A portrait of a child

[Chris Saper]

Dear Sampo,

Thank you for sharing your work. Your portrait shows beautiful, strong drawing skill, and good control of the values within the skin tones, which are two of the most important elements in portraiture.

To make an immediate and strong positive impact on your work, I would recommend two things:

First, try to paint from life as much as you can, so that you can continue to increase your experience in painting color, value and edges - and apply these lesson increasingly to photo interpretation; and second, change what you will accept as photographic source material.

Photos taken with flashes attached to the camera will virtually always be the poorest quality photo one can use as a painting reference. (See the many discussions in the forum on lighting your subject, using photography, etc., they will be very helpful!)

The light on your subject is essential in several ways: direction (In contrast to the other comments, I recommend that you always be true to your light source, which means that the highlights must always be placed correctly with regard to the source); the color of your light source (temperature); and the strength of your light source (controlling value shifts and color saturation between light and shadow).

Good luck!