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Eileen,
This came out great and the hair is wonderful. The only thing I would do is tone down the blues under her chin.
Pat
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Pat, thanks, and you are right. Now that you point it out, that blue definitely needs toned down. It’s nice to have other sets of eyes looking at this.
Sue, thanks for your advice. But I have to ask more questions, LOL! (I appreciate having you as a teacher here, and I’ve brought you an apple this morning!
) If I do reduce the intensity, won’t that also reduce the tonal values? Coming from working in graphite, I pay a lot of attention to tones. As a matter of fact, I work mostly from a black and white photo, only occassionaly referring to the color one, because it’s so important to me to get the tones right. (Not to say that they’re quite right on this one, LOL!)
I’m still trying to get an understanding of color. By reducing the intensity of a color, won’t that throw my tones out of whack?
Eileen
If you hear a voice within you say "you cannot paint," then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.
~Vincent Van GoghWonderful portrait Eileen your skin tones are lovely and what a cutie pie you have there.
KathyKathy
C & C welcome
Yes and no, Eileen. It depends on if you use the same tone to reduce the intensity, then no tone at all is lost. So instead of a dark bright blue violet you’ll get a dark subdued blue violet. I sometimes add a lighter color to knock it back in intensity and then lightly go over it with the original color and get the tone back, but reduced in intensity too. One thing you have to be careful with in photos is shadows. They almost always make shadows too dark. Shadows in real life are almost always transparent. unless they fall directly under an object that is very close to the shadow. Shadow has variation of color too, it shows the underlying colors and patterns and it shows reflection colors from the object throwing the shadow and other objects around it. For example…in Desolation below you can see that I used blue violets but the warm tones are still showing through, although reduced in intensity and cooler. The pants legs show how much light is actually allowed into shadows, although never as light as the sunlit areas, they do show a lot of light. And you can see the shadow cast on the step is transparent also. I can’t locate the ref pic for this, but originally she’s sitting against a rusted white painted steel bridge and the shadows were horribly dark in the bright sun. In fact it wasn’t even a photo but a still pulled from a video camera. You have to step away from the photo ref and look at the painting and make it work. Hope this helps some!
Artist webpage
See my virtual gallery!Charter Member of Silver Chord Art Guild
Pat–Your fisherman is looking marvelous! I’m very excited to see how he’s coming along.
Eileen–Keep up the good work on the little girl; I love her rosy cheek. I’ll consider crossposting my guy in portraits, but I’ve never been in that forum before…maybe if I can get a better photo of it.
Dyin, Pat, et al–Well, I’m not sure if you can tell by the bad indoor photo (you know how it makes hard midtones, etc. because I had to use flash) but I did adjust the eye and lips and in person I think it’s looking better. I could not get the nice coral tone on the mouth even after scraping, though.
The hair is still looking a little on the bright side as well but I’m taking a break on that part. Now I need a little advice, please: Should I leave the shirt as is, or nearly so? I can do cloth fairly well, but I’m afraid that I’ll get carried away with the folds and it will be distracting. Second thing: I gave no thought to the background, thinking I’d just use the nice light green tone (I love green and violet/blue together) but now I’ve got smudges here and there. :rolleyes: This was just for practice but I like it more than I thought I would, and want to hang it.
It really looks wonderful and so like her!
You could add a little shadow contrast around the shoulder area of the shirt so it doesn’t look so one color but I wouldn’t go down too far…just let it fade out. Ha…that’ll teach you not to think background from the beginning (I never used to either teehee) but depending on the paper you might just be able to get rid of the smudges…with a kneadable eraser…you just keep using a new spot, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. If it doesn’t you’ll just have to be brave and scumble some color in…it can be the greenish tone you want or perhaps the color in the cheek (on my monitor it’s a lovely orangish tone which is a compliment to the blues you have). It’s definately worth framing! Artist webpage
See my virtual gallery!Charter Member of Silver Chord Art Guild
Navajo Flute Player WIP
Oil Pastel on coldpress watercolor paperThought it time to share my attempt at skin tones in OP. It started out only as an exercise in drawing and skin tones but has become a painting. I like my progress and found the OP’s to be easier than other mediums for protraying skin tones. I originally had the background in washes of color then as I sometimes do started with the drawing of objects. Will change back to the washy background I don’t feel this one works. Will update after I do some additional work. Skin color values on hands still needs work–subjects right fingers aren’t reading correctly more work but coming together.
Your comments welcome
KathyKathy
C & C welcome Yikes! You did great with the skin tones
What an interesting subject and nicely composed on the page…I like the background, just needs to be softened a hair I think…it puts him in a nice environment. I also love the violets in the shirt. Great job, Kath! Artist webpage
See my virtual gallery!Charter Member of Silver Chord Art Guild
Hi Sue:
Thank you it felt good to be pushing the oileys around again. LOL This fellow was a terrific subject and was gracious to let me take his picture. The Navajos set up tables at the top of Oak Creek Canyon to sell their wares. Not only could he craft these lovely flutes he played beautifully. Thank you for your comments and will get back to work on this one.
KathyKathy
C & C welcome What a charming portrait, Scoy. I agree with Sue on the shirt, darker on the near shoulder. I’ve done that on portrait backgrounds, just put in a little similar tone. It is a strong little piece and stands by itself. Hang it.
Pat
My Website
oil pastel society member
my blog[/URL]
Kathy, What an interesting subject and he is coming along very well. I like the background as it puts him in a place. Looking forward to seeing the progress.
Pat
My Website
oil pastel society member
my blog[/URL]
So many good portraits going on here!
Scoy, a wonderful likeness indeed!
Eileen, she is adorable! On shadows, I am learning through trial and error on advice from softies, that shadows are transparent. They are not a color unto themselves, but almost a thin veil placed over the original color. Not explained real well, but something I keep in mind when doing shadows.
Kathleen, he is wonderful! So glad to see you back here and working on something new. I agree about the background – just a gentle smuding might do the trick to push it back to the background.
Pat, watching your progess – this looks to be a wonderful character to paint.
Hope I didn’t miss anybody – if I did, my apologies, but it’s not intentional –
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