[Xeniu]

This is quite a messy sketch for an acrylic painting. The idea seemed ok in my head, but after making this sketch i don't know..





The idea is painting a woman, placed in a hand, wearing a flowery dress picking flowers out of a big nostril.

Any ideas of how i can improve it compositionwise? anatomically?

it's black and white cause i just wanted to try some values without getting into color.

The Sketch

crap! I'm sorry. Passagen, my webspace provider won't let me link directly to the image.
http://hem.passagen.se/xentar/sketchval2.jpg


[ April 18, 2002: Message edited by: Xeniu ]

[fireburnspaper]

..Whoa..Weirdness =P I like. Oookie dokie. The first thing I noticed when I saw it and looked at the composition was the top of the picture..which isn't where you want the attention. You've got this big 'bright' spot right at the top, and it's really flat, even when you finish it no matter how much detail, it'll still have that 'flat' look to it. Two ways to fix that would be to either make the picture less 'tall' cutting off some of the palm, or make the girl hanging down more verticaly rather than horizontally. Either one would work well in it's own right (if you made her more vertically aligned you'd have nice vertical movement, if you shortened the picture or somehow filled in the 'dead space' above her with something to balance it, you could have the triangular composition between the nostrils, her face, and the fingers wrapping around her. You might also try messing around with the entire piece. Maybe have her coming in from the side, or from underneath stretching up, either would be good alternatives, and to have the flowers growing downward would just be a titch more abstract. So far, I like, I don't think you should ditch it all, I'd like to see it finished in fact! WOO! =) If you'd like I can show you what I mean by alternate compositions, if what I was saying wasn't paintin' the picture for ya hehe =) good start.

[fireburnspaper]

That looks much better already in my opinion. I was a little worried that it might not get the idea of a hand off perfectly, but it still does so far =) And by putting her up at the top more, it's far more balanced to bring your eye around the entire piece =)

[Xeniu]

Thanks. Good point, that flat area has to go and i'll consider reworking it, rotating it. I think i'll keep the nose on the bottom... still if the nose would be on the top gravity and stuff would permit her to look up without having fingers obscuring her vision or almost falling off (like now) and it would be easy to make it less awkward for the hand so i'm not ruling it out.

Here's what it looks like with a bit from the top cut out.