Bringing a painting to a finish
 

I was wondering if any of you have a set of questions you ask yourself to help you judge whether your painting is finished yet?
Thanks,
Debra

If I did all the little tweaks that I think "might help" make a painting better I'd never get it out the door and I'd be still tweaking it a month after I promised to deliver it. So I ask myself if there are any things that "have to" be done to fix certain areas, anything that's really bugging me. Once I've done all of those, I call it done.

Thanks, Michele. I can relate to the continual tweaking.

I have another question you (or someone else) may be able to answer; we've moved and I need to update my public profile, but can't figure out how to do it.

Debra,

Upper left corner of the page is "Your Controls." Click, and then follow up with "Edit Profile." That will take you to an editable profile page. (Have to be logged in.)

Somebody stop me!
 

Debra, this post came at a perfect time. I am working on a portrait and I have covered the entire canvas. I had some drawing errors in the head so I scraped that off and started again. Now I'm redoing the whole head and I can't stop 'tweaking' things to get it "better and better" (in my mind anyway). There seems to ALWAYS be something that needs to be moved 1/16" or so. And I'm just working on the tones, this isn't even color! Help!

I walk by the canvas and SEE something that needs just a quick adjustment, an hour later I'm putting the brush down. I am definately a "detail" person, so this part is actually fun, but enough already! I know I need to move on to the next step, which is color. Probably I'm stuck in this stage because the next step is the scary stage.

Michele, your answer to this question was great. I hope we'll hear more about when to stop. I do plan to have some brush strokes visible, my vision is not to end up with a highly refined portrait, just a nice portrait that looks like my model.

Thanks,

Joan

I guess my only exception to what I said above is that I will keep tweaking anything that bothers me, even in the slightest, when it comes to the face or head. These are portraits, after all, and an attractive, precise likeness is by far THE most important thing to my clients.

During the painting process, I paint for the good of the painting as a whole. I work that way from the beginning, to the end. I don't finish one area at a time and then go to another part. Instead, I am constantly comparing everything. It keeps me from working too long in one area without seeing it in relationship to the other parts of the painting. If a problem reaches out and grabs me, I try to resolve the issue as simply as possible, and move on, if I need to go back it will get my attention again.

My questions are:

Have I accomplished my purpose for the painting?

That could be one thing or a combination of things. What was my goal for painting this painting? What stirred my creative juices, was it's the mood, the attitude or the personality for my subjects, including the composition or lighting, or colors of my subjects. Whatever that was I look to see if I have done that?

Is there any area of the painting detracting from the painting as a whole? If I answer no. I stop, even if I could go further to refine it.

I have found that over working a painting does more harm that good. It will only result in a lifeless canvas full of labored expressions of a fact even if it's done well. Rather than, a the moment of life you are trying to capture. It is impossible to get back your fresh responses to that which inspires, once you've gone too far. As all artists know.

Good question, Lei

Steven, thanks, that was easy; I should have asked that question a long time ago. We've been here (Minnesota) for almost a year now, it's about time I get updated.

Lei, thank you also for your very good answers. Good food for thought. I'm going to write out your questions and post them in my studio. I had an impromptu critique today from one of my teachers, and she said almost the same thing you did about painting the "whole".

Joan, in today's critique I saw, with help from my teacher, I had painted the bottom half of my painting as a whole, and the top parts separately. So tomorrow's job will be to bring them back together. They were together (or at least partly together) once, but I changed the value of the background without changing the value of one of the objects, which made it pop out instead of fit in. Oh well, paint and learn! I think one of the most important things I've learned this year is to not ignore that little voice in my head, or feeling in my gut, that says "That's not right...." And I'm thrilled if I listen and get it fixed before the teacher catches it! When I was bringing my cast painting
to a finish one of my teachers said you can work on a painting for ten years, but it sure gets boring. It's good to bring them to a finish so you can apply what you've learned on the first one to the next.

I have a mental checklist that goes like this:

Is my center of interest what I intended?
Are the values masses clearly?
Does the composition hold together from across the room?
Are the color temperatures in light and shadow unified?
Does the color harmony work?
Do the edges support movement across the canvas?
Is there anything I can do to improve the drawing, or the painting as a whole- and often that means taking something out rather than putting something in.

I do way more tweaking than I used to, and I think my paintings have improved. I learned that it is possible to keep improving a painting without overworksing it.

Thanks, Chris, I'm going write yours out too.

Chris, that is a great point about the composition holding from across the room. I'd like to think my painting would be the first thing people noticed when they step inside. Unfortunately, it usually has to compete with other eye-catching decor, such as vases, windows, electrical outlets....

The lame landscape painting I completed today would have a hard time competing in a room with electrical outlets. Back to the easel!