What's Wrong With this Painting?

Davkin · #1 10-13-2011, 07:36 PM

This is a WIP that I thought I was nearly finished with and now I'm not sure I'll finish it at all. I know it's not a strong painting, (I won't go into how I know.) but I'm not sure why. Can you help? Please don't hold back, I need some serious constructive criticism here.

I do know the water needs work, that's a major weakness for me in general, but I don't think fixing the water will fix this painting.

Thanks

David

pointy · #2 10-13-2011, 08:24 PM

I think that there are a lot of good elements to this painting, maybe there is a little too much competition between everything though, decide where you want the focus to be and play down the other parts, the orange middle ground is what draws my eye in at the moment

Barbara01 · #3 10-13-2011, 09:35 PM

Love those warm ocher/sienna oranges and golds on the ground and repeated in the trees.

I notice that the tops of the trees on the left line up perfectly with the mountain top, that's a no-no that Johannes mentioned at some point. I like layering more cool tones in the water to give it the multidimensional quality which also gives it depth. Did you happen to catch Johannes demo about painting landscapes with pastels? He gently dragged a lighter toned pastel horizontally across the water near the edges allowing the darker under tones to show through in places. Perhaps use more highlights on that clump of trees to the left since they appear to be the focal area...not that I'm a focal point person. lol

Overall I think that it's a good composition.

maryinasia · #4 10-13-2011, 09:55 PM

maybe add some atmospheric blue to make more layers in the midground?

**DAK723** · #5 10-13-2011, 10:10 PM

Dave, first let me say that this is a nice painting. I would be very happy with a landscape that looked like this!

The comments I have are all pretty minor and really just a matter of opinion. There is nothing that I would say is fundamentally lacking in this painting. Since these are just my opinions, feel free to disregard my critiques.

The first thing that I notice in the painting is that the center two trees get lost a bit with the background. This is due to trying to get highlights on these trees, and yet the highlights are similar in value to the lighter background mountain. I would forsake most of the highlights so that these trees stand out a little more.

The second thing that I would tweak just a little is the line separating the two mountain ranges right in the center. It is a bit straight and could have a little more variety.

My third comment is even more opinion than the other two! There is a lot going on in the painting with quite a bit of detail in the fore and mid-ground trees. One way to make the painting less busy is to reduce the amount of suggested detail in the mountains.

I hope you don't mind, but when I have critiques I always try them out first in photoshop to see if they work (they often don't). Since these points are all fairly minor, they may not change the painting that much - which is all right because the painting is nice as it is! I post my revised version so that you can better visualize what my comments are, and to see if they improve the painting at all in your mind.

Again, feel free to ignore!

Don

chewie · #6 10-13-2011, 10:23 PM

ok, here's some food for thought and please know I am saying this all in kindness, and if you dont' like it, just delete it!

--the black lines I put on for the trees, they are too even, like a soldier line up. some should come forward, some back and some bigger than others. some darker, some with lots more brown tones.

the horizontal line of those trees and the next hill are too much on the same line. also, I think the middle hill has too much smoothness to the top, mess it up! you could toss in some lost edges between that one and the most distant hill/mt. and, the most distant hill is too even, it has 3 almost even 'lumps' and a cloud over each lump. and those left taller trees line up too evenly with the tallest distant mt. top.

to help your water, you need to decide if its about the water/land, or the sky. i believe your intention was to have it more about the land/water, so maybe slightly darken the sky, dull it just a tad. and maybe some green in the water as well, after all its surrounded by deep green trees there'd be some green to it i would think. sky often looks better with some aqua as well.

the color of the grasses is very good, as are the trees on the left, they are 'messy' and interesting. I think your forground on the right of the water is nicely done as well. i think you should play with this some more, at the very least use it for learning, but i think with some tweaking, this could be finished out nicely. there is alot going for it, keep going!

Davkin · #7 10-13-2011, 10:25 PM

Thanks for the inputs everybody. I'll mull them over and respond specifically when I have time. One thing I will respond to is the fact that maybe there's too much going on, so I decided to try a couple crops. Do either of these crops make a stronger painting, (with some modifications of course.)?

