I am immensely grateful to a follower on Twitter who told me they thought the shoulders were too broad and the legs too short for this woman. I get so involved with my work, I can’t always see errors that are glaringly obvious to anyone looking at the painting for the first time. So I pass on another tip for what it is worth. Always, if you can, get someone else to peer over your shoulder at your work. A fresh pair of eyes is always good and first impressions are usually correct. Constructive criticism is always helpful (so my tutor used to tell me….)
I had already made the arms smaller than from the original photo, but could now see more work needed doing and I have altered them accordingly.
The reason the legs looked short to this viewer was that I had got so involved in painting the hair that I was adding more and more brushstrokes, hence an overlarge head of hair and little legs! I have taken away some of the hair and now feel happy with the result.
A little more fine tuning of the paintings and I was done. I will not be putting my paintings into another work for a while as I am too impatient for such detailed work. It was a compromise trying to get not too realistic a finish to these paintings and then overworking them.
This painting is now sold and going to a good home which is great.
I now finally have a Facebook Business Page called just Miche Artist. Have a look and please ‘like’ the page ….if you do that is.
www.michewatkins.com.
A beautiful painting.. your work is phenomenal.
Stunning!!! I like it very much… Keep up with a good work 😉
Thanks so much for the support. I so love painting the female figure but it’s never easy !
Terrific painting, Miche. You are very wise to welcome and benefit from constructive criticism. It shows your seriousness of intent as an artist, and also your self-confidence.
Not sure about the self confidence part David, but yes I am completely serious about my work. I much enjoyed your recent blog by the way and will reply to that separately just now. As long as criticism IS constructive, it has to be good and I have been lucky so far in only having one ‘troll’ on Twitter. Thanks for the feedback.
Miche, it does take self-confidence and strength to be able to take criticism and recognize that it is constructive. But if it is not from a knowledgeable source or if you consider it, but disagree, you are the ultimate judge of your own work.
Yes but we artists are a thin-skinned lot and although we can disagree with a comment, it can still hurt. But I am getting better at dealing with that…and it was only one troll after all!