Critiques - - family portrait ... sort of

bert de wolff · #1 03-31-2006, 06:09 AM

what do you think of this little gathering ?

done in PS with Impressionist Chalk settings

cheers
Bert

klassylady25 · #2 03-31-2006, 08:11 AM

It reminds me of the "Paint-by-Number" pictures that I bought at the 5 &10!

Loved it then and now.

palms1 · #3 03-31-2006, 10:43 AM

Bert i think it is great, how would it look if the dog was looking the other way ? (flipped to be looking left looking at the cats )

Palms

Kraellin · #4 03-31-2006, 01:26 PM

bert,

i like the colors and renditions of each animal. not crazy about the background, but that's just a preference thing. the scale and size relationships also look correct.

what bugs me here is the dog and the horse. the cats look fine. they are full-bodied. but with the dog's neck and torso cut off and the horse being so close to the cats and dog, there is something that tells the eye this is a lie. the cats are raised up on a level relative to the horse and it makes them look almost like they are on an invisible platform. i wouldnt mind if i could see a platform or something and the horse is up to the edge of it. that would work for me. and with the dog's head floating like that, it also looks a bit odd to me. if even the neck were showing and the cat images were over that, i think i'd be ok with it. as is, it's ok as a vignette of the animals, but overall the oddities of the display throw me off just a tiny bit.

craig

bert de wolff · #5 04-01-2006, 03:32 AM

thanks for all your comments

palms: tried flipping the dog but that only increased what craig is saying

with these composites i think that either you try to fool the beholder's eye into believing that the scene could actually be like that, or you make it plain to see that it is what it is: a composite. certainly with necessary differences in scale like in this case with the horse, i personally prefer the latter approach

but, craig, i see what you mean and i'll experiment some more with composites

thanks again
cheers
bert

Kraellin · #6 04-01-2006, 08:06 AM

bert,

i think i could even pin this down a bit more. it's mostly the dog that looks out of place compositionally somehow. not sure where you'd fit him to make it more pleasing, though.

"but with the dog's neck and torso cut off and the horse being so close to the cats and dog, there is something that tells the eye this is a lie." and this statement isnt quite what i was trying to express, but i couldnt quite put my finger on what i didnt like about this. i think maybe it's more of a balance issue here. so, "lie" wasnt quite the right word choice there.

perhaps if the dog were between the two cats? more of an inverted 'T' composition? i'm really not sure.

again, i do like each individual animal rendition. it's just the composing of the overall that looks off.

craig