Home › Forums › The WetCanvas! Galleria › Open Critique Forum › Oil On Canvas 36 x 42 inches
- This topic has 13 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 1 year, 7 months ago by mr-cinnabar.
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January 8, 2023 at 10:29 am #1497713
- Still undeniably inspired by Bacon. What are your thoughts?
January 9, 2023 at 1:58 am #1497787Not my style I’m afraid.
Doug
We must leave our mark on this worldJanuary 9, 2023 at 10:30 am #1497844Just curious what you would like critiqued in the painting?
Anatomy, design, value range, color harmony, perspective, mass shapes, the list is extensive which I could go on about ; I would like to be as helpful as possible for you.Do you have an area you would like to have critiqued for you?
all the best ,
mark
Painting was easy until I learned how.
January 23, 2023 at 5:15 pm #1499465Thanks for looking Doug!
January 23, 2023 at 5:18 pm #1499466Hi Mark. I’d like to know what’s your take on colour harmony on this one as I’m colour blind so i see some colour slightly different when I apply them…& mass shapes perhaps? You can go into detail if you have time…i’d really appreciate it.
Thanks in Advance
January 24, 2023 at 2:06 pm #1499571Hi spiritual journey!
Alright… let’s look a little closer at this piece. Now that I know what you want to hear about… it makes it a lot easier to be focused in on what you’re interested in.
Let’s look at this with some bullets!
- Color harmony… The blue and the green are usually held within the “cool” side of the color wheel. The Greenish white of the wall tile contrasts with blue of the floor tile. The green is sort of a yellow green, and the blue closest to the bottom of the picture is cool and gradually turns to a warmer blue as it approaches the wall. These colors can play together because the green is rather desaturated (low chroma). The blue floor tile is highly saturated. Because the floor tile is SO saturated (high chroma), it pulls a lot of weight into the bottom 1/2 of the picture. The gray on the wall behind the head helps to allow the blue to stand by balancing it with another large neutral color area. So we have a large desaturated area paired with another smaller desaturated area, to help balance the powerful blues, especially those blues at the bottom of the painting. I think, it would help to desaturate these blues at the bottom of the painting a bit more. They are pulling they eye away from the areas of interest.
- I like how you adjusted the edges of the grout on the wall tile. It changes color, lost and found edges, and also value adjustments. Makes something which could have been very mechanical more interesting than it would have been. Good!
- Mass Shapes…The big issue here is the painting is split in half horizontally. That, according to the “rules” of composition is a big no no. Can splitting a painting into a left and a right half or a top and bottom half be done? Yeah. Still, it takes a lot of planning to pull it off though. I have never successfully been able to do it. I think here it creates two big equal blocks.
- To get back to the colors for a second… I know a painter who is partially color blind, he paints well, knowing what the colors are supposed to be. I don’t know how he does it exactly, and sometimes the colors pop into some colors which “shouldn’t” be in the area, but the thing is, it doesn’t matter. You can paint with almost any color and place it almost anywhere as long as it is of the right value. As long as the value is correct, the eye will usually accept the color. The thing he did for a long time was to work with a limited palette. That way he knew his painting would hang together color wise. Now, he works with more colors, but he intentionally adds an unusual color and tones it to the correct value. It works. Color is less important than value. I can paint a green sky of the right value, and your eye accepts it. Same goes with orange. The red of the heart is a very cool red. Nearly purple. High Chroma alizarin crimson I think.
- Shapes. There are some areas that could be improved if you’re interested. A few anatomy issues.
- Shadows. They’re waaayyy too dark. Different light sources. That cast shadow of the crane is on a very light tile. The shadow would be much lighter.
- Design. I think you could reconsider the direction of the box. The lines of the box are leading directly out of the painting. Redirect them back into the painting.
