Acrylic from 1918 b/w photo

[Yakov Afanasyev]

Hello All!

I am a what you call Sunday painter. I started painting about two months ago and enjoy it very much.

I educate myself mostly reading articles from different art forums. The painting I am sending you is my first big project. It was made from an old b/w photograph of 1918 from my family archive. It is of sentimental value and I would like to finish it at some reasonable level. At this point, however, I am not able to move any further on my own.

Please help! Acrylic, 24" x 32"

Yakov

[David Dowbyhuz]

I shudder to think of what I was producing at the 2 month stage! (Not too proud of the "2 year stage" for that matter.) You've obivously hit the ground running, Yakov.

The composition is very pleasing. I suspect your background is not nearly as dark as what I'm seeing on my screen. I'm getting a massive dark triangle bounding your figures.

Suggestion. One of the advantages of working from photos is changing things if we want. What would you think of altering the focus of the little boy to have him looking at us?

There is a charm to his distracted line of sight, but you might want to experiment and see which you prefer.

You're doing great. Welcome to a fellow Canadian!

[Yoshiharu Himata]

Hi, Yakov.

Good work.

As my case, I notice four points, below.

Relation of...
Hair & Brow.
Shoulder & Back.
Hand &Fingers.
And cubic effect of Armrest.(upper & side)

(Sorry, I'm not good at English. )

Yoshiharu

[Cynthia Daniel]

Is this your first project? Amazing. You've done very well.

Add to the items listed above...at the lower part of the mother's neck, seems there should be at least some slight shadow from the boy's arm. And seems perhaps there's some missing shadow on the left side of her neck. Perhaps check for slight shadows you may have missed overall, but the neck jumps out at me.

The boy's arm looks like it could be softened at the edge and the woman's index finger looks like it needs some tapering or shaping.

I rather like the averted gaze of the boy.

[Yakov Afanasyev]

Thanks Cynthia, Yoshiharu and David!

I appreciate very much your very specific comments. I think I will let the painting sit till Sunday and then try and incorporate your suggestions.

The background is quite dark indeed (although the scan is a bit more contrast than the actual painting). Perhaps I should lighten it to some degree.

The boy's gaze bothered me for a while but then I get used to it and started to like it. Actually it seems that they both look slightly above and to the left of the camera (the boy is more so) in the photograph. Perhaps they followed the instructions of the photographer. Photographers do it to avoid too intense staring into the objective lens.
My problem was that the photograph was small and a bit damaged so I was not able to see it in detail. I had to work from "knowledge" which I certainly lack.

Thank you again for taking time to look.

Cheers,
Yakov

[Cynthia Daniel]

You might want to check out a topic here called "I paint from photographs". It has some valuable information on this subject.

I don't have a problem with the dark background.