Layne

[Mike McCarty]

This is an oil on linen 18 x 24. I would enjoy your comments and critique's. My photo's show the skin tone to be a little too brown, should have a little more red than is showing.

[Mike McCarty]

Here is a closeup.

[Joseph Brzycki]

Mike, this is excellent. The lips are beautifully done. I could only find a few things to point out at the moment. The right eyebrow and lower right eye lid caught my attention for some reason. Also, the model's left eye looks to be forming an almond type shape. Other than that, it looks great.

[Steven Sweeney]

Very beautiful subject, posed in character (and hey, nice trick to get out of having to draw hands!!), very nicely rendered. There are two or three things I'd look at, but I'm stealing time in fits and starts today so I'll have to do it piecemeal.

Compositionally, I think the reflections in the tabletop are way too strong -- too light, too much definition. (I'm not saying a glossy surface couldn't yield that kind of reflection, but I'm focusing here on how much of it you want in the portrait.) In fact, I'd looked at this a couple of times before I realized she wasn't resting her elbows on her knees! (I would have been quite embarrassed to have delivered advices on how to better render the fabric in her jeans.)

I quickly bussed this through PhotoShop to confirm my read on it. Lower the intensity of the reflections by at least half, using some of the reddish hue of the tabletop, rather than just a grayed white (the effect of lowering intensity with the red is actually, perhaps paradoxically, to enhance the luminosity of the reflection -- it may even be an opportunity to use a glaze of Light Red or Indian Red (I can't really see whether it should be a warm or cool hue), so that the remaining white shines up through the glaze. Try to grade the value from its lightest part right next to the sweater to progressively darker as it moves away. Also grade the edges from sharpest near the elbows, to very very quickly much softer. And I'd taper off the intensity and the reflection entirely by the time it gets halfway between the elbows and the bottom edge. It makes a far more convincing reflection and it avoids having the viewer's eye follow those reflections right out of the painting. It will also eliminate that big white "diamond" that is competing compositionally with the head, and will give you a nice compositional "triangle" of head to elbows. Finally, that new path of tabletop colour along the bottom will help "frame" the whole piece.

Tip #2 when we return.

Cheers,
Steven

[Steven Sweeney]

My thinking cap hasn't come back from the dry cleaners, so I believe I'll just list some areas to look at, without going much into suggestions on procedure. These aren't equally weighted, some are minor, some not.

-- Your greatest value contrast and hardest edge is at the meeting of the table top and the bright light source on the lower left, and so, that has become your focus of interest. Reduce the contrast and soften the edge to encourage the viewer's eye to go directly to the girl's face.

-- A similar effect appears where the bright sleeve meets the triangular shadow on the front of the sweater. This may not be "as" problematic, since it's very close to where you want the viewer's eye to go. Still, I think I'd experiment with lightening up that shadow, and perhaps breaking up the "triangle" by letting some light come into it down around her waist. After all, it's a low, bright source light and she's leaning forward with her elbow on the table, so some light must be getting in there.

-- There is perhaps a bit of confusion in the lighting. The low location of the highest intensity of light suggests an "uplighting", and yet, for example, on the mouth, the top lip is dark and the bottom is light. Likely, the recommended reduction in intensity of that light on the lower left will neutralize such inconsistencies. You might balance that with a commensurate increase in the value of the background to our right. Finally, a great deal of light is making its way around the sleeve on our right, but no similar thing is happening on the face. I don't suggest any substantial increase in value but I do think a slight warming and lightening of the upper cheek would help explain the light and, in turn, the form.

-- I can see how the drape of the sleeve and the lighting could produce the very strong values contrast between her left "hand" and her left cheek, but it's nonetheless slightly difficult to "see" why two shapes so close to each other, relatively similar in "local" colour and value, and each lying within the same shadow influence, should be so markedly different in value. I would suggest that you experiment with possibly getting some reflected light from the sleeve up into the lower part of the cheek.

-- The lit and shaded sides of the face are rather equal, lying either side of a somewhat straight line. There are many ups and downs and ins and outs (Old Master terminology) in the face between the hairline and the bottom of the chin, and every change in facial planes is going to have an influence on that "dividing line" between light and shadow. Try to look for those. One example is at the top of the nose, where the brow turns under from the forehead and creates a wedge-shaped planar surface that goes down to meet the nose. That angle in facial planes just has to result in some deflection of that shadow line. If for example the light source is relatively low, then that wedge shape will be lit farther to our right than the planes above and below it. Another similar area is the space between the bottom lip and the "bulb" of the chin. Anywhere there's a change in direction of facial planes, look for an opportunity to describe the form by very carefully looking at what happens to the light and shadow in those areas. On the forehead, though there's a planar change from side to side, it's extremely gradual, and so I wouldn't expect to see either a "hard" or a centered shadow line (specifically, I'd expect to see the light make it's way a little farther to our right.)

