Sunday, March 4, 2007

Mick "Still life #1" --20"x16"


1 Comments:

Blogger Devin M. said...

The negative space in this piece reminds me of a pastel drawing. It produces an interesting effect, yet it feels separated from the objects in the foreground, especially since there is little value variation in most of the background. The indigo-blue color and the yellow-green don’t seem to flow together very well. As far as the composition goes, the right side of the painting feels a bit empty. I’m not sure this would be an issue if the background had more brush stroke and value variation in this area in particular. The composition is otherwise clean apart from the fact that it looks as if your bottle is melded to the adjoining object, which would probably be more of an issue with perspective and depth. Your grasp of light and shadow is decent, although I might recommend toning down the highlight on the onion as it begins to look too glossy. I also feel there should be more of a cast shadow coming off the bottle, depending on the angle of the light. A higher value in the right side of the painting would further add to the allusion to the light source. The red of the onion feels slightly isolated; although the color is in the table to a small extent, it’s difficult to find much red elsewhere in the painting besides in the reflecting on the bottle. The shadow side of the piece could perhaps use a bit more violet, or, simply put, more red could be incorporated everywhere. The eye tends to get stuck between the onion and the bottle because there is so little vivid coloration elsewhere and the green/red opposition is one of the only points of interest. Although this is the artist’s choice, I might have incorporated some violet into the garlic. I’m unsure what to make of the overall depth. The background is vague in a bad way- I can’t tell if that’s a wall or simply empty space. The abrupt stop to the foreground surface suggests it is a wall, in which case it could use more energy to add interest. The objects themselves appear to be proportional, but again the bottle and the vase could be more distinctly separated, which might add to the depth. Also, most importantly (I was equally guilty of this at times), I get the impression that the brush strokes are very smooth. It might just be the scan, but the piece as a whole seems like a cross between a photo-realistic painting and a pastel drawing. Some areas have distinct texture, but others are very smooth and it disrupts the overall flow of the piece. Even so, I’m basing this off the scan, so some of the issues I pointed out might not be entirely accurate with the piece itself.

March 20, 2007 at 6:32 PM  

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