Further dissections

Going to be a short post tonight . I am on a painting jury tomorrow in Rockport, Mass. so I have to get up early. Lets look at that boathouse picture from yesterdays post again.

I felt like the line of the dock across the middle of the painting divided it too much in half. What I did in photoshop was to pixilate it more. I broke the color up and lost a lot of the edges along that waterline area.

I broke up that overly insistent ramp thingy up on the dock. I also darkened the sky near the peak of that gable to deweight that passage a little bit. Also dropping the value of the sky a little made the spring trees tell better in front of it. I gave the little guy a head to make him look more human and I nailed it dark so it would be more compelling so he is of greater importance in the picture. He also helps attract attention up and away from that troubled waterline area.

Here's a still life that has nice color. I think it could use a little more observation though. The stylistic convention of the blocky planar shapes is I think pushed a little to hard. The blocky shapes would look better if they were interspersed with some more rounded forms. All of the forms could use more volume but the yellow pear seems to need it the most.

The color of that background is luscious but the brushwork there and around the knife parallels the forms in a rather matter of fact way. I think it usually better to paint in to an edge rather than along an edge. It makes the handling look more painterly.

I also think the edges in this piece are uniformly hard. It would benefit from having a mix of hard and soft edges. For instance in the shadow area under the front of that pear. The form would go around a lot better if the reflected light were grouped into the value family of the shadow rather than being as high in value as the planes which are out in the light. Too many hard edges make the eye jerk nervously from one to the next as they are all very assertive.

image; artrenewalcenter.org

Above is a Soren Emil Carlson that exemplifies the qualitys I am suggesting . Notice the dynamic light and shade, the hard and soft edges on that white bowl and the mystery with which the form of that bottle disappears into the shadows. Also notice the control; of color temperature. See the hot notes down in the shadows, it gives them transparency so we look down into them, instead of at them.

The three small red fruit, Cherry tomato's? are arrayed about that knife at all about the same distance. A greater variety of intervals between them would give greater variety of shape. Perhaps the shadow of the knife might be tied to the tomato to its left to haul the two together into a group. Then that knife and tomato group would sit on one side of that foreground space and the pear and tomato balance against it on the other. Whenever you can, try to arrange your objects into groupings so that several of them become one thing, rather than each object sitting separately from the others. Grouping simplifies the design.
The handle of the knife is not in quite the same plane as the blade giving the knife an uncertain sort of twist through space.

My suggestion for this artist would be to observe the forms more completely and try to get a more fluid handling.They could also work towards a better control of color temperature, the shadows light s and reflected lights across their forms are all uniformly of the same temperature. If they were to use, say, cool lights and warm reflected lights they would get greater variety in their color.