Oil portrait
 

I would be very interested to have some feedback on this portrait. It is of an Italian called Pietro and its actual dimensions are lifesize.
Many thanks and happy Christmas!
Catherine

Nice job. I find this to be a fine strong head with an interesting silhouette. Generally I stay away from life size portraits as any flaws in the execution will seem to be emphasized.

The only suggestion I would make might be to add more color to the reflected light within the shadow area in order to differentiate it from the direct light.

A really well-done portrait Catherine. Speaking from a layman's viewpoint, it has an intensity and strength that captivates me.

Catherine,

I really like your portrait. He shows a strength of character about him that is striking!

Have you thought of coming in somewhere with a different color, perhaps in the background to give it just a little more contrast? I like the grey, but maybe since the shirt is that color you could change it up a bit more behind him. I really love the face! Good job! :thumbsup:

Maxine,

The shirt shows as blue on my monitor. Really don't see grey anywhere. The colors are definitely muted, but definitely blue here.

Hi Cynthia,
I still feel the same way even though the shirt is blue. I see the way the same color is used all through the painting, which is a good idea, because it gives the painting integration. However, the fact that it is used so much is monotonous for me. Of course this is just my own opinion, I really love color. Some people prefer a more limited palette.

Thanks for the comments. As is often the case the reproduction hasn't quite captured the colours of the original. The shirt is indeed a muted blue but the background is a far stronger ochre/green in reality. Interestingly I do use a limited palette. Five colours to be precise. Lead white, ivory black, english red, light yellow ochre, and ultramarine blue (although this only for materials).

I make them myself and so far have not seen the need to increase my colour range as pretty much any colour can be achieved by mixing the main four and it makes it much easier to achieve an overall unity.

Many thanks again for comments, it's fantastic to have so much feedback and extremely useful!

Nice portrait. Check the ear, the orifice seems a little large and too far to the bottom of the ear. There also seems to an indefinite line coming into the orifice from the top.

Your painting would also look better with the line at the back of the head being softer.

Put some ambient light colors in the shadow side of the face.

I very much like the lighted side of your portrait.

Daniel
PS Happy new year.

I, too, like the overall pattern on the light side, which works especially well because the lights are linked; that is, there isn't a little spot of light here, and another there. The linkage actually simplifies the light shape and, in doing so, makes it more powerful.

I admit that my first impression as the page opened up was that the entire portrait was very "cool" in colour. (This may be owing to the digital reproduction.) Since even the flesh tones seem cool to me, I wonder if some interesting contrast might be introduced by working some orange (complementing the blue) into the background, perhaps using raw and burnt siennas. I notice that you've worked some oranges into the hair already.

Bringing the "light side" and "colour" discussion together (and again realizing that a snapshot often fails to pick up nuances of colour), I believe the light side of the face could be warmed up a bit in places, particularly at the sides of the forehead, where the facial planes begin to turn away from the light (and eventually move into the cooler, greenish halftones and shadows). Right now, the white-tinted highlight on the forehead goes from one side to the other without much variation, making the forehead appear flat (and of course, for all I know, it is -- but I suspect that one smaller area within the forehead was the location of the strongest highlight, with the areas around that focus being slightly warmer.)

The drawing of the features is very good, especially in this often-tricky 3/4 pose. I don't know your training, but you've obviously spent some time studying the figure. The mouth and "muzzle", an area that I struggle with, are well executed. (Paul Leveille makes a point of reminding us that the mouth is not just lips, but lips as part of a "muzzle", a musculature structure.) I would mention only a couple of little quibbly things to consider.

1-- From the viewer's perspective, the eye on the left seems to be looking higher and more to the right than does the eye on the far-side right. I would bring the colour of the iris ring farther to the left, and also round out what is now a too straight-edged iris (think of the iris/pupil as an inverted plate sitting on a sphere). You have that roundness in the iris on the other eye, and properly low.

2-- Again, from the viewer's perspective, the right nostril seems to disappear too completely. Though it flares upward and we can't see that on the off-side, the base would be about as low on the far side as on the near side (tiny allowance for perspective). The septum also thins out too much, winding up centered left of its "normal" location directly above the center of the upper lip.

3-- Some well-placed, slightly darker halftones at the top of the nose would be useful to "turn" the brow down a bit to meet the nose, and to "turn" the left side of the nose away from the light (and soften that sharp dark shadow line).

4-- I agree that the ear "orifice" is a bit too prominent. It may be too large, but I suspect that it's simply a bit too dark; indeed, it looks almost black. It's easy to overmodel ears and to introduce too great an extension of values. It seems that with ears, the less notice, the better, and right now the dark area's contrast with the rest of the ear is whistling for attention that it shouldn't get.

I agree that the "back" (left) edge of the hair should be softened. This will, among other things, help that part of the head recede, as it should (the sharp edge causes it to come forward.)

Kind of long-winded but I hope there's something that might seem worth having a look at.

