A few images gently critiqued

I have been painting in Maine and will return home today. Then I can take my new, new computer back to the store and see if they can fix it, again. If they do, I will be able to load photoshop and do all sorts of wonderful things that I have had to live without lately. I am going to crit a few images I received, as I have been meaning to do this for a while. I won't be able to draw on them or do a remake version this time, but I can discuss them verbally.


I like this one a lot. Probably in spite of myself. But it has a a lot of nice things going on. I like the design of the tree leaning to the right and how that gives a dynamic arrangement. If that tree had been vertical the picture would have been static and less interesting. The color in the fore ground is "modern" I guess and it is nice and clean and forms a nice color chord. Pretty smart. I could fault it a little as I think it looks a little more like a color scheme for a fabric than a landscape. I also think that long yellow sausage shape in the middle of the painting is overly geometric. The rest of the shapes in the painting are naturalistic, but that one shape sticks out as sort of artificial, and its bright yellow color draws attention to its being out of sync with the rest of the painting. Still its a very pleasing little piece and I am sure it will be happily welcomed into some collectors home.
The vertical piece above could use a few design tweaks. I think that the upright trunks if the trees could be varied more. Some could be lower in value and perhaps one or two might catch some light. The also all begin along a line at the bottom. I think they would look better if some were nearer and began closer to the lower margin of the painting and others further from that margin.
The limbs at the top of the trees are a bit repetitive too, most of them are the same weight and sit alone rather than touching another or better yet being arranged into groupings. When you can, paint GROUPS of things rather than individual things. When you look at a passage, particularly one that has a number of similar objects or shapes, ask yourself "how can I group these?" Grouping things is a design ploy that simplifies passages and eliminates repetitive shapes.

I also think the color in the tree trunks is a little too "brown" This might be a better picture with the introduction of some optical violets and maybe some ocher into those trunks to get variation and a feeling of light and shade. The brown feels too "local color".

This painting is in need of a walrus. That is, there needs to be more of a subject, something that will reward us for looking in there and seeing it. The water also feels a little like it runs up hill over on the right side. There are also two mustard colored ball shapes, one to each side, at the water line, that compete for our attention. I also think things could be delineated a little more to make this picture more interesting. This painting is nearly a design I call a three striper. I have made a zillion of them. They happen when you set up on a lake or other body of water and you have three horizontal bands stacked one above another, the lake, the distant shore and the sky, forming, three stripes. Whenever I am on a lake or similar environment I work real hard to stay away from that.

This next painting has an observed from nature look. That's always a good thing. I can make a few suggestions though. First of all the flowers in the foreground seem to sit on the bottom rabbet of the frame. Watch out for figures or trees or whatever, standing on the frame.

The hole through the trees seems too assertive and looks a little unnatural. I think a few spots of foliage within that cutout window would mitigate that a bit. Also the top border of that aperture is a the same height as the back edge of the field to its right. That sets up an unwanted geometric relationship in a place that should be random and varied. It is whats called a tangent I guess. I should do a post on tangents.

The little pool to the right of that doesn't read as well as it might. It doesn't lay out in space but seems to stand up vertically. There is an unintentional overly symmetrical shape left behind by the darks there, see it?

It also lookas if the horizon line is running downhill. but that could be the photography.

I know this boat. I have painted it too. I think it could use a little more space around it. Also the structure of the wheelhouse is a little vague. I think the plane that contains the front windows is in the shadow, that would be consistent with that square shaped extension of the cabin to its left. However the artist seems to have overstated the reflected light until the shadow area is as bright as the plane in the light. There is a general tendency through this whole painting to confuse the values of the lights and the shadows. Remember, no value occurs in both!

I also think the color of the hull is a problem. Both the shadow and the light are the same color.They are different in value, but not in color. The shadow is not a darker version of the color in the light! It is its own separate color. I did a post about that some time ago, here that is. And here is another relevant post.

Here are some things I do to separate my lights from my shadows.

• I paint the lights in a high value and the shadows in a low value, so you can tell them apart.
• sometimes I paint the lights with one pigment and the shadows with a different pigment, so you can tell them apart.
• sometimes I paint the lights grave and the shadows highly colored, so you can tell them apart,
• or I will paint the lights highly colored and the shadows grave, so you can tell them apart
• sometimes I will paint the lights warm and the shadows cool, so you can tell them apart
• sometimes I will paint the lights cool and the shadows warm, so you can tell them apart.
• sometimes I will paint my lights opaque and my shadows transparent, so you can tell them apart.
• sometimes I paint the lights with hard edges and the shadows with soft edges, so you can tell them apart
  
• sometimes I use cool reflected light in the lights and hot reflected light in the shadow, so you can tell them apart.

See you all tomorrow