40 x 30 Oil Portrait for Critique

Paul Burns · 08-18-2001, 05:37 AM

40 x 30 Oil Portrait for Critique. Thank you.

Mostly I'm concerned with how I handled the edges, warm and cool color. The arm in the background concerned me a bit. Also, are the arms and hands secondary enough or not? Is the highlight on the chair arm too bright?

Karin Wells · 08-25-2001, 11:56 PM

Your edges seem OK as far as I can see on such a small picture.

On my screen, the face detail is much cooler than in the larger picture...which is accurate?

The sitters proportions don't look right...the head seems too large and/or the shoulders and arms seem too small.

I don't object to the intensity of the highlight on the chair if the arm of the chair is meant to be highly reflective.

Overall, I feel that with a little more time and effort invested in this painting, you will have something quite nice.

Chris Saper · 08-26-2001, 10:53 PM

Dear Paul,

Welcome to SOG and thank you for the opportunity to view your painting. With respect to your inquiry about edges, my general thought is to think of the way that edges function to support the composition and the center of interest in a painting...they never work in isolation, but in conjunction with other tools you use, like sharp changes in value, color intensity, placement, etc.

I think that you have strong lights and strong darks to move the eye around the painting well, and your sharp edges reinforce this kind of movement. However the large dark negative space at the upper left tends to weight the painting disproportionately, so that is looks like the figue may sink into the southeast quadrant. This is strictly a compositional issue. There are several ways to deal with this, such as re-cropping, or adding a balance (subordinate) in the dark quadrant. I like the light on the chair and feel that this could be part of an eyepath that moves through the upper left. As I have visited this issue many times, I have found that by doing a 3-value thumbnail sketch before I begin can save lots of later aggravation.

This response may be a bit afield from your request, but it is often difficult to look at one aspect, such as edges, in isolation. Best wishes to you.

Chris