Critique oil portrait of Amanda

[Christina Kent]

I’m going through the portrait painting for beginners course with Joseph Todorovitch and would appreciate feedback on the oil portrait I painted of Amanda. My goals were to:

1. create good color relationships with the Zorn palette
2. have a strong design for the painting in terms of values
3. use loose brush strokes to convey value shapes, especially outside of the focal point

Let me know what you think I did well and what I could improve on!

9″x12″ oil on arches oil paper

[Neil Wallace]

Thanks for critiquing mine. I’d say very effective use of Zorn palette. My subjective view is that the area about the clavicle structure  area looks quite complex/interesting/unusual and “competes” with the face. I find myself looking at the face and the clavicle area separately and interfers with a unified whole

[Christina Kent]

Good point. Maybe it would have been better to have lower saturation/highlights in the clavicle area. Thanks for the feedback Neil! 🙂

[Carlos Perez]

Hey Christina, good job, and i congrats you on your exercise with that clear intentionality

 

I can see that your focal point is on the profile,  which has very good structure and brush strokes, i would say the values are well accomplished most of the shapes seem well-depicted value except the hard edge of the jaw, i can’t say exactly the reason why but there’s something there,  i would say it doesn’t look natural.

 

I like the color use here, hair looks well as well as the front shoulder nevertheless the clavicle looks off,  i agree with you on taking it out the focal point, I’d do that or work more on it.

 

Cheers ::)

[Christina Kent]

Thanks for the feedback Carlos, much appreciated! 🙂

[Zau Spínola]

Very nice, Christina! I am mesmerized by her eyes and I just love that one touch of light on her lower eyelid. Overall I think it is a beautiful work and it makes me look forward to get to that part of the course too. The last one I did was the Jennifer color demo.

About points to improve, I agree with the previous comments and I think that the cavicle ends much closer to the shoulder, so by adjusting that maybe the painting would feel nicer too. And now I think that the body color could resemble even more of the reddish face colors. Maybe it is a bit too green. What do you think?

Anyway, congratulations! It is a very nice painting in my amateur opinion haha

Cheers!

[Christina Kent]

Thanks for the thoughtful feedback Paulo! 🙂 For the body color, I agree it is off. I’ve noticed with the Zorn palette that if I’m not careful with my mixtures, white and black will get into everything and make my skin tones very gray. But if I stay organized, I can maintain some nice, saturated mixtures for the skin tones. Maybe you have experienced this too?

I hope you enjoy the rest of the course! It’s a good one 🙂

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