Grandma Marilyn's village houses.

 

Here is a progress shot of Marilyn's painting of a village in winter. 

I'll wait to critique it until Marilyn comes down from cloud nine and gets another session on the piece.

Congratulations Marilyn.

Susan's white house.

Here is Susan's beautiful portrait of a white house and yard. 

first of all, I think that the color is really beautiful. I especially like the color and paint handling of the house and the hedge and grass area.

I only have a few suggestions but they apply to a few areas. The first version below is unmarked up and the one below  shows the areas.

 

1. I feel that the open areas of the painting where the sky is seen between the trees opens up the composition and naturally leads us into the house. I think that the house feels a little bigger and more prominent with these open areas.

2. The same idea applies to the dark areas around the lower trees. In the orange and yellow ones on the left, I think separating them with dark areas makes each more interesting.

One other thing I'd be conscious of is how the top parts of the trees are finished and to mix up the heights and widths a little. Paint through the edges of the painting as opposed to painting right up to them.

This is a study and I think that the final is going to be fantastic and I can't wait to see it. 

Barbara's Flowers

Here are the first of Barbara's four flower paintings.

first I'd like to say that I'm really impressed with the bold strokes, color and experimentation with the composition. I can't help but think that Barbara learned a ton in this process and that it will be a good thing to do going forward. I'm not sure which is my favorite but I'll start with this one.

I just really like this one. I think that the color and scale of the flowers work so well. The flower shapes relative to the edges is just about perfect. The ratio of the ground plane to background feels just right.

A few notes:

1. I like all this.

2. Here Barbara might firm up some of the edges of the flowers in this area to delineate them.

This is the worked version of the painting Barbara submitted a few weeks ago. I think that she's succeeded in pushing the background back by lightening and softening it.

3. To further separate the foreground and background, sharpening the edges of the flowers and leaves in the arrangement will help as indicated in the marked up version above.

1. and 2. This is just a note to point out that in my opinion, the colors of both the curtains and the table top could use some work. The work Barbara has done on the background and the color in the flowers, which look really good, make it worth playing with color in these other areas to have a nice piece.

(I'm sorry for the order of these paintings relative to the copy. Google has succeed in making this program, which used to work really well, about as stubborn and stupid as possible.)

I like the dynamic color and interesting array of flowers in the painting below. My only suggestions are

1. Watch out for the tangencies with the edges of the painting-that is, try not to end shapes close or right at the edge.

2. My eye is pullingto this are more than even the flowers. I think that it's primarily due to the hard edges and relatively high contrast of the largish geometric shapes. The perspective of the table top is nicely done but also leads us to this area. Maybe consider softening the edges and making the background color (as nice as it is) lighter, graduating the value from the top to this area.

It would be nice to get feedback from the other Silala painters on this to see if they agree with me or if they don't think this is an issue.

Overall, I think this piece is very nice. As I said, I really like the flower arrangement and I especially like the painting of the vase.

I think that this painting works great. The bottom half is really interesting. The flattened circular shape and the color and pattern of the tablecloth work super well. The painting of the vase is nicely done as well.

I think that the flowers are nicely composed and the shape and size relationships a very good.

My only notes are that 

2. I might make the color on some of the flowers cleaner and also the edges of the flowers could be more defined.

1. Here, like in the previous painting, the geometric shapes may be undermining the impact of the flowers a little. I feel that the isolated light shape along the left edge may be pulling too much attention. I've taken ithe edge out for Barbara to compare. It could be just be a personal preference and the edge of the window is nicely painted so it could be left in if preferred.

3. Here I would soften the edges of the table top, wall and window. I might also give just a little more subtle color to bottom of the window as well as the wall.

There are so many things to like about this series of paintings. This feels like a big step for Barbara and I'm looking forward to seeing what she paints next.

Lonna's Poppies and vineyards

Above is Lonna's first painting of vineyards with poppies. I like the energy and color.

And here is her second go at the subject. Here there is a better sense of space and the scale relationships. Notice the adjusted scale and diminishing size of the poppies in the foreground plane as they recede. The color is cleaner here. I do like the varied color in the dirt between the rows in the painting above a bit more. I like the energy and color of the main grouping of trees in this version.

 

Here is Lonna's photo reference. Notice that the scale of things like the further vineyard and the house are much smaller than in the paintings. For the sake of the painting, somewhere in between the size of the house and vineyard in the photo and the second painting might work best.

Here are just a few things I'd consider to work on in Lonna's painting.

1. the hill to the left of the house kind of disappears. It might be better to continue through on the hill with just a small drop off as it goes to the left.

2. even though this is a loose painting, getting the silhouette shape right is important. Here it's a tad fuzzy. I really like the color of the trees on the left but once again, just a little more attention to the actual shape of the tree's silhouette would help.

3. the red color of the poppies is gorgeous. The flowers may be a little smaller still though.

I have a few more suggestions.

I might open up and unclutter the space for the vineyards. Notice the counter rhythms indicated by the purple lines. The kind of zig zag. Also notice the curvature of the rows of vines to indicate the volume of the curved hills. 

I added a few trees in the distance in a relative scale like in the photo but put them behind the house. Look for the curved shapes of the trees and bushes in the photo. Having a tighter scale and a different rhythm of the curved shapes in the trees to contrast the longer curving shapes of the vineyards adds interest.

Make sure your house doesn't get to large. When objects in the background get too big it flattens the space dramatically. Lonna has improved the relationships in the second painting but might consider pushing the scale of the house and far hill back a little more.  The size of the vineyard rows will diminish as the rows recede. These suggestions are to deepen the space of the landscape. 

Here I've also simplified the large middle ground trees and created another staggered relationship for interest.  I really like the dynamic foreground flowers in Lonna's painting but I've made them smaller here to indicate a little bit of a truer scale relationship to the trees. Maybe somewhere in between would work to retain the dynamic.

I really like Lonna's painting, especially the color and loose painting. I know exactly what I'm looking at here and her painting allows us to put ourselves into the landscape.

Here's a painting to illustrate scale (even though the foreground flowers are a little big) by some old french guy.