Critique: Red Poppies
WDE June 8, 2007*
Mixed Media, 5×8
There are many aspects to a successful painting. Elements to be considered can include composition, contrast, color and depth. In a realistic landscape, it’s the perspective that must be convincing. Linear and aerial perspective can combine in a manner that will either lead the viewer’s eye gently into the vista, or let it drop off a cliff.
Today, I’m discussing the poppy field. My original goal was to render the poppy field somewhat realistically, with a strong influence from the impressionists. Let’s start with:
1. Did I achieve my original goal? I think so, but I’m not very knowledgeable about styles of art.
2. Overall, am I happy with my results? Overall, yes. It’s the best landscape I’ve ever done, and probably one of the cleanest. By clean, I mean I didn’t muddy the colors by overworking them. I was able to STOP. Stopping is hard, especially with soft pastels. Each time I pick up a different stick it’s “more! more! more!” which is fine when looking at it (the pastel) but not when putting it on the paper.
3. Was atmospheric perspective achieved? I think so, but am open to other thoughts.
4. Do I consider it a successful landscape? Um, no and there are two reasons for this. Remember that visual cliff I was talking about? My eye does that in several places while it wanders through the poppies. It’s driving me nuts. More importantly, neither my husband nor I like it well enough to hang it in the main part of the house, although I wouldn’t mind hanging it the basement.
That’s the clincher.
5. Do I like it well enough to hang it where everybody can see it? I’ll give it one atta-girl and a spot on the basement wall.
*The yellow hibiscus is from the WDE. It’s pigmented india ink over colored pencil on Raffine paper. You didn’t really want to see those poppies again, did you?
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Lisa,
I appreciate your sharing this list - I usually get fed up with working on something, so that once it’s done, I don’t have the patience to evaluate it - I just want to forget about it for a while!
Could one of the “visual cliffs” on this be the line where the poppies meet the background field? For me, the complimentary colors meeting in a line create some visual discord. Seems to bring that line out, although it should be more distant. I am curious how to solve a problem like that! I suppose desaturating it might help, but that’d make it less red and poppy-ish.
Do you know what you’d do differently if you did it again?
Good questions, Meg. I have so many that are beyond hope that I have forgotten about them. It’s the ones that almost get there, but not quite, that bother me enough to do an evaluation of “what’s wrong with this picture?”
I think the linear perspective has gotten “off” somewhere… finding THAT under all this color is going to be like finding a needle in a haystack.
The place you mentioned is one of 3 that I notice. I also think that fixing one might help fix the other. I feel like the poppy field is on different drawing planes, the left side being too high.
There’s not enough value change in the field. The whole bottom part is quite dark compared to the sky. Some lighter and brighter greens in the field may help, as well as lowering the intensity of the flowers in front of the far field.
Darkening the sky is a possibility, but I like how the sky turned out and am reluctant to change it.
I think the buildings are still too big, and the tree to the far left should be bigger. I don’t like the center tree in the far field. Move it or get rid of it altogether.
If I did (do?) this one again, I was thinking an orange-y colored sky might be interesting. Scale down the other elements. Dots for poppies, lines for buildings, and a MUCH smaller cypress.
As it is, neither the sky nor the field has any real dominance. A good crop before framing will fix that. I’ll either crop the poppies and focus on the sky, or crop the sky and focus on the poppies.
I’ll also be able to buy a smaller (and less costly) frame.