I'm finished...let me know if I addressed the issues you all shared.
Monique
Monique - this is a beautiful little girl, and you have done her justice. I love the subtle yet strong red of the coat. Her flesh tones are just lovely.
I was going to post this the other day, but decided against it, but upon reflection I think that if it were me in the same situation, I would want to know.
You had some camera distortion in your reference photo which caused her far eye to be slightly higher than it should, and, unfortunately, you have exaggerated this to the point where her eyes are completely misaligned. It's one of those cases where we will accept something in a photo because we're used to the lens doing that sort of wonky thing to our faces, but in a painting, it should be fixed (ideally in the drawing stage, though... sorry.).
I didn't say anything, because I didn't think it was a commission, but then I thought, if it IS a commission, or even if you plan to use it in your portfolio, you would most likely want to address that.
As Richard Schmid says: "Never knowingly leave anything wrong in your painting." (or words to that effect.)
I've flopped the detail shot horizontally - you can, I think, see what I mean.
Thanks for pointing that one out. NO ONE has said anything about that. I can't believe that flipping it makes it stand out. darn it! ......
don't know if I'm up to this, lol.....does that mean the whole back eye needs to be re-set???? now little perfectionist me will stare at that eye forever!! kidding....
I'll weigh up my options..I wonder if there is a way, not so intrusive, to fix that??? I'll report back..Thanks SO VERY MUCH for the honesty...I expect that from you guys..that's why I post here!!
First - put an isolating layer of retouch varnish on it. That way, if you mess up what you're doing, you can easily remove the additional paint without disturbing what you've already done. Let that dry.
Oil out the painting (put a whisper-thin layer of linseed oil over it, then wipe it off). Then mix your flesh tones in shadow, and paint into the wet surface.
You might find that you can just repaint the eye area - or it might be that you'll have to revisit the whole shadow side of her face. I guess it depends on how well you can recreate the flesh tones in shadow.
I haven't been into the Critiques area for quite a while, hence the tardiness of my observations.
I've actually twice this evening filled a "Reply" window, and even did a little Photoshop double-checking, but didn't post either effort, because I didn't feel I was explaining myself very well.
But I'm a compulsive sort, so I'm just going to make some parting notes about some things to consider as you make your final revisions.
I don't know if an instructor told me this or if I read it somewhere, but the advice was essentially to make sure that the thing you're changing is the thing that needs to be changed.
That eye may indeed need to be moved, but to even know how much to move it, you might benefit from making a few other tiny adjustments. One of the reasons that eye looks high is because the lower half of the face has become slightly skewed toward our left and cast slightly downward, which then of course just amplifies the eye effect.
I see four areas that have contributed to this "skewing" (these are just to my eye, mind you, nothing "true" or "false" about this):
1- You've let the corner of the mouth on our right side drop down. This is apparent in the close-up, where you've painted the dark line between the lips to drop down suddenly before reaching the corner of the mouth. If we think generically, a line between the irises of the eyes and a line between the corners of the mouth would be roughly parallel (or on parallel circles of latitude, if we think in terms of the head's round shape, in any orientation). By lowering the right-side corner of the mouth, those lines instead diverge, and depending on one's perspective, the corner of the mouth will either look "low" or the eye on that same side "high."
2- I think the chin is slightly too narrow. It is very slight, but I do think, looking at the photograph, that the chin is slightly more "underneath" the mouth/muzzle structure than appears in the painting. Put another way, the mass of the chin structure is moved slightly to our left, which in turn pulls the lower part of the face in that direction, and adds to the downcast aspect of that part of the face.
3- The cheek contour on the shadow side is just every slightly too wide and too generically round.
4- Slightly too much of the middle tone on the nose is moving over into the lighted side, which turns the structure of the nose toward us. Letting the light flow just a bit more across the bulb of the nose will keep the centerline of the nose closer to the hair-to-neck centerline arc (the longitude counterpart to the latitude lines, mentioned above), the sort of thing you'd see by drawing a vertical line on an egg and then turning the egg about 30 degrees to the right.
Think about those things and make any adjustments that seem right, at which time you may decide not to move the eye at all, or you may decide that it does need to be moved, but only 1/8 inch instead of the 1/4 inch or whatever seemed necessary in isolation.
A Photoshop demo image wouldn't be helpful here. There are too many things going on at once, so you're going to have to make the calls as you go. For example, perhaps widening the chin will make the cheek contour adjustment unnecessary -- I simply can't know.
My major point is to encourage you to ask a larger question than merely, is the eye too high? Rather, take notice of the fact that observers are telling you that the eye seems too high, and then spend some time looking at the overall structure to determine what it is that might be contributing to that effect. Because if the location of the eye is only one of, say, five contributing factors, and you move the eye, there will still be four things not quite "right," and if you then go in and adjust each of those in isolation, the newly-moved eye might be in the "wrong" place -- again!
If it all comes down to moving the eye -- do it. But back up and re-think in terms of value shapes and other fundamentals, rather than "moving an eye." That will be less intimidating -- and it will work better, anyway.
I have also been enjoying watching your work in progress and think that you have done a fine job.
Now for the nitpicks, I do think that you could push some details around a bit.
There are several things going on, as Steven suggested, so if you do one thing you will have to do another also.
I have done a few things in Photo Shop : 1. I picked the color from the background and took the forehead a little back. 2. With the same background color I straightened the cheek. 3. About her left eye, I did not lower the whole eye area, but filled some light color into the upper eyelid to "press" the eye from the top, and I took some of the dark in the iris added some to lower it.( Maybe you will need to lower the pupil also )
4. The mouth. I did raise the right side ( her left) and corrected the upper lip shape and slightly lowered the shadow, between the lips, on the left side.
By the way, the coat color reads warmer in the painting, how about adding a touch of colder highlight / texture?
I believe that the reference photo was taken from a distance, as it should be, and that that it is part of the perspective problem. Not that it is wrong, it
Hybrid Mode
