Hello! Here is a wip of a painting I am working on, I am kinda stuck and not sure where to go from here. I feel its a little flat. Not sure how to improve the lighting and depth or the piece overall. feedback and CC is appreciated thanks sm! Dont mind draw overs or paint overs at all. Thanks. 😁
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your painting looks very nice. it clearly conveys an idea. it has a nice composition and i like its color palette.
i think it could be considered complete. forms are clean and clear and easily allow it to be taken further, if desired. i think a good refinement approach at this stage, would be to unify treatments. isolate one material from the scene, the subject's skin for example. compare what's different from the hands, cleavage, face, and ears.
hands = using sharp shadow planes, colored contour lines for inner forms
cleavage = using soft shadow planes, soft edged brush lines for inner form
face = using soft base strokes with hard cut accents, implied line with form and cut-in brush shapes. the neck is using a unique shadow edge color (peach/orange/brown)
ears = silhouetted color/shape block-in
if you begin to unify or fade in treatments for each grouping of a material, i think this will enhance certain areas and begin to tighten common threads throughout the overall subject and painting.
as you do this, note your light source and unify the shadow and highlight angles.
isolate other materials in the same way, such as cloth, then hair/fur.
the leaf canopies used to frame the figure are defining the depth around the subject. what might be pushing against it is the scale of the leaves. the leaves in the foreground should be larger as they are closer to the eye of the viewer, the falling leaves in the mid ground will be used to gauge the size of the leaves compared to the subject, and the canopy forms in the background will define the distance. although realistically, these plants could have different shaped leaves, making them within the same range will better serve conveying depth around the subject.
hi! I really appreciate that you took the time to write a throughout and detailed critique. Thanks so much! This helped me so much!