My baby girl

Here is my next portrait. It is 12x16, pastel on Mi-Teintes grey paper. Her face in this portrait is slightly larger than life. Is there a rule on this? Any comments would be great!

[Renee Price]

Hi Linda,

The colors you've used are great. The hat is cute! The first questionable area I noticed was the size of her face. I know that the hand is back and, according to perspective, that what is closer is larger and as something moves farther away it appears smaller. However, it looks like the hand is too small in relation to the face. Also, the nose and mouth look like they are at a slight angle while the eyes look like they are facing straight forward. It's hard to make drawing suggestions without seeing the resource so I may be completely wrong. Cute baby!

I hope this helps,
Renee Price

[Lon Haverly]

What fun! No rules on size, but just some thoughts. When you work larger than life size, you run the risk of making the individual features more life size, while the rest is larger than life. Results - distortion. The rule is always to keep the drawing in proportion. Here, it may be that you did succumb a little to size distortion dilemma of the individual features.

Many artists draw and paint larger than life. I almost never do. I view the frame as a window of sorts, and the subject as on the other side of the window. If the subject is smaller than life, it will be behind the window. If it is life size, it will cross-section the window, and if it is bigger than life, it will be on this side of the window right up in your face! On larger subjects, that can be disturbing.

I always draw and paint just smaller than life. It also enables me to see the figure more to scale, and avoid possible distortions.

It appears that the nose is too far from the eyes, which may be attributed to the oversize distortion dilemma.

Overall, a great job!

I love the colors used, especially on the eyes! I do agree that the nose seems a little out of place with the eyes, though. If not for that, it would feel as if you had intentionally made her head larger than her body. At least, to me.

Chris

Thanks, Renee for your thoughts. I see what you're saying about her hand in relation to size of her face. However, in the picture, her hand does look quite small. One, being all three of my children are blessed with my large head (90th percentile); and two, babies' heads are generally out of proportion to their bodies. I did not post the reference photo because it isn't the greatest because it was taken indoors with a flash and most of the color was washed out of her face. I do agree with your comment about her eyes not being at the same angle as her nose and mouth. Thank you for pointing that out.

As always, thank you, Lon for your insight. I will try to work a little smaller next time to see how that goes. Also, thank you for pointing out the distance between her eyes and nose are too great. I have a habit of doing that! Thanks again.

Thanks, Chris, for your post. I am glad that you like the colors I used. Color has been my biggest struggle and I am slowly getting it right.