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- This topic has 6 replies, 3 voices, and was last updated 3 months, 2 weeks ago by txomsy.
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June 22, 2024 at 8:16 am #1554152
9×12″ on 140#cold press paper
Hi, I’m asking for crits and comments re AVON PARK I. What works, what doesn’t? How would you improve it, esp composition, values, color? What feeling do you get from it? What would you do, and why? Are the grasses at the water’s edge too individual? How about in the grassy foreground? Thanks.
July 2, 2024 at 3:30 am #1555137I think it is very good. The blues are perhaps a bit too bright *for me*, but that is a matter of personal preference.
Maybe colors are too uniform, I miss the presence of some contrasting element to focus attention, my eye wanders around the image without resting at any single specific place. Maybe (but only maybe) you should have included some “foreign” element (a person, or, I do not know, something), but then it would be a different image.
Other than that, I do like it a lot.
July 3, 2024 at 3:28 pm #1555336I like how you painted the leaves, the trees in the background, the reflections in the water and the sky. I like the grasses too, but I would add some more prominent ones in the foreground (I feel like they are perhaps too “concentrated” near the water). Maybe I would add some more yellowish greens, to make the greens look more vivid (the scene looks quite “cool” in color to me). However I think it’s very good and I like the dynamic feel of it a lot.
"Las cosas más bonitas de esta vida son las que se acaban"
July 7, 2024 at 1:29 pm #1555733txomsy, thanks for the feedback. It is a bright piece, isn’t it. Even as I worked on it, I thought that, and something I read years ago here, in the landscape forum, I think by one of the more prominent artists. Something about natural colors being much more muted than are generally painted. I’ve also thought that’s not necessarily my experience. A lot of that (muted coloring) is because of location, general weather and temperatures, the foliage itself.
Yes, it is bright. The day was bright. I think I see what you mean about color uniformity which I worked to avoid but maybe didn’t quite make it… I also thought of including a heron–one was nearby–but didn’t. I didn’t think I could make it believable. Thanks.
July 7, 2024 at 3:23 pm #1555745Hi, Lauraefe, thanks for your comments, too. Interesting that you mentioned temperature. Taller grasses in the near foreground may help with depth, too. The tall ones at the water’s edges have their feet in the water–more water plants than grasses. It does need a bit more differentiation in grass colors… I’ll see what I can do.
July 19, 2024 at 4:20 am #1556652I agree, it largely depends on personal experience, and even so…
I think it was Van Gogh (or Monet) that said it was a huge surprise when they moved to Provence and first saw the bright Mediterranean colors. What in one place is seen as muted, in a different one may be eye-shearing, dazzling colors.
And anyway, if one were to paint reality as it is, a photograph “might” do it more justice. But I often find photographs do not make justice to what I perceive or how I perceive reality. The photograph may sometimes be lighter or duller or have less contrast than the way I see the subject*. The great advantage of painting is you need not make things as they are, but paint them as they should be, or as you see them, or convey an impression of feeling.
*Actually, they likely are precise, but our eyes adapt automatically to different light intensities as our attention focus changes, altering our “local” perception, while a photograph has to use the same sensitivity for the whole scope… which is what led to HDR photographs, but then all contrast is stretched, not just that of your intended focus of attention. So far**, only painting can do that.
**Now, there there is an idea for the next time I try to postprocess an HDR shot. Might be fun thinking of ways to do “focused” or “localized” HDR believably. Likely not as much fun as painting it, yet.
July 19, 2024 at 4:21 am #1556653BTW, looking forward to Avon Park II
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