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Shawn Laughlin
•
1mo
added comment inFinal Touches
Asked for help
Trying to make it look more like she's in an atmosphere with dust, smoke or mist.
Shawn Laughlin
•
1mo
Asked for help
I like this way of working. I need to practice it more, but I can see using this for portraits. I'll go back and do the previous paintings with this technique. I went for the dirty mouth. I think it came out ok.
Another way I thought about doing this is getting pristine with the dress and putting some food on that. I guess the real soul of the photo is the eyes and the face. I dunno, I think both might work.
Shawn Laughlin
•
1mo
Asked for help
I do like this way of working and it goes against what I've always been taught. Its so much easier to judge things when the eyes are right. In my painting, the girl looks a little too old. I'm guessing she's about 2 and she looks maybe 4 in my painting. Part of it is in the cheeks, and partly the lines in the eyes are too dark. I'll work on that. I know you said kids don't need red noses, but I'm going to pretend she got a little sun. I like how that nose turned out :)
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1mo
and your placement is good because you followed it.
Shawn Laughlin
•
1mo
Asked for help
There are probably still a lot a problems in it, but I think I've hit the point you talked about where I really don't where to go from this stage. What bothers me most about it now is the right side of her face looks too sharp, almost cut out. I tried to soften it, but it still looks sharp to me. Its like its not in the same atmosphere.
Looking at it again, and looking at it in black and white, it doesn't look too bad ( I think it looks better in black and white). My father used to tell me make sure to work some of the background color into the subject, and some of the colors in the subject, into the background so they look like they share the same atmosphere. In one of the video in the first lesson you mentioned an art teacher told you if you still had a brush full of paint - put it somewhere else in the painting. I'm thinking its the same concept and not about saving paint. The problem is, I wouldn't know how to research it because I don't know what that idea is called. I think its more specific than color harmony. I think that's what bothering me. She seems isolated from the background. I look through your paintings and I see the subject and the backgrounds do share colors and it makes it look like they are completely at home in that atmosphere/environment.
Asked for help
I till have a lot to do with it, but this is so far. There are still a lot of hard edges and ugly shapes. I'm following your lesson step by step, but I did skip ahead to block in the shirt/jacket. It the lightness was kind of throwing me off.
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1mo
Be careful on that background. Way too dark compared to all the darks in rest of painting. It’s throwing everything off
Asked for help
Many thanks for that lesson on good shapes. I'll be consciously working on my shapes. I've leaned so much from this course.
Are there specifics, especially with the head, of what types of shapes one should be looking for? I know about the cheek triangle and Rembrandt lighting. But with the ear, most people would see a curved contour. You seem to go with angled straight edges inside and out. Are there places on the head where one should avoid curves? The angled straight edges definitely give it more structure.
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2mo
By emphasizing more angular shapes, it gives a person a better opportunity for measuring accurately
Shawn Laughlin
•
2mo
Asked for help
I'm doing this digitally, so I can't mix colors like one mixes pigment. In digital its additive mixing and pigment is subtractive mixing. I thought the colors in my first painting were too muted even for a limited palette. This time, I sampled the colors from screen shots when you were testing the colors. So I have better starting points. I've your average light, avg dark, avg dark from the 1st painting and your ketchup and mustard. Digital black and white are both pretty flat so I made a blue black and bluish white. Most of my mixing I'll do on the color picker from these starting points. Hopefully I'll come closer to the colors you're getting.
