Finished Oil Painting #1
Is there contrast? How did you use light and dark shapes to make your object dimensional?
I think there is a lot of contrast, especially between the background and the head itself, as well as the parts of the face where the light is hitting compared to the actual color of the piece. I tried to ad dramatic shadow where there was simply regular shadow to make things pop on the face. I mainly worked with different varieties of blue to show cooler shadow and different varieties of yellow to show warmer colors.
Are the figures floating in space. or do they have shadows and sit in the space?
I don’t think that its really floating in space, but I can see how to some it may simply look like a head floating around. Although since I added the neck and not all of the head, I though that hinted that there was more to the object than what meats the eye.
How did you compose your object? Balance of positive and negative space? Diagonals?
I started with a light pencil outline and then added the background with warm colors, knowing that the majority of the face would be colored with cool blues. I had the face on the side of the painting without taking up the entire page so there would be a balance negative and positive space. Diagonals were greatly present in the painting, since this was a painting of a head.
How did you use complementary colors to choose your background or mix your colors?
As I said earlier, knowing that the main focus of the painting would be on the face of the object, I used warm yellows and pinks to contrast with the blues of the face. I didn’t much mix complementary colors for my paints since I was already working with greatly complementary colors for the majority of the painting.
What are you happy with? What would you change?
I’m happy with the structure of the face and the background colors as well. I like the cheek, nose, and lips mainly on the head. If I were able to start this painting over, I would avoid adding too much texture in the beginning so I could do that in the later layers of the process. I would try to focus on adding more white or choosing an image that was not almost completely in shadow, so it would look more white either way.
