[Chris Saper]

Dear Cathy,

You should be very excited about this first portrait, and be energized about your next one!

My few comments relate briefly to several elements of your painting:

Drawing. Your drawing skills look to be strong; I am very impressed with your willingness to dive in and render the hands...very nicely, too. With regard to Dean's head, it looks to me like the top half of his head may be a little short. With an adult looking straight at the viewer, the eyes (by eyes, I mean the caruncles-or as Harley Brown is wont to say, "The PINK things!") are invariably halfway on the skull. It's a little hard to see as Dean's chin is hidden a bit, but it would be a measurement to perhaps check.

Design. The negative spaces, right and left, are nearly mirror images..by altering the shape and/or volume of one you can lend a sense of movement to the composition. I personally love a square format, although I find that I do need to spend extra up-front design time to consider movement in a format that is by its nature somewhat static. My guess is that this is mainly a function of the source phtoograph you have used.

Color. You have a nice analogous color scheme going...you could push the temperature shift between light and shadow a little more to create more depth. I think that by using complements in the shadow and light you can accomplish much dimension, even when, as it appears, that your source photo doesn't offer a lot of value shift between light and shadow. The gray background, on my monitor, looks a little cold, as it if it is a black/white or Payne's gray. You can get a beautiful lush neutral with your blue and its complement. (What colors do you have on your palette?)

Kindest regards, Chris