Please critique the attached portrait. I have been painting for one year and recently took a class on portrait painting. This is my first original portrait and I would appreciate any tips or suggestions you can offer.

P.S. I enjoy your website and especially liked reading your evaluations of the paintings submitted by other artists.

• What a nice job! A detailed human figure combined with landscape. I see many positive points in your work. This is your first original portrait!!!!????? What can we expect of you in the future? Only one year! God almighty! I wish painting had come that easy to me when I started.
• You have a nice way of entering the painting using the lady's left leg. The viewer's eye will follow this all the way up to her face.
• All the negative (area surrounding the figure) is different. She is perfectly situated in the picture plane.
• All her body parts are in different positions.
• You captured and depicted her sweet expression
• She looks relaxed and enjoying herself. You were able to convey a mood not just a picture perfect portrait.
• The surrounding area is interesting. We can look beyond her sharing her surroundings.
• Cropping her foot was correct. This anchors the subject to the picture. Many artists try to fit everything in the picture frame making the subject
  look boxed in.
• The composition is perfect. I don't see a way to improve that.

• I felt the foliage in the far background had the same greens as the middle ground foliage. This did not enhance the atmospheric perspective, so I pushed them back into the distance by glazing some mauve over them.
• I varied the height of the trees because they seemed to be too symmetrical and all about the same size. This could happen in nature but we have an artist's license to improve where nature doesn't give us what we want.
• I increased the punch in the flowers since they are within the focal point.
• The last thing I did was reduce the value on the shadow side of the white beam so that straight line wouldn't pull the viewer out of the picture by using it as an exit point.
• I suggest you repeat the same modifications in your original painting. You will be more pleased with it. If you rework the original painting, or create a new work, let me know - I'd love to see it!

Fantastic job!