A portrait of a child

[Sampo Kaikkonen]

Hi there!

At first I excuse my not-so-good english. I am from Finland.

I just sold this portrait to a family friend. I have only painted a few portraits and I am still in the beginning of the learning prosess. The portrait is painted from a photo as you can see from the direct lighting. Any advises and critique are welcome.

[Darla Dixon]

Hi Sampo! Great work!
The hands are incredibly good!
I also think the mouth and hair are done very nicely.

To decrease the 'based on a photograph' effect, you could change the location of the highlights in the eyes so the light reflection would not appear so straight-on.

[Sampo Kaikkonen]

Thanks Darla.

I agree with you. A simple trick but for some reason I didn't think of it when I painted the portrait. Well, on my next work I will keep that in mind. Life is an endless prosess of learning and I am just in the beginning of that journey.

I am currently working on a double portrait of an old couple. Any critique and advice I get will help me on that one too.

[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!

[Abdi R Malik]

Hello Sampo,

Well done, I like the way you put highlight. Your line is good, you are talented. The texture of cloth, skin tone are precised.

Keep up the good work.

Regards,
Abdi

[Maxine Gilder]

I love the sweetness that comes across in this painting! The only thing I might change a bit is the background to the left. Maybe you could try making that upper corner a bit more interesting without doing too much! I love the relaxed position of the model!

[Sampo Kaikkonen]

Thanks for comments this far!

I really think this is an incredible web site. It is a bit frustrating to paint alone and not get any comments on my work.

That is why I am very thankful to get some advice and positive comments here. It really gives motivation and helps me to see things in my work that I for some reason do not notice.

Thank you Chris for the advice on lighting. I read the discussion about lights and photography already. Here in Finland I am, of course, forced to use artificial lights because the daylight lasts less than two hours at this time of year. In the summer it is the opposite and I can paint without lamps even in the middle of the night.

Also Thank you Abdi and Maxine for your comments. I have also noticed while exploring this site that some of my backgrounds are a bit empty. I try to improve that in the future.

By the way it would be very interesting to know what kind of background would you people paint for this kid?

[Cynthia Daniel]

Sampo,

Thanks for the compliment on my site and glad you're enjoying it. I'm wondering if you're only familiar with this forum (which is open to all artists serious about a career in traditional portraiture) or if you also know abut my main site at http://www.portraitartist.com where artists must qualify in order to be featured.

[Sampo Kaikkonen]

Hi Cynthia!

The compliments are not exaggerated. This site is very professional and well build.

I have been exploring http://www.portraitartist.com and find it also very high class site. It seems that there are just a few artists outside of USA there. I wonder would it be any use for me as a Finnish artist to be in the gallery. Although I would be flattered to be among the artists of the Stroke of Genius.

In Finland the art market is much smaller than in US and the prices are not as high. That is why there are not too many portrait artists here.

[Cynthia Daniel]

Most of the artists on my site who are in other countries also have some connection with this country or might have a rep here.

Rochelle Cheever is actually an American living in Italy and has a rep here and flies over periodically.

Gwenneth Barth in Switzerland is American-born but raised over there and again has ties over here.

Because the Canadian artists are so close to the U. S. and it's easy (or was) to go across the border, most have U. S. clients.

The exception to all this is Marie Therese Heumeusser of Austria who is looking to break into the U. S. market, but as far as I know doesn't have any ties here. She's fairly new on my site.

I have been approached by a few others from another country and I hear the same thing about the prices being lower outside the U. S. In fact, when I managed an Austrian portrait painter, he had a different set of fees for his native country.

As far as a Stroke of Genius web site helping you, that's hard to predict with your location and it also depends on your career goals and current level of development in your career.

I encourage portrait artists to view their online pages as an electronic portfolio, just like the portfolio they carry with them, but instead it's electronic. There can be benefits even without getting commissions provided the artist really uses their site. Some sit back and have the attitude "what are you going to do for me".

That would be like putting your regular portfolio on a shelf in your home and leaving it there and expecting results from it. An artist needs to be proactive in regards to their web site.

Generally, being on Stroke of Genius is considered prestigious and generally not for the very beginning artist (I'm not addressing you specifically, as I don't know your career level). And, though there is a range of quality and prices, there are also restrictions in these areas.