Portrait of a Young Woman – Critique Appreciated

[ZHI SU]

Oil painting on canvas board, 12 x 16 in. Any critique and or comment is highly appreciated. Thank you.

• This topic was modified 4 years ago by ZHI SU.

[Joshua Jacobo]

Thank you for the submission. Hopefully we can get to this soon!

[ZHI SU]

I painted more still-life and landscape in watercolor and acrylic, but I find myself more and more interested in portrait and figure. It will be great to have some feedback.

I have learned a lot from NMA. Thanks for all the good work.

[Impressions du Bord du Monde]

i there ! Nice piece of work, I really like your use of colour and the purples in the shadow. One of my main concerns with your painting would be the flatness of the face : it looks like if it misses some more shadow. You have put a very strong cast shadow on the side of the nose, but we dont see any plane change in the eye socket. This makes it appear flat a bit I feel. I also feel like if the nose is not exactly on the good spot to feel “3D” : the shadow-light line is going straight in direction of the middle of the mouth, and separates in two equal parts the nose: it appears like if the character was facing us, and yet the rest of the face is like 3/4.

Still, the colours and shapes are very beautiful and I like the fluidity of the shapes.

[ZHI SU]

Thank you so much Impressions du Nord du Monde. I can see your points, very helpful!

[Josseline Jeria]

Hi Zhi,

Oh this is so lovely! I love pushes of colour variations in my figures, so I’m particularly drawn to this. I find it hard to describe her emotional quality. It’s something like her reflecting on something, which though was not quite right or challenging or difficult or the like, but she feels content nonetheless. Or a sense of longing, but happy regardless the result, sort of thing. Not sure. either way, like it 🙂

I would say it could be good to make both sides of the background more consistent. The two separate sides makes the image feel less consistent and uniting. I personally think the olive green side works well with this image. putting subtle strokes of the warm purple as you did at the bottom of that side of the background throughout I think would be a nice addition.

[ZHI SU]

Thank you Josseline for the kind words and suggestions!

[ZHI SU]

Same pose, watercolor version:

[Jean Carlos]

We can clearly see the improvement on that last one! Specially the mouth and nose. The values, shadows and edges too – and form! I love it. Very well done.

[Chris_Legaspi]

Hi Zhi, really. nice painting. The drawing and colors are working well. The main things I notice are:

• plane definition is not clear, especially around the eyes/eye socket.
• In general the shadow side feels too bright and too busy with too much bounce light and detail.
• The edges on the mouth and lips are too sharp and should be softened especially in the shadow side.

I like the direction you are going. It makes me think of John Asaro or Zhaoming Wu. Asaro has an excellent painting lesson in this library if you haven’t seen it already. Hope that helps.

[ZHI SU]

Thank you so much Mr Legaspi! This is very helpful. I understand the planes in theory, but am always distracted by details in execution. I will check out Mr Asaro’s class. Really appreciate what NMA has done for students.

[Author]

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