Hi Mary,

Welcome to the Forum! Sorry to jump on you on your first post, but I think you've got the head too big altogether. Measure the head on your photo and compare it to something else on the photo; then compare the head of your painting and compare it to something else on your painting. I just did this with a pencil but you should really get out a clear ruler and do this exactly.

Work out sizing and drawing problems before you get involved with form and color.

This is a beautiful girl and you have a lovely painting going on here.

Best wishes,
Linda

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Well, I think the head is still way too big. Also the relative scale of the body parts is off, as well as the placement of the features. On the bright side, I think your handling of the paint is very nice.

To put a fine point on it, there is absolutely nothing that can save a painting that has a flawed drawing. You've made some changes, I can see that, but I think you're going to have to hike up your socks and make more drastic adjustments.

I empathize with the situation - it's hard to make sweeping adjustments when you don't want to lose what has already gone right in a painting. I think her pose is very sweet and communicative, but it is lost in a tight composition. You may want to consider calling this a study, and moving on to a larger canvas, where you can spend as much time as you want getting the drawing precisely right.

I'm not trying to discourage you, by the way. Just the opposite!

Thanks for the suggestion Lisa, maybe I'll try it again.

Mary

Mary,

This is a lovely painting of a very pretty young lady, and I like the way you've rendered her skin and especially that hair, which can be tricky. Achieving the right age in a child can be quite difficult, though. Looking at the reference photo and the last image you posted side by side, I think the chin is still too full and mature looking. Also the eyes are larger and the eyebrows in your painting are too arched, again making her look older. Similarly her mouth is more of a cupid's bow in your painting. Her hairline is lower in the reference, which makes her forehead look a bit wider. And the back of her head is a bit fuller in your photo. Bringing up the chin and lowering the top of the head and therefore the hairline would probably make her more proportionately sized to the rest of her body in the painting, too.

Her shoulder is also higher in the photo than in the painting; the top of her shoulder is close to the same plane as her chin in your reference. That would make her arm look longer and more in keeping with the rest of her. Measuring the relative sizes with a pencil or brush can be really helpful as you block in your painting.

Back to the age issue, if you covered the chin and the eyebrows I think you'd see that she comes across younger and thus closer to your reference. Often just obscuring the suspected problem area in a picture and seeing whether that solves the difficulty can be quite helpful. Another trick I use is to turn both the photo and painting upside down; it's amazing what will pop out at you that way.

Please post what you end up doing with the painting. Hope this has helped! You do such nice things with a paint brush that I'd like to see what else you come up with.

Hi Mary!

This is a radical suggestion ... and if this is a commission, you may not have the leeway to make a change like this, but it occurred to me that one way to make her look less crammed in and retain much of your work on her face and hands might be to have her arms resting on something other than her legs and alter the image to a half length. This would allow you to lengthen the arms as much as you need to so that the proportions are more in line with her head.

Just thinking outside the box!

Good luck!
Terri

Thanks ladies...
 

Leslie and Terri,

I certainly apppreciate all your helpful input and plan on using this in the future. Terri thanks for the creative alternative, but I think I am going to start this one from scratch again with a smaller figure on the canvas. I'll try to post as I am going along so that I may catch things early on. Thanks for your time.

Mary