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Critiques
I believe that a critique is a great teaching tool that helps the student (we all are) to SEE like a painter and to improve our artistic TASTE. To ask: "are you satisfied with the likeness?" is an unnecessary question, because if one isn't satisfied with the degree of likeness in a portrait, no paint would have been used, only charcoal or thinned paint for a sketch.
Once a painting has been finished, the more useful teaching comments would be about composition, color harmony, achievement of the illusion of atmospheric depth, roundness of form, adequate perspective (linear and aerial), mood, etc. Of course, to obtain these effects on a painting, one has to have adequate drawing skills, a sense of color harmony, adequate use of edges and most of all, to be able to put together an attractive combination of shapes, chroma and values that make a painting a pleasant picture to look at. The likeness of the sitter doesn't make a painting good or bad, it's the total effect that the artist has put on the support that counts, regardless of whether the painter used live models or photos, and also regardless of the painter's artistic or stylistic goals. As I said it before, when I look at a painting as a whole, I can feel attracted by it, rejected by it or causing no feelings at all. I prefer to be told you: "why don't you try it again, your painting does not look good..." rather that try to dissect it into edges, color temperature, proportions, values, etc. As serious painters, we all are supposed to be able to pick up most of our errors in technique and be able to correct them without somebody having to tell us "this is what you did wrong". I have seen many paintings submitted for critiques that have been "corrected" according to various "advices", and to me, those paintings never stopped looking flat and unattractive, because the problem was deeper that an edge being too sharp or an "unnatural" color..
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Tito Champena
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