Brenda,
I wonder if it would not be easier to see the differences if you use the same drawing in blue on both the ref. and the painting. Superimpose the blue lines from the ref. upon the painting to illustrate the differences.

Janet,
It also works to open another page with the forum and make both pages small and place them side by side. Then you look forth and back between the ref. and painting. :) ;)

Allan

Allan,
Yes it would be easier! Sometimes my brain does not engage. Janet if you havePhotoshop this is something you could do on your computer too. Use the line tool to line out certain problem features in the photograph and then group the layers of lines together without the photograph and move the group of lines over to your painting. This will show you discrepancies. the line tool is good because it makes straight lines.

Janet,
If I remember correctly from the distant past, on a Mac you draw a rectangle around the image with your mouse and then somewhere there is a "take a picture" option and you click on that and a picture gets put somewehre on your hard drive. I don't know where though and I don't know how to change where it puts it.

Brenda,

I just dragged and dropped the pics onto a new Photoshop document. Then I traced your reference lines on the painting with the pen tool and pasted them onto the photo. Voila, all my drawing crimes revealed.

It has taken a bit of time to get back to this one. I had to learn 2 things first: how to use cool flesh colours better than I had been doing; and second, the confidence to know that I had more than one left eye in me per painting. The first I addressed by doing a Bouguereau copy from a high rez download from ARC. The second thing, I guess I just got tired of trying to fix features that were wrong in the first place. Not to say that I'm "there" yet, but I think that poring over the threads on this site and cyber-stalking great artists, modern and contemporary, has done a world of good. Now, with luck, those of you who coached me through this is the first place will see at least some progress.

Thanks again, Janet

Hi Janet,

I really llike what you've been doing here and I love the way you're handling the paint and cooling the light side. Just a couple of things... does she have colored contact lenses or is that really her eye color? Either way, I feel the blue is a little startling and I would try to try to tone it down as much as possible without losing her character. Try to get some soft edges around the eye if you can. About her nostrils: is that raw umber? Try for a warm color for body openings, nostrils, corners of mouths, ears, etc.

Also, I often leave out neck folds altogether and it still looks very natural in a painting, especially in women. Go take a look at some Sargents and see what I mean. Photography accentuates line where in real life form meets form and value meets value in a much more subtle manner. The eye can be drawn to hard lines in paintings anyway and you want to manage the viewer's attention. Here, your lines come off as stripes in a Nearly Headless Nick effect. Remember that you are the aesthetic boss of your painting, not the photo!

You've really caught her character here, nice job. And really nice hair, too, soft and convincing colors.

Janet,

The skin tones are much more life-like this time around!

I agree with Linda about the neck lines. I would also take a bit of the darkest color of the hair and blend in at the forhead more to soften that edge right at her part. I think the hair looks lovely, but blondes especially seem to have a lot of cools in their hair (grays and blues)...just something to consider.

Edit - Im going to take that back about the cools in the hair since now that I look again you do have them. It may be the darkest area that Im drawn to - wanting to see it as cooler.

Well, ladies, the changes here are by and large pretty subtle. If you can't see them, I guess they are too subtle. Hairline at centre part: done. More cool in the dark part of the hair: done. Neck stripes: gone. Eye edges softened a little: done. Thanks you guys for taking the time to pick on the little things that make so much difference.

As for the colour of her eyes, they are quite startling in real life; depending on the light I have never been able to decide whether they look like glacial meltwater or tropical lagoons. Hopefully softening them up has made them jump out less. And the neck creases - I looked up Sargent on this and no, I don't imagine he ever allowed a crease to sully those languid, elegant subjects of his. Since you both mentioned it, is it because paying lady customers don't like to see them? Included are some of the prettiest neck creases I have ever seen, just to stir it up a little.

Nicely done. All the studing and changes you've been doing have made a lot of difference.

Good idea to do the Bougereau copy in order to work on your skintones too. I was intently studying an exquisite Bougereau at a museum today and really noticed how cool the skintones were.

Hi Janet,

I just came upon this thread, which has obviously been going on for some time. I am so impressed with your persistence and the improvements you have made. You've gotten such excellent advice from the experts, too!

I think the way you approached this (and your other work), challenging yourself to draw from what you see, couldn't be more helpful for you in the long run. If you run into trouble, those photoshop techniques are invaluable for pinpointing where you have gone wrong. I think that elusive likeness problem has happened to most artists at different times. I use the wierd and probably goofy looking method of smiling at my paintings and seeing if they smile back. If it's not quite them, i.e., if the nostril is a bit snarly and the mouth a bit droopy, I try to be really honest with myself and not gloss it over. Then I try to figure out what has caused the problem, by looking back and forth between the person or reference, and the painted image. It's usually the problem that was mentioned: the tendency to straighten out everything.

Every time you paint this fascinating girl your painting improves by leaps and bounds. It's exciting to see.

Alex