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Comment by Gloria Hoag on October 28, 2011 at 8:34

Congratulations on your painting Emmanuelle, I like the muted colors.

Comment by Janet Taylor on October 28, 2011 at 8:30

Congratulations Emmanuelle! Very, very nice. I love how this is so inviting to come and linger and take it all in. Love it!

Comment by deb hill on October 28, 2011 at 0:47

Very lovely. Congrats! Loved what Richard did too, but I think most of us have the same problem. It is hard to choose what really needs detail and I personally tend to be afraid to suggest so much of the painting. You are way ahead of me on that. I am sometimes fearful of really choosing the spot light thinking that it will be too unnatural. I guess that I feel too much like I paint backdrops for something??? Neat that Ricchard thought to place the sheep in there. Looking forward to seeing more of your work. Blessings!

Comment by Emmanuelle Mertian de Muller on October 27, 2011 at 20:19

I just read the results now... many thanks to you Richard, but most of all for giving us so much of your vast knowledge. A workshop like this feed our artistic soul and I think that the winners are everyone who entered it...

Comment by Emmanuelle Mertian de Muller on October 27, 2011 at 19:52

Richard,

I feel very very touched that you considered my painting and your remarks are full of interest. 

You have the talent to lift people up with your professional eyes :-)

Totally agree whith everything, especially with the trees : they did not meant to be in the background but the scale of the painting looks much better that way. 

Did not think about the snow either: thank you, I love the way you changed it... love the sheep but would not have had the idea/the competence for doing them... 

In your demo, you sense of freedom blow me away : you change the scenery, add up things, swap them around... it is incredible !!! 

And your use of photoshop !! ... 

You opened me a window of freedom and I feel authorized now to expand what is in front of my eyes. 

Looking forward to do the next workshop. 

Emma 

Paris, France. 

Comment by Richard Robinson on October 27, 2011 at 10:37

Well, there is a blur tool in photoshop I use sometimes, or you can soft select an area and use a blur filter, but what I've done in this one in some places is just use a larger soft brush with a color selected from the area I'm painting but applied at about 30% transparency - like a light glaze really.

Comment by susie gregory on October 27, 2011 at 10:08

richard..how on earth do you blur and soften things with photoshop?  is it easy to learn?  i think fiddling around until you come up with something you like would be a huge benefit as you're putting brush to canvas!  you can really see the spotlight effect as you squint down at the redo on the right! wonderful!!! 

Comment by Denise Maxwell on October 27, 2011 at 7:02

Richard I like how you can see the little tweeks to make a good painting even better I hope my eye can soon do that also, fabulous. I love the sheep.

Comment by susie gregory on October 27, 2011 at 1:39

this is really lovely...and enhanced by richard's suggestions, even lovlier, if possible...i love the fenceposts and sheep he dreamed up!!  really soft and yet bold at the same time...good job!!!

Comment by Richard Robinson on October 26, 2011 at 18:39

Hi Emmanuelle, thanks for this beautiful painting, here's my thoughts on it...

 

Design

I really like the design. When it's simplified to it's basic dark/light design I can more easily see why - large dynamic shapes leading me into the painting. You've taken the concept of the curving river and turned it into what could be a grassy plain or a dirt track and the color design of warm against cool works very well and is immediately attractive to my eye even when viewed at a very small size which is always my test of a good design - if it looks good on a postage stamp, it'll look great on a wall.
 

 

Color

As I said the warm/cool thing is great and you've also varied the hues within those major groups enough to keep them interesting. The light blue in the mountains suggest smoke or mist to me and possibly could stand with some warming up just a little, as could the snow in sunlight to keep it in the same light as those warm clouds. I could imagine a slightly stronger spotlight effect further down the valley too. There are just a few odd flicks of dark green which seem to float out of place at the base of the mountains.

 

Brushwork

Lovely brushwork - very confident. I'm enjoying those strokes leading into the painting - they're a really beautiful feature of this painting in my opinion.

 

Realism

Overall it's really pretty good in terms of giving a convincing illusion of space. There is one major thing that pokes in my eye and that's the size of the trees on the right. Although I do like the size of them compositionally, there doesn't seem any way to reconcile their size with the size of the trees on the left and that puts the entire foreground into question - is it a broad plain of tussock or a dirt track? If you look at the image in a mirror for a second you'll get a new perspective on this because you're used to it now. To my eye those trees need some pruning and the track could do with some other elements to give it better scale, like some fence posts and some mustering sheep for instance.

 

I've picked on the things I personally would change which are pretty minor because overall I think its a really nice painting and I wouldn't mind it on my wall at all. Nice work!

 

 

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