Portrait in Formal Dining Room
 

This portrait will be for a very important client and I'm looking for critiques and suggestions, especially on composition and cropping.

As you can tell, I have already moved things around here and there. You can see the evidence of my "Photoshopping". (Is that a verb?)

Thanks!

And here's the closeup:

Are the clients really wanting that gold thing, (candelabra?) in the painting? That's the first thing I noticed. I'd crop from the top a little. The slight reflection on french doors and the fabric near the top are really nice. This will be a beautiful painting Michele.

Ok Michele, you can suck me into these little puzzles every time. I am reminded of a composition that I worked on recently, "Victoria's Flute." Simplification is your best friend.

I tried to do a haircut on the pole, fiddled with a different style drape using the rose color, and repositioned and reshaped the window on the right, and did a slight crop in from our right.

I'm sorry, this is pretty crude, and it may not be an improvement, but I just can't help myself.

Try, try, again
 

Michele,

Sorry to be the bearer of negative opinions, but I see trouble a'brewin' here.

The idea of using window light and a reflector board doesn't allow for the shadow illumination necessary to build a believable painting.

As I've noted many times here, what looks good through the lens may not translate well in a photo, which has a far more limited value range than your eye. The values in the hair, dress and background shadows are devoid of detail and tonal information as well as separation, so the image naturally flattens out.

A reflector that illuminates her skin shadows cannot provide adequate light to areas that are farther away. If you want control over the lighting in photographs, you need two lights, a main and a fill (to control the light to shadow ratio).

Some erroneously point out that there is only one light source in nature, the sun, as justification for a one light setup (be it artificial or natural). However there are actually two. Sunlight and skylight work together to illuminate the light and shadow side of forms in nature.

A reflector fill is a flawed concept because it cannot provide even illumination the way that skylight does. A soft light source (umbrella or softbox) placed near the camera position is the secret to providing even illumination in shadows. It can be moved closer or farther to create the correct ratio. You need to experiment to find a workable distance. Using an incident off-camera light meter is very important.

The fact that you needed to "photoshop" your reference should raise a red flag to the fact that your reference is lacking.

The shadows should have very little tonal variations in contrast to the more active lights where the attention should be focused.

I also feel that the way you wrapped the light around her face is very unflattering for a delicate female face. Forget the window as the source and give her face more light. The vast majority of masterly portraits do not include the light source in the painting, especially in the case of beautiful women. Play the percentages.

Before you take your pictures cut a small window mat and view your subject through it. Looking through the camera makes it much harder to evaluate what lies before you. Move things, rearrange the lights until what is in your frame looks good, and you will get a far better painting from square one.

If this is an important commission, give yourself a fighting chance and take adequate photos to work from.

Here's one more, simpler still. I'll stop now.

I have simplified the composition somewhat, mostly by cropping and massing the values. I have taken the values down on the candelabra and simplified the values on the drapery and vase.

I was aiming for dramatic lighting in this composition. I felt her striking youthful looks could support this strong side light. I may include some dress detail on the shadow side (it's in the reference photos when I print them lighter).

Thanks for the tip about the softbox or umbrella for fill, Marvin, for when I want a lower contrast ratio. I've been thinking about getting one of those.

Nobody's touched on this, so maybe I shouldn't bring it up, but how do you feel about the expression on her face? Most of the portraits I've looked at have an expression of contemplation, sympathy, alertness, or similar. She looks sort of, how do I put this, disgusted? Impatient? Smug? It's hard to describe but not altogether pleasant.

Her eyebrows seem raised, as well as both the corners of her mouth and the center of her lower lip, which doesn't look like a smile but a grimace. She doesn't have braces does she? One of my models has braces, which really distorts her mouth and chin since she tries to cover her teeth with her lips. After braces come off, that's a hard habit to break too.

With 5 daughters, I may be overly sensitive to the facial expressions of young women! But I see this expression my 12-year-old stepdaughter's face a LOT, and it never means anything good.

Sorry if I am out of line bringing it up.

This is the facial expression they chose, from about twelve options, some of which had big smiles. They felt that this photo was really her. She is a serious person by nature and was not a very relaxed model.

I find that the calm gentle smile I like to go for is often the toughest expression to coax out of models. Either they grin in response to something we're talking about during the photo shoot, or they are quite serious.

To answer your other question, she doesn't have braces.

Does the second face, below, seem to have a more pleasant expression, than the image on top? (It's very subtle, I know, and may not be noticeable.)

Sargent (pretty much my favorite artist, if people haven't noticed) dropped a lot of values completely to black.

I studied an original of his not long ago in a museum which consisted of a man dressed in black on a black background. There was no differentiation between the figure and background in much of the area where the body would have been. I didn't have a problem with his use of values like that. I liked the drama of the piece and the sense of the figure emerging out of the mysterious shadows.

Michele, I think the bottom one might be just the eensiest bit different. Does the corner of the mouth seem a little higher in relation to the center? The eyes and eyebrows are the same, but the position of the mouth is subtly different. I think it's a little more pleasant, yes.

Michele,

Being one that likes to play too, and just in case you were not going to have time to re-shoot I wanted to give you to of my thoughts.

I think everyone has given you great input. I do just shoot black and white now, and it has helped me a lot.

One thing I noticed in addition to the "formal" dinning room which usually translates into busy - is there is a ton of intense color in the same value and hue which is confusing to the eye. Since she is holding the red roses this adds even more directional questions for me.

I did two simple modifications to the one you changed. This first one is just lowering the light and saturation of the background color plus dodging the shadows on the dark edges just a hair.

This second one I took the elements in the background to our left and suggested them with color, keeping the idea of the window but trying to silhouette her figure better. I kept the drape and vase.

I think they like the gold on the left but it is so distracting from their lovely daughter, I sure you could convince them she is far more valuable.

Good luck!

Thanks, everyone, for your input. This will be a better painting because of all your suggestions.