Marsha, your first pastel portrait! I guess I'll go and hide in a broom closet! It is lovely even without it being your first. Amazing. You captured the darker values on her neck and could perhaps add darker values also to her lore cheek on the left side of the painting - I think that part of her face was in pretty deep shadow in the photo. At any rate, you've just dashed my belief in having to work with a new medium for a while before we become really good at working with it!
Jim, an excellent portrait of the woman. I especially liked the way you laid the shadows in - it gives it the appearance of a wood block print, which is very cool.
Bonnie, your painting of the flintlock rifle is excellent. The one thing you might consider is a touch of highlight on the rifle and boards and bag to widen the range of values. This may sound odd, buy I love the tall grass and plan to copy the way you painted them for something I'm working on!
Jean, this is a lovely rendering of the row of birdhouses, which is such a charming photo to base a painting on - you captured that charm so successfully. I concur with the other comments about just adding a touch more contrast in values.
Fred, I always love your paintings because they speak to the viewer on so many levels. Are they charming? Yes. Are they clever and often funny? Indeed. But they also have a point of view and a moral, so to speak. This one is very touching, even more so because thousand of people in the path of Hurricane Sandy still don't have a place to live, or heat, or food.
Catherine, I like to do the same thing you described - put a pale wash of color in each facet of a painting and then build up the color in layers.
Geri, Sam has it exactly - just a very subtle suggestion of a shadow under their feet. Beautiful use of contrasting value by making the chick on the end darker, too. Again, just lovely.
So much beautiful work!
Alex
Comments and critiques are welcomed and appreciated.
Geri, don't feel bad if you decide to leave the chicks as is. You have, as Sam says, a gem. You'll never forgive yourself if you keep working on it and it doesn't work. Does that make sense?
Hi Geri, your ckicks are charming just the way they are, I read something in an art magazine about adding figures to paintings that I think would give you the suggestion here. It was to put the figures on tracing paper cut them out and just place on the painting to see where they would fit best before adding them. If you did some of the work for the shading under the chicks on tracing paper and set it on the sketch you might get the idea of what it would look like before you put ink to paper.
Bonnie C & C most welcome / appreciated
Geri I'm with Bonnie idea of either using a tracing paper or you could print off a copy and try it on the copy before you commit to the original.
Your chicks look great!
I'm glad you mentioned the picking the white of the eye out with a sharp object as I forgot to leave the white spot for my chicks so I made a note to do that before I'm done with mine.
Catherine Brown
C&C's are welcome.
(No digital alterations please)
Jean - I absolutely love how you did your ptg.. The looseness, what you inc. for the composition, the colors...it all ties together fabulously.
Fred - Your friends in the ptg. are so charming and you've conveyed the theme in a creative way. Like those hats!
Geri - This is obviously a labor of love for you since this takes much patience. It's worth your effort since it has already turned out super. Another way to go as far as testing re. the shadow...do you have Photoshop to experiment with that? It's a great way to plug in what you want to test ahead of time. Whatever you decide, it's a winner.
Kim T (Kim513)
C&C welcome!
Catherine, colored pencil goes well over watercolor. You can put the white highlights in with a white pencil.
Sam/Sammy C & C Welcome
Visit my blog at www.artbysamh.blogspot.com
Jean, this a lovely lively WC of the bird houses. I didn't know how to make this into a painting but you clearly did . well done.
Jen C & C's always welcome
Fred I like this painting on so many levels not the least the lovely message in it. I also like the bright colours which bring so much like to the cold snaowy day.
Gerri, you have made great use of those new pens of yours. you have far more patience than I and the results are wonderful. the little chicks look so fluffy and cute. I agree about a little grounding for them but would also try it out before doing so. either way you did a great job.
Well I had a go with Gerri's grandson tonight. I am not good with animals and doing a portrait with so little contrast is tricky but I had fun and it is a challenge.
in my sketchbook 2b pencil
Jen, this is a wonderful (and very sweet) likeness of Geri's nephew with his goat kid.
Jen, this is so good, I can almost see the goat squirming in Geri's grandson's arms.
Geri this pen painting is great as is why put 2,000,000,000 more dots and end up dislikeing the results , I try to be overly optimistic about humanitys role on this planet so far we've done poorly at best
Jen you have captured the very essence of the photo great job
Jim C&C welcomed
Hi Fred, love your new piece, you have such a skill in simplfying the picture to highlight the theme and hold the viewer who then discovers all the wonderful aspects of the painting. I'm with Sam, love the sky and I think someone else mentioned the hats, there great and relate to the idea of neighbours helping neighbours. I also think the snow must have been very hard to do and you make it look so easy.
Jen, this is adorable. You should be pleased with this one. I think the pencil adds to the nostalgic feel.
Jen, your graphite drawing of Geri's grandson, Nate, is well done. You are getting real good at portraits. The facial features are right on, you did a good job with the hand, and your newborn goat is so cute. I agree that it is difficult to do a work of art while using a reference that does not show values. I usually decide where I want the light to be coming from and then proceed to put in darks where I think they should be. Without the values, everything looks flat and non-dimensional.
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