Steve

[Mike McCarty]

Jean,

I admire your tenacity and I think you have done yourself a huge favor by changing your palette. There was too much color sameness throughout in the previous posts.

I have a couple of comments that you can ponder. The differences I see have to do with the fact that you have taken your subject from one lighting situation and placed him in to another. More particularly, in the reference the man is under a porch, lit from the front with shadows created by the dark side of the porch.

You have in some respects translated this lighting scheme into your outdoor painting. The direct light we see on the mans hands and forearms in the photo, taken literally into the painting, now look like highlights. In your outdoor scene there would be much more ambient light that would create a more homogeneous lighting effect.

I would look at his painted left arm going up from just above the wrist, the way you have handled the shifts and tone, and I would try and replicate that scheme all the way down to his finger tips. Reducing the some of the contrasty value shifts that I think would not be present with outdoor ambient light.

Next, in the photo, if you will notice the dark values under the hands, these are the result of both the lack of ambient light (the dark side of the porch as taken this away) and the want of a photograph to intensify dark values. I would lighten this area up and maybe replace with a bit of blue reflected light. Maybe, for the same reasons, a bit on the underside of his jeans as well.

I hope this helps, best of luck.