P.S. One last "drawing" point. If the shirt or jacket is hooded, then that part of the material would be thicker and sit on top of the shoulder. If this is instead a collared garment, I'd suggest moving the point of the color off the shoulder, so that it isn't directly in line with the shoulder's edge. Just a little movement would be enough to make clearer that the collar is in front of the shoulder and above the pectoral muscle (and, so, add some depth to an area that looks a little vertical and flat.)

Very good job Catherine.

I couldn't resist adding my comments since several things did jump out at me however.

The hair that forms a bun (?) shape could use some variation in shape (it becomes a geometric object) and an earlier suggestion to vary your edges along the silhouette on the back of the head will help a lot.

I should also say that it does not look as though you gave the shirt as much attention and interest as the wonderful face. It seems rather monochromatic and edges are uniformly rendered. Paint it with the same enthusisam as the head.

Good Luck!

Soft remark
 

I have a little thing to say that is probably about my personal taste and manner of seeing...

I really think most "westerners" read paintings by and large from left to right. The gaze being towards the left (looking of the canvas) rather makes me want to look off with him. I might prefer it (the work) simply flipped, then we'd be looking in toward him. Is this clear or valid?

Aside from that I too think it's strong and like it still.

I am too felt the right eye (left on the painting) needs some work, exactly the way described by Steven. But don't try to do it without the sitter re-pose for you, the color should not be the same as on the other eye, and can be any imaginary color due to the angle which light refract thru the lens and complicated by the reflection of iris.

The rest is fine to me, well balanced composition, forms and colors, show that painterly expression.

This will be your milestone painting, so move on do another one quick, don't stop.

Catherine,

I don't know that I agree about changing the direction of sitter or light as was suggested earlier by Tim, but flipped the painting to see what it would look like (I have a mirror in my studio that permits me to look at a reverse of the painting while I am working on it and often see problems that don't occur to me otherwise) and then moved the figure further back in the painting to give the head/face more room.
I hope you don't mind my playing with your pianting and hope it helps.

Love it!
 

Jim it's great...I know all the big ones have done great works in the manner of the original I just really like what you just posted, even the light flows (more naturally for me from left to right) or from above downward...:thumbsup: Tim

Dear all,
A million thanks for all the help and such in depth advice.

I'll have to admit that I can now clearly see the faults myself but through a constricted amount of time and partly due to the fact that it was an exercise rather than a commission I never did get round to correcting them!

I will definitely post the next more finished effort that I am working on at the moment.
Thanks especially to Tim, Stephen, and Jim for their contributions. The reversal of the image was incredibly effective, an aspect of the psychology of painting that had never even crossed my mind.

Many thanks again
Catherine
:)

Just to be clear.

I copied and pasted Catherine's portrait into Photoshop, flipped it, moved the image back in the frame, and cloned the background and shirt to fill the resulting space on the face side of the frame. I also added an indication of a shoulder.

The attached shows these changes to the original compared to the flipped version and I must say that I find it very difficult to find one direction better than the other.

Dear Catherine et al,

I am in complete agreement that westerners will tend to "read" paintings from left to right; and that a person's first written language dictates their "default" reading direction. The notion of how a painting is "read" is one that I spent many hours researching when putting together text for "Painting Beautiful Skin Tones". (Includes interviews with a developmental pediatrician, a neuro-psychiatrist, two opthalmic surgeons and a speech therapist,as well as a lot of literature review.) Although there is a variety of opinion, there is some support in the literature for the idea that there is a "direction of language".

This idea of a learned visual direction, is, I think, the same mechanism that causes Americans to look the wrong way and step out into traffic in London. I believe it results in tendencies for the Israeli-born viewer to read from right to left and the Chinese-born viewer to read from top to bottom.

I also think it is very important in setting out the composition of a paintng to recognize this idea. To get the left-to-right reader to comfortably read your work from right to left, you can help immensely by giving them obvious visual clues about the eyepaths that you place in the work. Otherwise the painter can risk presenting the discomfort that comes with straddling a visual fence (like the vase-face thing, or the even-distribution of values/shapes/etc thing). One of the most basic things a painter can do is to place proportionately more negative space between the edge of the canvas and the front of the head than is placed between the edge and the back of the head, as Jim shows in the flipped/cropped version. (I mention this as a convention, although, like any convention, I have seen painters break them very successfully, but I am convinced, not accidentally)

I also think that this is the underlying reason that European painters so often placed subject with light coming from the upper left, rather than the upper right...it just felt more comfortable.

I'm interested in other opinions...? Perhaps this is more a Cafe Guerbois topic...

Catherine, I love this piece and find it fresh and painterly. There is little I can add to the very thoughtful critiques that have been posted..the only thing I would note is that the light and shadow temperatures are different in the face and the hair..that is, it seems that a warm light is falling on the hair, while a cool light is falling on the skin; the ear seems a little cool for the shadow tempertures.

Best regards, Chris