I missed it

Elizabeth June wrote:
you can critique the painting on my profile page if you want.  it's acrylic on canvas.

Looks quite good. Well observed.

I get a sense of two-dimensionality from parts of it, though, as if you are thinking of the scene as made of interlocking 2d color shapes, which to a large extent it is, but I feel you are not holding a solid conception of 3D form long enough in your mind as you work. I'm speaking mainly of the cloth areas.

Terrell Gates wrote:
Here's a drawing...



www.terrygates.com

You have a nice confident style. I'm finding some of the anatomy a little confusing.

In the upper back and shoulder area I'm having a hard time identifying specific muscles and bones - the shoulder blades, for example.

I find your work a little too saturated for my taste, and I'm not as into strong outlines in paintings as I used to be, but those are matters of personal style and everyone doesn't have to paint the same way, so ultimately that's good.

The actual draftsmanship is quite good. Occasionally I find the anatomy a little indistinct - maybe in an armpit or somewhere else.

Sometimes I feel you use color too much over value to reveal form, and I wonder if the form would look sufficiently contrasty in black and white. I didn't actually look, though.

All in all pretty good.

Dan Law wrote:
I'll throw my proverbial hat into the ring.

I would suggest looking through this thread:
http://www.modelmayhem.com/po.php?thread_id=808677

I think in general you are too timid with contrast and with dynamic range. Everything is a bit washed out and the planes of the face are not confidently delineated.



I'd get a head like this and practice drawing it until I knew the planes of the head by heart.

http://www.planesofthehead.com/memorize … detail.php

Or get a skull and practice drawing it and fitting it into heads you see



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Here if you follow the jawline around it's not quite symmetrical and you lose part of it as it meets the hair.

It's not bad but I think it might be good to start with something light that is a little more gestural, and then going to something a little darker and a little more structural before going right to the contour.

Of course contour drawing is a valid exercise, but I personally start with those other things.

I've been doing more 30 second gestures such as:



Thanks for reminding me of a few other things I need to work on

You've mastered the first step. Your chimney is not on a diagonal.

This is good. I think I may like it best of your posted work.

I get a nice sense of roundness and volume and presence from this portrait that I don't feel as much in some others. The strokes have a nice energy to them.

You start to lose volume on this one below the head, so it doesn't quite feel as fully realized as the head does. It might benefit from more contrast, specifically darker darks.

All in all quite good.

Vincent Wolff wrote:
what the hell....

This has always been my favorite of your work here.  The composition and design is perfect.  The light is on point and the shadow detail just locks it in.

I like your colors and your energy and your themes. I like the confidence displayed in your contours, but sometimes I think there is a little hand waving regarding details in the interiors of the figures. It's definitely a very bold, graphic style, and I like it, but sometimes I'd like to see the anatomy a little more specific. In the case of Storm we see the mass of the thigh muscles running up the femur toward the anterior superior iliac spine on the pelvis, and the adductors breaking away, forming their own sub-mass as they head toward the pubic bone, and that's nicely realized, but I'd like to see that degree of observation indicated more in some of the other works.



Same with the buildings here. I find some of the surfaces a little under detailed in places.

Cool stuff.

NothingIsRealButTheGirl wrote:

I like your colors and your energy and your themes. I like the confidence displayed in your contours, but sometimes I think there is a little hand waving regarding details in the interiors of the figures. It's definitely a very bold, graphic style, and I like it, but sometimes I'd like to see the anatomy a little more specific. In the case of Storm we see the mass of the thigh muscles running up the femur toward the anterior superior iliac spine on the pelvis, and the adductors breaking away, forming their own sub-mass as they head toward the pubic bone, and that's nicely realized, but I'd like to see that degree of observation indicated more in some of the other works.



Same with the buildings here. I find some of the surfaces a little under detailed in places.

Cool stuff.

Now that... Is a damn good critique!

thank you, it seems to be a favorite of people.

You have an unusual style that brings to mind somewhat the 3D layered work of James Rizzi. It seems somewhat collage-based down to seemingly reusing heads from piece to piece. Your work is very 'symbolic' in that by using perfect front views of heads so often you convey more the idea of a head than a specifically observed head.

I'd push even further in that direction and make the assamblage nature of the work even more obvious, so wee feel multiple sources for the imagery even within one figure.







You sometimes have a fairly stylized space. I'd push it even more, and make the floors more vertical, somewhat in the direction van gogh went after seeing Japanese art.



You uses a lot of purple, some green and all skin tones are somewhat in the orange family, so you are using the traditional secondary color palette. I don't get a strong sense that you are working deliberately within a palette. Might be good to do so.

Also you are not really subordinating lesser elements (making them dimmer or less saturated, for example) to guide the eye. The result seems naive in the artistic sense, and somewhat 'clash-y,' which is great if that's your intention, but it means you make the viewer sort of meet you halfway, which some may find off-putting.

Bottom line: push further in your current direction.