Wednesday, October 9, 2013


CONSTRUCTIVE FIGURATIVE STUDY
oil on canvas
Zach

11 comments:

  1. I read the balance of warm to cool. The body is proportionate and the stylistic brush marks help this painting.

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  2. The colors you used are great and are well balanced. I like the teexture you've used throughout the painting. The flesh tone is well done and has nice shadows. I think the figure would benefit from some stronger highlighhts. Overall, great work!

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  3. It was fun watching you work on this painting and seeing the changes you made. It feels expressive and gestural because of the mark makings across the figure and background. I think you did a good job of capturing the figure and creating a real presence. I like the skin tone you created, it has some really nice warm colors in there but it would be nice to maybe see some more cooler tones as well. The couch feels a bit off, part of it looks like they are at an angle while other parts feel like they are being seen head on.

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  4. I really love your choice of colors from one shift to the next looking from each subject in the painting. I’d suggest possibly adding more drastic values in the figure to make it stand out more against the shadows to create even more dimension. I think it’s very interesting as you used a palette knife to do the background. I almost wish that you’d do a gradient effect with your blues to yellow.

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  5. I really like the feel of this painting; the colors in the background are very dream-like and the couch's detail is realistic. The pose successfully comes across as relaxed and comfortable. I also thought you did a great job of portraying this model! He was so difficult to capture on canvas.

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  6. I loke the over all composition of the figure, but the couch seems to conflict very much like in my piece. I felt the couch was hard to capture without it taking over the figure. The colors used on the body and flesh tones are great and I also agree that some blue could help bring in more cooler tones for shadows and overall cool areas, possibly some blue glazes could do that. I think this piece was very successful and its hard to find exactly is promlematic, but I think small fixes will pull it all together.

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  7. I love the textures of this painting. To me it feels somewhat aged/used/rustic, which works very well in the couch and background. You have a lot of colors in the image, especially the background, and I think they might be distracting from the figure. The figure itself feels like you may have wanted to use the colors across the figure equally, which makes the whole figure feel a little flattened. Conoversely you have sculpted the figure with your placement of shadows very well, so this creates an odd feeling where it wants to flatten out and keep the 3D form.
    I think that graying the white strip at the base of the couch and the colors of the background would help pop the figure more, but I think you have good proportions and scale for this painting.

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  8. I love the way this painting flows! I think you captured the shadow and light well on his face, and I really love the overall skin tone on the figure. The only thing I would change if I had to pick something, would be his Right shoulder. If you were to make that slightly smaller its proportion to the rest of the figure would be perfect. I love the background, it shows what i think is passion for painting.

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  9. this painting has a great rustic atmosphere because of your strokes, but i do think that the figure is flattened somewhat due to a lack of extreme tones (very dark or very light). Personally i actually enjoy the couch you have rendered.

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  10. Watching this piece progress was very interesting. The support may not have been unconventional, but your manner of painting definitely was. your brush strokes (and pallet knife strokes?) are very expressive and convey movement very well.

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  11. This painting is a beautiful example of painting and why it exists. the figure's proportions, his lighting, and the colors and marks you used in creating his flesh and his background have such a painterly quality to them that it is difficult to imagine this piece being created in any other medium but paint. The way that you blocked out major shifts in tones on the figure using pinks, and then thoughtfully accented him with the same reds, golds, and whites, makes the figure lifelike and believable in space. the marks that you used to apply the color to the figure also give him structure, like the perpendicular pink slashes in this torso to define ribs, and the long, parallel stripes of gold in his legs. In a painterly way, you added flecks of bright white-green to the pillow, and pulled splashes of gold an ochre across the burnt crimson couch. The white and blue band beneath the figure addressees the fact the it was a strip of metal, but does not disassociate it from the rest of the piece. In addition to being handled in a way that you could only achieve through painting, you used just the right amount of blue and grey in the stripe such that it doesn't sorely stick out and instead rhythmically complements the figure. Finally, the cool yellows and greens, the little blue flecks, and the dark, deep blue you used in the background tie the whole piece together, stylistically and chromatically. there is a bit of delineation in the top of the couch, and along a couple of spots on the figure, but after seeing more of your paintings I have noticed that these contours are indicative of your artistic style. Though they flatten the space in the painting a bit, they bring a valuable level of artistic unity and cohesiveness to your piece, and help tie it in to your other work. Much of what you accomplished in this piece definitively displays why people choose to use oil paints as an expressive medium.

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