviously giving you trouble. It is of utmost importance to control your lighting and not let it control you. If your light is not defining your form you can't paint it.

I did a few things here to show a few choices that might have improved your painting. Now I did not worry about being accurate her, just to show how a different lighting might have helped.

If you look at your photo you can see that the reflected light does offer some of the effect that I show in the 2 light source example, but it is not as defined. In the 2 light sources that I show, your darkest values would be down the center. And I exaggerated a cooler light on your subjects left with a warm light on the right. In the single source example, I show how, if you had some light on the left cheek, it would help define the line of the nose and the plane as it turns around the head to the left.

[Barbara Hudson]

Hello Michael.

First of all, I would like to thank you for taking the time to look and comment on my painting.

The demonstration on lighting effects was very helpful and informative.

Yes, the lighting on the reference photograph is not what it should be, I agree. However, she liked the photograph and her position or stance in it so much that I decided to tackle it anyway. I did have a couple of better photographs of her to help me with details, I realise that this is not ideal but I did consider it a challenge. As I am still in the early stages of my venture into portraiture, I thought that taking on a challenge such as this would be good experience. Was this wrong?

As for the cropping that you mention. I was advised by another portrait artist about composition in portraits who me completely different advice on this! He said that to make a better and more interesting composition in a portrait you should try to crop a little of the subject out of the frame which will, in effect 'lead the eye into the painting'.

Anyway, I did put in some planning some thought into the composition, but I probably misunderstood what he was saying. I will have to read up more on portraiture composition before I tackle my next one.

I still have quite a lot to do on the painting before it is 'put to bed', and I cannot get back to it until after next Wednesday.

I will, if all goes according to plan, post the final version by next weekend. Hopefully, it will get past the perusal of all you wonderful experts without any hitches! Fingers crossed!

Thank you once again Michael.


Barbara

[Peter Jochems]

Hello Barbara,

In a situation like this I would prefer to make a new series of photographs, and all would be variations on the photograph the model likes so much but with the proper lighting, so I, as the portait-painter can feel satisfied also about the quality of the picture, while the model sees the pose that he or she prefers.

As a portrait painter, I feel that I need to guide the model through the process, so the person who commissions the work feels satisfied about the pose and the way he/she is being portrayed, on the other hand, there are certain things that I want to get right in the source-photograph, like good lighting. Although I understand that it's not always possible to do that when someone insists on using a photograph he or she likes very much.

Peter

[Barbara Hudson]

Hello to everybody in the Forum.

First of all, my thanks to Peter and everybody for taking up their time to help me with my painting. I realise that the reference photograph was not of a good standard and this made it difficult for everybody to offer their advice. The advantage that I had over you was that I actually know the subject, and I also have a lot of other better quality shots of her.

That being said, her parents are delighted with the result and told me that I have captured the look that they wanted so badly, i.e. the crooked smile!

I think that I am reasonably satisfied with the result given the problems that I have had, however, where I feel that I can improve it is to soften some of the edges more than I already have (this was difficult). Is there any way that you can successfully give the impression of a painting being done in one session thereby the edges naturally resulting in being soft?

Unless you think that there is something that is glaringly obviously wrong with it I think that I will put this one to bed.

I have certainly learned a lot with this portrait, which will help with the next one which is already being planned.

Thank you again

Barbara