Kim

[Denise Racine]

Thanks for posting the picture. It is much easier to see that your painting looks very much like Kim. I think the dyed hair threw me off because it is almost the same value as the skin.

Don't worry too much about your digital photo problems. Good values are more important than good colors. And we can see the value range very well.

[Sharon Knettell]

John,

Do not ever try to combine two expressions into one painting. It is a recipe for disaster. When I was first starting out as an artist I had to do a movie poster. It was of the guy who had a shoe phone. Anyway, the agency wanted me to combine the top of the actors head with another shot of the bottom of his head. I complied as I was young, poor and wanting to please. The horrible result was never used and I never got another job from that movie company. I have never repeated that mistake.

Your photo is too high contrast. Try Portra NC iso 160, and use a simple white reflector to fill in the dark side. This will give you better skin tone reference. Your skin tones go from light to dark, there are no lovely undertones of blue or green.

Try this exercise. Take a simple head shot in natural daylight, sit your subject next to the photo (a comparable size photo is best) in the same light. The photo helps keep the drawing accurate and you can then see all the wonderful skin tones you miss while using just photos.

[Sharon Knettell]

I do not agree with that rule. It very much depends on the composition. Check out Sargent. It all depends on the composition and the point of view you are trying to communicate.

[Sharon Knettell]

Dear John,

In my zeal to provide you with what I thought was valuable information, I neglected to tell you the MANY POSITIVES of your work. I was so blown away by your persistence and hard work, I couldn't wait to pile on the advice. I rarely see that, so I was like an over-anxious nanny! I worked many years as an illustrator in NY, where criticism was direct and we were expected to take it without a whimper. I treated you like a seasoned pro.

I liked your composition very much; it was unusual and expressed a point of view. It created an interesting narrative and mood. The door handle perfectly balanced the head.

Your skin tone sequences were good, though they could have benefited from a few subtle undertones. I believe the Vermeer website deals with that under "local color". That website is wonderful and seems to be a perfect fit with your nature.

You appear to approach your work as I do, you are not simply interested in painting a face but your work has to express an idea. Try if you would, my little exercise, do several small heads, it will speed up your progress. I had to learn that the hard way, ruined acres of canvas, months lost!

You have all the credentials for sucess: talent, a willingness to learn and work hard, and most rarely and importantly, a point of view.

[Denise Racine]

Sharon,

After visiting your website I take back my suggestion about the 2-3". You have beautiful paintings to prove the contrary!

[Sharon Knettell]

Denise, thank you for that! the 2"-3" rule of thumb is probably useful for simple head portraits. However if you want more interesting and unusual compositions you have to push the envelope. I once saw a classic Boston School portrait with the head on the lower third of the painting. It was very effective!

[Karin Wells]

Vermeer painted sharp details in his areas of light. And much less detail is found in his shadows. Also, your reference photos clearly show this.

This manipulation of detail is especially effective when the contrast between light and shadow is as dramatic as in this painting.

I think that if you soften the details in the shadow side of her face and hair, you will be taking a giant step toward "realism" - and I am sure that if Vermeer were still alive he would be proud of your first effort John.

[John Zeissig]

Dear Sharon,

In a way I am a seasoned pro, so you are right to tell it like it is. I've been exhibiting my work for twelve years now, both in juried competitions and occasionally at commercial galleries. I've had some sales, done twenty-something commissioned pieces, won some prizes, etc.. In brief, I've been taking advantage of the opportunities available to someone with no formal art training and decades of developing bad habits, but with a great passion for art. It's just that I've rarely exhibited my paintings, for a lot of reasons that probably don't matter.

I've had experience on the other side of the art industry as well. For two years, in fact, I was on the exhibition committee for a very large arts organization in the San Francisco bay area, where I live. Picture this: a middle-aged guy who thinks he can make it as an artist (and is desperate to exhibit his own work) finds himself looking at slides and proposals from all over the world, curating shows, deciding who gets shown and who doesn't, and dealing with the charming eccentricities of the artists. My naive notions about the art world were irreversibly changed.

