2015

I've been looking at your deviations on my watch page for a couple of weeks now, thinking how I might write a critique for someone who provides such a wonderful and necessary service to our community. Most of what I have to say is summed up in "thank you, thank you, thank you, keep doing what you do! It would be really hard to improve on your work, but the request for a critique implies the question "how can I do it better?" so there was my dilemma! If I had only one thing to critique about your work it would be that I would personally like to see more stock with some stronger form lighting, where maybe 3/5 of the model or so was in light and the rest have well defined shadows. I know many people wouldn't care much, so I don't know how many of us this would really help, but having well defined shadows really helps when you are painting realistic works where you might be inventing parts of the scene instead of just copying the photo. It helps keep the lighting consistent, yet allows me to convincingly render the forms in a strongly 3d way. I can invent scenes using front lighting, but the result can tend to be flatter unless I really work my edge planes well. I know you do have many photos with form lighting in your gallery, but sometimes i'll find just the right pose, but not the lighting I need. Anyway, that's my 2 cents, and you can feel free to ignore it, because you're doing such a great job and you probably know the needs of your supporters better than I do! Again I want to thank you for your work, It's great on it's own, but it's usefulness for many of us is beyond price, and since I just said that, I need to know what to do about a work I used one of your references on. I did the work not intending to sell it, but I have a gallery that might be interested in it. What would be your usual price or percentage if I sold the work? Your original reference isn't really recognizable, but I want to be sure I don't overstep fair use.