This is for A Day Not Wasted Sept 2011 challenge, French Waitress. It's oil on 6x8 canvas panel.
When I saw the original photo (ref) , I thought there were two ways to approach this painting. One is a pure portrait of the girl, minus everything else, while the other option is to take the whole scene but selecting elements in the pictures to come up with an over composition. I chose the latter since there were elements in the reference picture that were interesting.
I first got rid of all the noise on the wall - magazines and magazine racks - too busy, and instead I painted a solid wall. The woman on the left I thought was interesting since she helped to show there was a secondary light source, also her curve broke up with the wall's straight lines. I also got rid of the bricks outside the front window, again too busy I thought. I kept a letter and a hint of people outside. Originally I was going to stop there. However, the painting looked flat and lacking in depth. So at the end, I decided to add in the blurry foreground outline of a person and the two water goblets. At this point, I had to stop since there were plenty of details for this little 6x8 painting!
When I saw the original photo (ref) , I thought there were two ways to approach this painting. One is a pure portrait of the girl, minus everything else, while the other option is to take the whole scene but selecting elements in the pictures to come up with an over composition. I chose the latter since there were elements in the reference picture that were interesting.
I first got rid of all the noise on the wall - magazines and magazine racks - too busy, and instead I painted a solid wall. The woman on the left I thought was interesting since she helped to show there was a secondary light source, also her curve broke up with the wall's straight lines. I also got rid of the bricks outside the front window, again too busy I thought. I kept a letter and a hint of people outside. Originally I was going to stop there. However, the painting looked flat and lacking in depth. So at the end, I decided to add in the blurry foreground outline of a person and the two water goblets. At this point, I had to stop since there were plenty of details for this little 6x8 painting!
I like the way you paint, and attently read your comment, which is useful!
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