Looking for a critique
3yr
@mussienko
Hi everyone! I have recently picked up oil painting and would really appreciate some direction and critique. All three are plein-air paintings, the vertical ones are 8 x 10 inches and were finished outside in one session. The horizontal one is slightly bigger and was finished up in the "studio".
I'm trying to think in three values and thumbnailing the composition beforehand but finding myself struggling with the color, value, and just feeling that it's lacking overall.
Anyways, would love to hear any advice and critique so I can maybe start improving :)
These are pretty nice! To me those are pretty adequate for a representational painting... If you feel somewhat "lacking", it might be because the shapes are not very much combined and the image becomes harder to read? And I found that if you do bright stuff in the areas that are supposed to be shadow, it's gonna look weird. Like the white line on the road, it's typically a lot darker. I just did a overpaint on the computer in an attempt to clean up more on the shapes.
Thank you for your feedback! It does look more unified with your corrections. I will definitely keep this in mind at the preliminary stage!
Hi @mussienko, I love your use of color in all of these studies! I think you have a pretty good self critique of your work, and I think the most impactful thing that you can work on would be to punch up your values. Right now, I think the areas in light and in shadow are not made all that clear. For example, looking at the road in your first painting, it looks like there are some segments of it that should be in light and other segments that are in shadow, however both your light and shadow values are too close to each other to communicate that.
In order to get this clear separation of light and shadow, you might have to start either exposing your image to the light, or exposing your image to the shadow. When you expose your image to the light, it means you have a higher value range for objects being hit by light, and you compress the values for objects in shadow. When you expose your image to the shadows, you do the opposite: you have a higher value range for objects in shadow, and you compress the values for objects in the light.
I've attached two separate images to illustrate this point. The first image is exposed for the light. Everything that's in shadow has been simplified to black (sometimes dark blue). Everything else is in the light. This allows the artist to get a clear separation of values for light and shadow for even the dark jackets in the scene. The second image shows a painting that is exposed for shadow. Notice how much color information and variation the artist is able to get in the shadows. Also notice that how everything in the light is basically white, in order to achieve that clear separation of value.
Hopefully this concept can help as you try to apply it in your future studies. I think the challenge for you is going to be in keeping your color vibrancy while doing this value separation, but push through and your paintings are just going to get stronger. Hope this helps, and let me know if there is anything that I can clear up for you!
@Luigi Manese, thank you so much for your advice! I went out and tried to apply it today. I think it worked really well, especially in this direct sunlight condition. Looking back on it I probably could’ve pushed it further, but pretty happy with the result nevertheless. Excited to experiment further and expose the scene to the light next time!
Choosing a non-middle exposure reference is quite neat! I haven't thought of this much because for most of time when I photograph I'm doing it in a representational way where it is meant to capture most dynamic range. But as you say exposure to the light or shadow areas indeed brings more focus to the given region instead of muddling everything together. I need to bing this mentality more to my paintings I think, it also naturally solves the "oh I can't see that thing in the shadow/light area if I don't have the dynamic range" problem because that's kind of the point. :D
These are fabulous. Because you're obviously quite skilled already, be more daring with the marks you leave and the way you load the brush!
That’s very kind of you to say, thank you! I definitely want to go more expressive eventually, just making sure I have a solid base first. :)
