[Aquanet] January Member Critique is up

[Barry Lindley]

Hi, Miriam-

It is a lovely portrait, and I'm sure the client was well pleased.  The pose
and expression are very appealing and graceful, and the dog is great,
well-integrated with the girl. 

I'm not sure what you meant about "Rembrandt lighting", because the bright,
lively background (which works well and fits the spirit) does not seem to be
what I would think of, nor does the generally lively color. I think it is
difficult to pull off the low chromaticity and deep shadows of Rembrandt (as
well as the wonderful textural quality of the paint) in watercolor, although
as soon as I say that I think of Henry Casselli, who does it wonderfully
well, also Andrew Wwyeth on occasion.

The one thing that bothers me a bit  is the feet - in the photo, they are a
bright orange, with strong value contrast to the tights, and are a big
distraction, although I'm sure you worked hard on the drawing to "get them
right" - they are better off much subdued.  In a Rembrandt-esque treatment,
the feet would be almost lost in shadow. The big toe is tangent to one edge
of the picture field, and the left knee to the other, but maybe that's in
the photo-cropping.  It is always better to avoid having features end at the
edges of the picture.

Although the overall effect of the painting is fine, the lighting seems a
little confused to me.  The shadows on the shoulders and face are consistent
with light coming from high right, a little to the front, but the lower
right leg is inconsistent with that, as is the dog, especially the
conspicuous red kerchief (the most saturated thing in the whole picture,
with no light/shade modeling).  There is a very puzzling pattern of very
dark smudges on the right arm and lower shirt, presumably an effort to show
deep shadows there, but they just don't seem to fit the other light cues and
are too "active" (interrupted by flashes of light along creases.  To have
them as well as the nicely done shadows on the shoulders you'd have to have
two light sources of rather different character.

You might try doing a gray scale posterized to review your value patterns -
I find that doing that can help strengthen composition and avoid some of the
things that creep in when working out the details of a painting.

Please don't let all this distract from my feeling that the overall
impression is of a very good portrait.

Barry

 
Barry D. Lindley
Paintings and Drawings
www.BarryLindleyArt.com