So here is a quick rework on the painting which is REALLY rough. The main attack was on the guys face. The “outline” of the nose was erased, Highlights on the cheekbones, lightened and reshaped the alla of the nose so the nostril would be smaller, lightened the corner of the jaw, attached the neck into the jaw much further up (it attaches about an inch to an 1 1/2 inches back from the front of the jaw, and reshaped the chest. The other thing I did was to lighten the shadows a bunch and softened those edges. I touched up the shoulder and implied the clavicle and the sternocleomastoid muscle.
Let’s look at the value scale. The reason is we often confuse color with value…
What are the areas of highest contrast? Is that an area important to the story of the painting? This reads to me as a middle key painting.
I think there is one tweak I would really recommend for you to do. Change the direction of the box holding the heart… as below, I think it redirects the eye back into the painting.
Using the blue for the box helps to unite the top and bottom half of the painting. It also points in the general direction of the mask on the hook above the guy. Not to mention it breaks the wall/floor line up so it isn’t so powerful.
There are other things you could do if you wanted to unite the painting more, I have lots of different ideas there, but the main one is to break the line of the wall/floor and redirect the eye back into the painting.
to me, this painting screams “healthcare worker”. I work in the healthcare field and have seen some horrific and heartbreaking things in my life. I have also witnessed bravery, courage, love and tenderness. Having to place your heart into a box so you don’t break down yourself so you can give the care people so desperately need, is part and parcel to a job like that. It follows you home. It is a rewarding job, but it also keeps parts of you in check. Was that the point of this painting?
All the best to you and yours!
Hopefully this helps!
Mark
Painting was easy until I learned how.
January 25, 2023 at 4:21 pm #1499687Hi Mark, i really do appreciate your break down,,.specially the importance of colour value. It’s an area I want to work on, value, colour & effect of light.
Regarding the box, I can feel the change in your redo. it feels more “right”. it’s nicer to look at..
With the division in the middle , between the wall & floor, that’s a very interesting view point plus the aggressive blue of the floor, both factors takes the attention from the subject..
My paintings are just plainly visual. not much story behind it or it doesn’t try to tell any stories.., just following my guts about what i want to see. it’s just an image i captured in my mind like the rest of my paintings
i want to go more in this direction with focus on the right colour value & following classical geometrics and less narrative, that’s entirely up to the viewer
once again thanks a lot Mark. i have to keep those pointers in mind for my next painting =]
January 26, 2023 at 4:39 pm #1499793To work on color value, I suggest you make a value scale.
Here’s one I made… Ivory Black on one end and Titanium white on the other. (Our kitchen has a rather yellow light in it. In real life its white and black)
Hold against the thing you’re looking at, and see where does it fall on your value scale. Then hold against the color you’ve mixed. Does the color you’ve mixed fall at the same spot on the value scale?
You’ll quickly gain the ability to look at a green or blue or red or yellow and see where it falls on this scale.
As you can see, this is well worn and well used. I still will take this into the field with me to make sure I am not confounding color with value.
Just an idea.
Mark
Painting was easy until I learned how.
January 27, 2023 at 7:24 am #1499856ah great! so basically you just mix the chosen colour with titanium white? the more white the lighter & the less white the darker? or what tubes exactly you used for this example?
January 27, 2023 at 4:49 pm #1499897ah great! so basically you just mix the chosen colour with titanium white? the more white the lighter & the less white the darker? or what tubes exactly you used for this example?
Yup. Exactly. I have a 25 + year old tube of ivory black… I think it’s 250 ml or something. I don’t use black very often. Usually, I only use black if I am using a Zorn palette, or if I am making some certain types of greens.
Anyways… I was doing this as a teaching tool for my kids (I taught them to draw and paint) and we were all making one on a scrap of Masonite with some oil primer on it. Understand this was probably 25 years ago or so I still had a LOT to learn myself. I thought if I use equal portions of Ivory black and Titanium white I should get the 50% gray. So I mixed it up and lo and behold, NOPE. Waaaayyyy off. I puzzled and puzzed until my puzzler was sore, then I thought of something I hadn’t ever thought before. Maybe, just maybe, there was a difference in the way pigments mixed with one another. I hadn’t heard the term tinting strength before. This was all new territory for me. Wild unexplored territory. I knew what I was after, and made a new batch of gray to hit what I thought was mid way between the black and the white. The middle gray. I used that big pool as a source and took a small portion of it and added white to make the halfway gray between white and gray, then took another small portion and added black to the halfway gray between black. Then just averaged for the others. I was amazed at how much white it would take to lighten a color and how little black.
