Have never had critique...

[Steven Sweeney]

A lot of visitors will empathize with your concern about "where you stand in the group", and though it's easier to mouth platitudes than to internalize them, the fact is, you stand on your own two feet, not on the back of anyone else, not in anyone's shadow. Critiques are merely observations -- sometimes perceptive and helpful, and yes, sometimes impulsive and judgmental -- that you can choose to adopt as a barometer of ability and self-worth, or accept as information that may be useful (whether it leads to changes in the work or, after reflection, counsels you to leave the work as is.)

My non-painting wife has the incredibly annoying habit of taking a quick look at a piece that I've worked days or perhaps weeks on, and without any prefatory remarks about my obvious genius of composition or masterly execution, saying something like, "Are you still working on it, or . . .?" [at which time I say yes, even if I had theretofore considered the piece all but finished], and then she says, "Well, that thing in the background looks like it's sitting on the table instead of hanging on the wall" or "Is that supposed to be . . . no . . . is that grass?"

There was a time when I'd transform those comments into little darts, which I with open arms would permit to enter me between ribs to prove my incompetence. No more. Though I'm perhaps not yet always gracious enough to immediately thank her for her observations, I often do, as soon as she's gone, soften the edges and lower the tone of that background object, to push it off the table, and I add detail to the foreground of the grassy area and let the optics of aerial perspective mute the distant field. And then you know what I do? I take FULL CREDIT for the result!!! -- and I do so because I considered the information I was given, analyzed my work in light of it, made deliberate decisions about how to address the "problem", and resolved it. It's not only a great way to learn, it's the ONLY way to learn. So try very hard never to fear the necessarily biased (we all see through unique eyes), sometimes inartfully expressed, and yet sometimes dead-on observations of others.

I think you have a very nice drawing here, one that I immediately thought must capture some essential quality of the subject. I felt like I would know this person if I saw her in real life. The parts of the drawing that might need some reassessment are things that come from experience, from drawing dozens or hundreds of head studies, hand studies, and so on. I've found that one of the most useful guages in drawing is carefully comparing reference points. A couple of examples: if I'm satisfied that the left shoulder meets the neck at the correct height (from the viewer's perspective), does something seem amiss at the other shoulder's being so much higher? And if in this not-quite-3/4 view, the center of the chin is to the right of center, wouldn't the center of the lips be also, and wouldn't the tip of the nose be even slightly to the right of that? [I hasten to add that I don't know the answers, because I'm not looking at the subject.] And from the side of the skull adjacent to the eye on the right, is the upper corner of the forehead above, or to the left of that point? (Cover up a sliver of the right side of the forehead with your finger, so that the skull is more "rounded", and see the effect.)

Comparing those reference points to each other, and to horizontal and vertical plumb lines, will very quickly ratchet up the realistic accuracy in your drawings and your paintings.