Oh dear, now I feel completely silly. The kid to which I refer (my kid) is the one who said that my painting looked like an alien. The comments that followed regarding the alien remark seemed to refer to a small child, smaller at least than mine. The little girl in the painting is an altogether adorable third party child (not mine). I hope this is all now clear as mud.

It is just so hard to goof around in text only. Sorry for any confusement.

Janet

:D :) Oooppps! I could have read more carefully; my apologies.

Anyway I really like this painting of the little cutie. It is so freshly and directly painted!

Garth

Hey Garth,

No harm done. This text stuff is tricky. By the way, your good opinion means a lot to me. Earlier today you mentioned to do another one. Well I did. I'll post it in a day or so. I took this week off work because I'd really rather be painting. So I am painting up a storm.

Janet

Janet, what a colorful and lively portrait regardless of the age of the subject. I just love how the personality shines though the canvas.

I did a self portrait and my son asked me why I made myself thinner. LOL. He's 10. If my husband had said that it sure wouldn't be cute.

I realize you noted the comments on the head. I still feel like the tippy top could come down a tiny bit but I haven't seen the reference and I am no expert.

One other question. There is more than one image in your initial post? I only see one using Firefox (on PC). Now I feel like I am missing tons of great stuff but I am not happy using IE. Any thoughts?

Hi Lisa,

Thanks for your thoughts, I will lop a little more off her head. Too bad you can't see the reference photo, though. I'm wondering if it's a Windows/Mac issue, in which case we all may be missing some info from time to time. It's funny, I'm using the most current Mac OS, which was supposed to make integration with the internet completely seamless. The reference shot did not originate on my computer, but it was another Mac (same OS), and I certainly resized and resaved on my machine exactly the same way as the picture you can see. In short, I'm as mystified as you are. It would be a shame if not everyone was getting the same information all the time.

PS. Add me to the legions of fans of your "Naive Elegance" portrait. I felt too intimidated to add my two cents at the time. Congratulations.

Linda,

Sorry for being remiss. No, it's not an outdoor shot, but I selected it for the look, and then really exploited it. There were three kids in the shot, all with that lovely back lighting. Lots of practice for me! You asked in another thread what was on my palette and I never got back to you. Short answer: no cadmiums. I pretty much phased them out years ago doing illustration and then banished them last year from my oil painting palette when I started doing portraits. This was long before I knew of the deep divide that can exist on the issue!

Janet

Cute kid - nice painting. But I don't see a reference photo posted?

Julie, hi, sorry. It seems that some people can see the reference photo and some can't. I have resaved it from the original and will post it again. I noticed the first one was CMYK instead of RGB, so perhaps that was the problem. Thanks for taking a look, anyway.

Janet

Get a Mac. Use Safari.
 

The reference photo is visible using Safari as the browser. It is not visible using IE or Netscape.

Everybody get a Mac! ;)

Garth


Update: Okay Janet, your reposted image below works on IE, and Netscape!

Oooops, and again.