Hello Lara,
Let me say first of all I think this is a lovely painting and I think that the clients are thrilled to pieces with it. Your problems are "please the artist" problems, not "please the client" problems.
Regarding atmosphere: I suggest you wander through the SOG site and take a good hard look at artists who regularly paint outdoor portraits and see how they handle the backgrounds. (I have a few favorites but I hestitate to name them here for fear of annoying other artists.)
I'm freshly returned from Peggy Baumgaertner's portrait seminar in California and one of her many worthwhile sayings was this: "The outdoor portrait is about the light; the indoor portrait is about the subject." What you want to do in this painting is capture the feeling of humid (near the water, right?) and coolish (evidenced by sweater) air and overcast sky. You have to try and make the viewer feel those weather conditions. I'd blur and neutralize those edges of the dock and purposely exaggerate atmospheric perspective in order to make my point.
I had to look twice at the boy's legs to figure out what was going on there. You've got to really make clear (change value or color) that one is behind the other.
I think your composition is unbalanced and the whole painting leans to the right. If this were my painting I'd put more rocks in on the left, behind his body. I'd play with rock placement to move the eye around the painting, ending up at the boy's head.
Hope this helps, and please keep posting.
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Hybrid Mode