I think you've generally captured a very revealing mood and gesture, and as I suggested earlier, I think you've also shown the subject's youthful beauty in a kind of coming-of-age pensiveness.

I'm about to get a parking ticket so I guess I'll move along now.

Cheers,
Steven

[Peter Jochems]

I really thought she was resting on her knees, and was about to comment on the disconnected nature of her legs from the rest of her body... Perhaps you can put something on the table, a walkman or a personal item of her, to make clearer that that is a table. Maybe the background could be a little darker. Can you post a picture of the original photograph?

Greetings,
Peter

[Renee Price]

Beautiful painting! I love the softness and the colors--especially where the hair falls onto the sweater. Could you post the reference photo? I'm questioning the eyes, area between the eyes, the darkness of the hairline.
Renee

[Mike McCarty]

I can

[Steven Sweeney]

Wow, what a beautiful reference to get to start with.

Incidentally, I was just goofin' on you a little about the hands. The sleeves pulled up and over like that are extremely descriptive of character, especially -- in my recent experience as the dad of a teen-age girl -- someone this age. To have asked her to pull her sleeves back so you could see her hands would have completely changed the character of the piece and, I think, robbed it of a bit of its charm.

(This brings to mind, though, a old and probably inaccurately-recalled Peanuts strip in which the characters are drawing figures and it's noted that Charlie Brown has drawn his with the hands behind the back. Various pyschological theories are posited by other characters for this choice, but Charlie Brown finally simplifies the matter by saying that he just did it that way because he can't draw hands.)

Anyway, the photo does confirm a couple of things, such as the relatively lighter tone in that triangle of light between her forearms. Also, it's clear that the light in the painting indeed does come too far around the arm on our right and too far up on that arm toward the face -- that's what's creating the strong contrast in values between the sleeve and the face, the former's too light and the latter's a little dark. Also, see how the light comes across her forehead just a little more, how the shadow line dips to the right as it moves over the brow (rather than proceeding in a straight line), how the line under the bottom lip moves over to the right for a moment before coming back to the shadow on the chin.

One of the optical illusions that, I think, permitted me to think her elbows were resting on her knees had to do with somehow making the table top into the floor, with the dark line of contrast being the point at which the floor and wall met behind her. I think that, besides working on the reflections in the table top, it might be helpful to go ahead and put that chair back and partial picture frame into your painting, for spatial reference.

I think the inside corners of both eyes are too high, giving them that almond or "football" shape. The bottom lid is actually a bit straighter than the top, and they don't meet in a point at the inside corner, but instead the top drops down rather vertically at the "last second" to meet the lower lid.

That's probably enough from me, or perhaps too much.

Cheers,
Steven

[Mike McCarty]

I think the inside corners of both eyes are too high, giving them that almond or "football" shape. The bottom lid is actually a bit straighter than the top, and they don't meet in a point at the inside corner, but instead the top drops down rather vertically at the "last second" to meet the lower lid.

It's still amazing to me how you can study and stare at something so intently and fail to notice these simple things. The bottom lid of the right eye is out of whack.

I used to write computer code years ago. Invariably you would get the "bug" in your logic and work for hours or even days trying to locate it. You then take this string of logic to a collegue and they would point their finger at it in 3 minutes... amazing.

There is danger in making things up. I really thought the photo was yummy. The photo seems to have a nice kind of balance from top left to bottom right (technically it could have been lit better but thats not the issue). But I never thought that I could execute the flowers. So the flowers go and in their going the balance goes. So you remove something on the left to try and regain the balance. By this time you have something which has lost much of what drew you to it. I thought about placing a vase or a rose or a mouse or something on the table but ultimately did not.

Painters are like actors, we are judged by the material we choose as much as by the way we execute it. If I keep painting I will get better. But judgement, does ones judgement improve with exercise? I'm going to say yes it can.

My tendency is towards inclusion. Trying to give context to the person. As I go from case to case I become more firm in my belief that simple, clearly stated compositions are best. Less is more.