It taught me a lot. It taught the kids a lot. That’s why I recommend it so much. I went out and did some Plein Aire paintings just using black and white and this value scale. I was amazed at how much more life like the paintings looked simply by placing the correct value. Distant trees looked distant. Close shadows looked close. Crazy. As I said above, I still will check my work from time to time outdoors and in the studio. Not to see WHICH green I am using, but is it the right VALUE. When things don’t look right to me, it will often be traced back to this fundamental error. My son is better than I am at massing shapes and values. It’s just the way he paints. He sees values accurately.
I think the old Ivory black is an old Grumbacher tube, and I know I was using Grumbacher Titanium White at the time. I think the mixing process was something I needed to do to really LEARN this and make it part of my being. I had already been painting for many years when I did this and hadn’t really realized how much of a difference it made.
Sorry about going on and on…
Mark
Painting was easy until I learned how.
February 3, 2023 at 9:07 am #1500810Hey cheers Mark. Yes, it’s a mission to find the correct value. At the moment, i’m obsessed with skin tone. Trying to get it right based off photographs then I refer sometimes to my own memory if it doesn’t look right on the canvas. For me, this (correct value) is what i’m focusing right now because it really captures the attention,. it is nostalgic in a sense & gives the onlooker a feeling of familiarity.
not sure if you’ve seen this painting of mine, i took time to get the tone of meat which i find familiar.. so there’s 3 pieces of meat there,..3 attempts… 3 photographs =]
February 4, 2023 at 11:56 am #1500945Interesting painting. Meat looks like meat so you have done well there.
Value of a particular color is the most important thing. The first thing to find is whether the value is in shadow or in light. Everything in the shadow is darker than the darkest portion in the light. It was a real thunderclap of understanding for me when I read that bit of information. It explained why some of my paintings didn’t read correctly. The value of the color MUST be within the shadow values or within the light values there’s no other place for that value to be. It is either in the shadow or in the light. Any value which is in the light cannot also be in the shadow. Any value in the shadow is being lit by REFLECTED light which isn’t as strong as the primary light source and thus MUST be darker.
Ideally, you could photograph someone you know, make the painting from the photo, then bring them back in and have them model and see where your colors/values have gone astray. If you do that, bring them against a background which matches the mid range value of the skin. Have them lit with a side and forward light and use that. If the background is darker than the light part of the skin, then the lighted portion will give you an edge you can see. Same goes with the shadowed side of the face which will be darker than the background allowing you to see the edge there as well. Works really well to do a line drawing that way too for the same reason.
All the best!
Mark
Painting was easy until I learned how.
February 14, 2023 at 2:56 am #1502178I’m not going to comment on the subject matter as that’s not my thing at all. But here’s a few things.
- Perspective is skewed throughout. Is this intentional? If not then you need to pay closer attention to correct perspective whenever you depict the built environment. There is a very low tolerance for getting this off before it necomes distracting. The tiles make this a harder job than if it were a smooth surface.
- Hand on the man appears to be without form.
- Might want to do some figure studies as that posture is a bit hard to look at.
April 8, 2023 at 12:52 am #1509057Your tile is terrific, both the background and the blue ones underneath. I do think his flesh, even if he is dead, needs to contrasted a bit more from the water/tub. And Mark, while helpful, might be overwhelming you with too much information – but he’s right about both the cube/heart AND like most paintings here, lack of CONTRAST is the thing that seems to hurt a work more than any other sin we artists can commit. Good luck!
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