Unsure of next move. Help!

[Linda Brandon]

Hi Janet,

I like the fresh painterly quality you bring to your work. Nice painting!

Here's an idea that might help you with facial proportions when you work from photos: blow up your photo (a Xeroxed black and white is fine for this purpose) to the same size as your painting. Take a clear plastic sheet and draw over the face with a black Sharpie. Use this as a template to place over your painting before every painting session. It will keep you from falling in love with an eye that is a quarter inch off which you will be loathe to move. (Tip on moving eyes: scrape the canvas down so there are absolutely no ridges before you rework it.)

The template is a pretty primitive tool but personally I am too lazy to really learn Photoshop and do photo comparisons that way. I also think this way is faster.

By far the best way to train yourself to draw something exactly is to let your eye flip back and forth from the subject to your painting. Where there is vibration is where you've made a mistake. The Sharpie template is a crutch but it will help you from going too far in a wrong direction. It also won't help you in finding values, color or volume but it will help you with placement of features. When you work from a photo your facial measurements must be exactly right or the likeness will be off.

Most artists who work primarily from photos go to a huge amount of trouble to get everything exactly the same as the photo so if you are going the photorealism route you'll have to do this process of constant remeasurement, one way or another, not only at the start of your painting but at every painting session.

[Brenda Ellis]

Janet,

I vote for "Faith" too. It looks great! I love your painterly style.
(Thanks for the compliment on that other thread! )

This forum is such a great thing. It is so nice to know others who are learning and developing along side of me. And we have such great teachers!

[Janet Kimantas]

So Faith it is. I know what she was thinking about when I snapped the shot, and she's gonna need all the faith she can muster (moving out of town to go to University. With my son. I don't know if I'd do it!).

Thanks for your support, all. I do wonder, Linda, about the whole "photorealism" aspect. I'm not sure that that's even what I'm after. Certainly realism, but isn't that different from photorealism? I'm probably just revealing my ignorance here, but I thought they were two different approaches. Anyway, thanks again. That's the last painting of Sam for a while, I don't want to start appearing peculiar.

Janet

[Linda Brandon]

Originally Posted by Janet Kimantas

Thanks for your support, all. I do wonder, Linda, about the whole "photorealism" aspect. I'm not sure that that's even what I'm after. Certainly realism, but isn't that different from photorealism? I'm probably just revealing my ignorance here, but I thought they were two different approaches.
Janet

I should rewrite that paragraph in my last post; I don't think you're a "photorealist", you're more like a painterly romantic realist who works from photos, at least in this painting. (Or something like that.) I think a lot of the realism styles overlap, depending on the artist.

I think it takes years and years of practise to catch one's own drawing mistakes. You can see this when you attend a workshop: the person next to you is way off, and why can't he spot that? Meanwhile that person is looking over at your own painting and thnking the same thing about you. (By the way, I know some painters who get "close enough" but never actually nail a likeness, and they get away with it.) Also, you can be off, and know you're off, but not know exactly where you're off. Another set of eyes really helps sometimes. The template can be a simple checking device when you don't have anybody else to ask at the moment.

If you're not trying for an exact likeness I suppose there is more wiggle room, but it takes very little error to distort facial features.

Your painting is beautiful however it's labelled.

Sorry for rambling. I'm working on a painting right now and it took me three days to figure out I had the nose septum too narrow.

Brenda, I really lke that Dickens painting! Thanks for posting.

[Janet Kimantas]

Linda, go ahead and ramble. I wouldn't interupt you for the world. Thanks for all the time and thought you put into your comments. This portraiture thing sure is tricky. Although I suppose I could just not post my reference from now on! Seriously, though, thanks. Hey, how did your myriad cousins up here in Ariss fare during the tornado that touched down? The photos I saw were quite amazing.

Janet