critique: "listen my children"

"listen my children"

when charles reid starts a critique he usually asks the artist what he/she likes about the painting and what things he/she doesn't like and would change.  so that's where i will start.  i really like the strong figure of the old man. i think that it is well drawn and painted .  i also like the idea of the kids nonchalantly munching on their treats while the old man tries to impart the wisdom of the world on their deaf ears. the thing that i dislike the most is the placement of the figures with everything crammed into the bottom of the page.  this is a problem that i have faced before on number of figure paintings so i should start to become aware of that possibility and "fix" it.  we all have these foibles and can usually work out of them with practice and experience.  i know i used to make the heads of figures too big, then just the eyes were too big.  the children are also pulled in too close to the man.  all of these things could have been solved early on by a little  pre-sketching or planning. all in all i think that i should have followed the original photo a little more closely. additionally,  i think that the picture plane is a little flat.  if that is what i was trying to do, i could take credit for succeeding, but that wasn't my goal if i am being honest. there is a little linear perspective going on but the values would suggest that most of the objects are all in the same plane, leaving only overlaps to give the impression of depth. so i should have probably dulled down the chroma of the objects in the background and made them a lighter value.  all that said, i actually like this painting more that i thought i was going to early on in the process.

i am packing up the studio to travel out to the california desert (borrego springs) for the remainder of the winter.  hopefully the desert will be in bloom and i will produce some landscapes (plein air, anyone?) to share with you. so our trek will take about a week as we will take our time and i will start some posts when we arrive.  thanks for viewing.