Nude with gardener
11mo
Paul Scott
This is a preparatory sketch for a proposed painting. Any critiques would be appreciated.
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10mo
Hey there, Paul! Nice prep sketch. Something I notice is that your main character elements are pushed far to the edges of the picture, well outside of the rule of thirds which cramps your foreground and background storytelling elements to the outside of frame. Also the gardener's face being clipped by the window is fairly distracting. You could rearrange your composition a bit and make more use of the dead space by the window curtain, and have both gardeners craning their necks peeking in the window frame right, taking a little inspiration from Rockwell's "The Flirts" which similarly cramps the two men in the window but we're able to see the whole story their faces are telling. Nice work, hope this helps!
Thanks for your critique, Patrick. Much appreciated. Actually, I never thought of there being two gardeners! The bust on the top left is a sort of neanderthal Elon Musk in my imagination, and the oddities of having the bust looking directly out of the picture, and the gardener's face obscured by the strut of the window are sort of idiosyncracies which I rather like. You do point out the lack of subject matter down below, but there's one very important thing down there which will probably still attract the viewer's attention. Thanks again for your thoughts and I will bear what you say in mind when redrawing the sketch.
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10mo
The pose feels a bit stiff. Did you try drawing a few quick gestures of this pose yet? I'm a beginner, but the composition itself seems pretty solid.