Given that background, I want to let you know that your comments are exactly the kind of thing I have been looking for. I include Mark and Denise and Mari in this as well. The observations on the eye and skin tones are all well taken. When you give or get a critique it's like an engineering problem. If something isn't working, you point out the problem along with suggestions for a solution. Usually there is a specific fix or an improvement that can be made, if not on this painting then on the next one. It does nobody any good to gloss over bad passages or withold critical comments for fear of hurting somebody's feelings. That would defeat the purpose of the whole exercise. Furthermore, a painting can be flawed, even deeply flawed, and still be good: not a masterpiece maybe, but good. In any event, it's necessary to display the work and pay attention to the response; close the loop by correcting the mistakes and present the revised work for another round. It works the same way in science or art or anything else I can think of where people do things with purpose. The process requires candor on everyone's part. In my case, I think I'm approaching the stage where I'm going to need some workshop or atelier training: because its difficult to apply these suggestions without having someone point out what's missing at the crucial time, rather than after the mistake has insinuated itself into the work.

I don't think the skin tone problem is as acute in this painting as the image in the post might suggest, but I think you've all spotted it. I spent a lot of time today going to portrait websites and downloading images. I've been blowing them up and looking at the actual pixel distributions in the areas of fleshtones at different values. There's a lot of talk about greens and blues and a multiplicity of colors in these areas, but precious little evidence of it in the pixels. Occasionally I'll find some solid green in the deepest shadows, but it usually requires 4X magnification or greater to really begin to see the hues: below that and they just look black. I've no reason to doubt that people are painting the way they say they are painting, so something is going on that causes those tones to be lost in the digitization. I've got the suspicion that the dithering algorithms that come into play when resizing an image are favoring the reds and yellows on downsizing. This is really apparent when I put a painting next to the monitor and compare it to smaller images on screen. The smaller the image the more orange it seems to be. If this is the case it limits interpretation of subtle coloration based on website posts.

I'm definitely going to switch to the Portra the next time I do any photography. You're absolutely correct about the contrast here being too high. I can't do too much about lighting right away as I don't have a proper studio, but I'm sure the film change will help things. I do paint from life when I can get cooperation. Situations like this Kim portrait with the direct sunlight make it very hard to arrange. I'm definitely taking your advice about doing some small head studies; it's a perfect time for that. On Jonathan's Vermeer website: I neglected to mention that when I started painting Kim he had just started the web page and the lessons after the underpainting section were not posted yet. I got way ahead of him and finished the painting before he posted the local color section or any of the rest. Not a very patient student, am I? Still, he was very helpful to me via e-mail.

Finally, I think it was very perceptive of you, Sharon, to notice that I have a narrative bent. I'm much more interested in portraiture that suggests a story or expresses a generalization than I am in stock depictions of Mrs. Pacific-Heights and Fluffy, not that there's anything wrong with that. Ah Ha! I just checked out your website. "Stephanie"!!!!!! I'm humbled.

[Mari DeRuntz]

Hi John,

A couple of atelier links you might be interested in:

1. The Art Renewal Center has an ARC-approved list of ateliers, some of which might be in your neck of the woods here: http://www.artrenewal.org/asp/database/atelier_list.asp

2. www.Gandygallery.com and the John Pence Gallery www.johnpence.com both have great online galleries where you can view works by atelier-trained painters.

3. www.Classicalrealism.com is the online site for the American Society of Classical Realism. On their "publications" page, I highly recommend Richard Lack's "On the Training of Painters", an inexpensive publication, and the first place where I saw (clearly spelled out) the difference between the Venetian and Flemish methods of creating a painting. If you found the Vermeer site interesting, you should really look this one up. And for more debth, he references the book, "Methods and Materials of Painting of the Great Schools and Masters," by Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, which Cynthia offers here on the book link.

I think you'll have lots of opportunities for this sort of study in California.

[Cynthia Daniel]

Thanks Mari, but actually, I didn't know about that book and I'll have to add it to my Art Bookstore. However, in the meantime, here's the link for it at Amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...strokeofgenius