Joan of Arc – Would Love A Critique

[hugobravo]

This is my latest painting “Joan of Arc” Oil on canvas 16″x20″.

The painting has not been varnished so there are uneven tones of color because of how it dried.

I welcome any critiques about the painting but I am also hoping to get feed back about lack of edge lighting on the figure.

I know the edge lighting will help give the illusion that the figure is in that torch lit environment. I just did not know where to best apply the edge lighting on the figure.

Thank you so much NMA community.

Hugo

[Josseline Jeria]

Hi Hugo,

what a powerful image! Great sense of mood and emotion. Nice use of the blue for some but not too much play on compliments. Yeah it’s always sad to see the vibracy and contrast of your painting fade a bit as the painting dries. Reshare this once it’s varnished 🙂 Also, what is your canvas prep process? That can make a difference too. If you use pre-primed canvases, it would be worthwhile priming with another layer or two. They often don’t use the best quality gesso/primer so the canvas sinks in the paint because it absorbs the oil.

For the edge lighting, I’m assuming it’s for the armour? Because I think the face and hair works. The light is coming from the background so the lit effect wouldn’t be as strong, unless your intention is for the image to look as if she is in a room surrounded by torch light. Given this. With the highlights, you’ve done well to indicate that there is a lighter highlight within the edge lighting. You could either add the tiniest bit of warm yellow and/or orange or both and vary it, to your white. You don’t need much but just enough so it isn’t pure white. The idea would may be that the lightest part of the edge highlight would be even warmer than the less light part of the edge light, so could experiment with that too. It’ll make the overall highlight look less cool. Or you could experiment on a separate canvas some glazing. i’ve not done any to help with this, but it is another approach. Perhaps pushing the local colour of the armour to pull a warmer grey in the lights. Experiment with all this somewhere separate as colour studies (which you may already do) because this is a great painting and you want to improve on it.

Great great work. I am working to one day be able to paint this well.

 

[ZHI SU]

Powerful image! I wonder if the lower part of her face could be darker. Right now there’s a sharp contrast between the jaw and the space below, so the head is a bit hanging there. It seems you have a light source from above front, which works fine for the figure. Do you have to use edge lighting? If so, then maybe the whole front need to be in a darker value.

I agree with Josseline above. I also wish I could one day paint this well. Great job!

[hugobravo]

Hello Josseline and Zhi,

Thanks for the quick reply. You both had excellent comments which I can see will make the improvements I believe the work needs. Thank you both for your compliments and I wish you both great success with your artistic endeavors.

[Josseline Jeria]

You’re welcome and thankyou 🙂 I wish the same onto you. Feel free to post here more works you make in the future.

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