One the first crop, (or even the uncropped version) I think I'd mostly eliminate that bulge in the water to the right.

David

equinespirit · #8 10-14-2011, 02:29 AM

David, I like it just as it is and I think you have done a good job on the water too, but Im no landscape painter

DBfarmgirl · #9 10-14-2011, 07:45 AM

I like it. Don't give up on it.

After seeing your cropped versions, it makes me wonder if there's something with the dark areas of trees on either side that is distracting. Maybe lighten/grey down, add some noise to the background trees on the far left, center?

I like the top crop alot.

jackiesimmonds · #10 10-14-2011, 09:41 AM

Forgive me, but I think the primary problem with the painting is that it is rather DULL. I feel it lacks punch so is somewhat boring.... also it is dull in terms of its colour and its pattern of light and dark. Take a look at its greyscale rendering:

Now we have taken away the colour, you can see that the image lacks impact. You can achieve impact in various ways. One of them is colour contrast, another is tonal contrast. The colour contrast is not particularly strong or effective; the tonal contrasts are limited to light sky/ rest of pic lots of similar tones of greens.

Also, now we become aware of the SHAPE of the water. It is a specific shape, yes, but it just meanders diagonally across the picture from left to right, taking us nowhere in particular, and echoing nothing except the colour of the sky. One of the strongest ways to give a picture more impact is to have ECHOING SHAPES within it. - this pic seems to have no echoing shapes, it just has the shapes that were "there".

to explain what I mean...have a look at this Monet. See how the blue shape of the water is VERY SIMILAR in shape to the green reflection on its left it is almost the same shape, just the other way up, and it "relates" also to the shape to the right...they are a "family" of shapes, all of them similar to each other,.

Sometimes, in a landscape, it is hard to find echoing shapes, like Monet did, but I promise you, it was no accident. He would have deliberately chosen that patch of water because he was able to use those shapes to his advantage, to create a strong composition with them. Sometimes, we have to "adjust" nature a little, to create a strong compositional structure for ourselves. It adds a great deal of power to our images.

let's see what I might do without making drastic changes. Firstly, I exaggerated the sunlight on the trees, picking up on the gold colours in the ground. repetition is a strong compositional tool...and while this turns it perhaps into rather a different scene, it dramatically increases the impact - now we SEE the trees, and feel and see the drama in the scene. The oranges contrast strongly with the blues in the sky -they are complementary colours on the colour wheel ...you could add some more colour to those blues, and pick up the colours you use, echoing them in the water.

Also, I brought the water back INTO the picture, (and added one more horizontal area to balance the shape a little more and echo other horizontal movements in the picture - see if you can find it). Now we dont just meander from left to right, and out the picture to the right...(no reason to come back, after all, because that backdrop of trees was not interesting enough to make us want to come back in). Now we come in from the left, and then are encouraged to move back into the centre of the pic towards the main stand of trees, our focal point, with their sunlit edges, strong dark trunks, brilliant light behind and dark shadows beneath them.
Counterchange is another compositional tool, and here you have it..right on a focal point too.....dark trunks against light behind, while above that area, you have light on the trees against dark behind.

See what you think.

Jackie

Kathryn Wilson · #11 10-14-2011, 12:18 PM

You are learning to evaluate your own paintings - and that's good progress for you - to stand back and see that it needs work.

It needs a major player - something to attract someone to the painting to look closer. It doesn't need a major change, but just find a focus in the painting that attracted you to the scene and make more of it - pump it up, make it shine, let it say "look at ME". (Jackie showed you a good example.)

Don't scrap it - just work on it and even if you go too far, you will have learned something. Be daring, be bold - it will only help you in the long run.

IMaybe · #12 10-14-2011, 12:59 PM

I TOTALLY agree with Jackie's explanation of the scene. I felt as soon as I saw it that the values could use some help, even tho the 3 planes were apart from one another. Looking at it in greyscale sure does help, also painting standing up and going back to view your work helps.

Her fixes or suggestions to me are spot -on.

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