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Ed's thread (3 Viewers)

Wow, what a great piece, Ed! Wonderful, unique style and feeling to this. It suits the behavior of the critter - blending in and trying to be low key and unnoticed, yet a magnificent animal.
 
hello all

back on the fauve teal and rapidly done this evening hopefully without sludging it all with brown

but there's a bit of an empty or samey patch in the lower middle, so I've crayoned a short-eared owl and then placed it on the computah to see if it might work, but not painted in yet

not a complete fake up as I have seen short eared owls on this exact spot many times over many years, just not lately...

so views welcome- the owl can shrink, grow move or go..
 

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My votes for the owl. The only thing is that for some odd reason I feel like the wings should be a little bit less straight up and down and tilted a bit one way or the other from a straight vertical. I have no idea why I think this. Just my first reaction.

In a way it reminds me of a painting Tim did a year ago or so. Putting a bird in front of the scene like that really opens up the space.
 
Agree on the owl too Ed.....but I'd put it so that we're viewing from the underside so it looks as if it's banking into the painting which then naturally leads us in too. With its back to us and looking out it kinda bars us from entering....but maybe that's just me!
 
Well Ed I know I'm supposed to cheer you on, but have to be honest here, this painting is never going to work with this composition.

You need to really pin down what it is about, the ducks,then why are they so tiny, the landscape? it has the most real estate and it has all the things that draw the eye ie huge contrasts in big stripes. the water, or the light or color...fix in you mind what the painting is really about and you will find your way easier. I also think those stripes have to go, and here is a rendition where they are tamed down....but you may have other ideas, so this is just my 2 cents or whatever that is in British pounds units.
 

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Well Ed I know I'm supposed to cheer you on

ooh no- crtitique away: cheering on should be on a strictly selective basis! otherwise its like one of them photography forums where everyone shouts "hey great capture"...

I shal have a little muse on this one- it was originally meant to be about the glowing gut of enclosed water with a little point of bird action, but I concede it has got a bit out of hand what with the tiger skin rug
 
I shal have a little muse on this one- it was originally meant to be about the glowing gut of enclosed water with a little point of bird action, but I concede it has got a bit out of hand what with the tiger skin rug

Now I'd say the opposite. Make sure that you're making the painting that you want and not that someone else wants. If you headed in the direction of a tiger skin rug then there was a reason. I'd pursue that direction and see where it leads. From the beginning the painting has been about brilliant light and color. It seems to me to be a shame to not continue that.

I guess it might be good to ask why you want to add the owl though. Is it because something seems lacking in the painting without it, or do you just think it would add to it. My feeling is that it can add to it if you get is scaled and placed right, as in the buzzard and hay bales.

Good luck!
 
If you headed in the direction of a tiger skin rug then there was a reason. I'd pursue that direction and see where it leads.

Well I've headed in the direction of love and passion with a few Tom Dick and Harry's that have been a complete disaster.;) Paintings have reasons why they work that have held since the time of Rembrandt and before, and compositions vary greatly but have principles that when we pay attention to them make our works of art solid and strong and giving the message we want to convey.
 
Ed,

I don't like to critique others' work. But the SEO gives us a viewpoint well above the painting. In a vista like this one would expect no such high point. A massive tower hide, or a micro-lite maybe?

Sorry, my first ever critique. :-C

Ground level. And if the SEO is included? Above, in the sky. Or in perspective to the horizon...;)
 
lol, poor ed - confused? He will be! ;)

So I'll add my halfpenny's worth ...

1. Colour/contrasts - Love it and it should stay - Very Ed!
2. Upperwing/banking view of SEO - again, Love it - contrasty colours work great against landscape and also - Very Ed!

3. Not sure re: eye level that Phil refers to - to me, height is fine because that appears to be the perspective of the landscape - ie viewer standing on a higher bank looking down across marsh

The only wee (and really wee) think I might change, would be to push the owl further back into the painting so it's marginally smaller and on the same horizontal point of the tree to the right and hawking slightly lower over the marsh. (but roughly in the same vertical plane as it is now)

Oh, and what it's still about to me is what it was about originally (before the owl), the glaring autumnal colours of a winter sunset broken up by the brightness of frozen looking water - impressionism at it's best
 
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goodness me- there's some formed thoughts in the above that I need to take notice of

sometimes this forum acts very well as a conscience tweaker- I knew the owl was a bandaid solution to a more basic problem of the empty quarter in the pic; and then l had fudged or botched how far back into the pic the owl was

and lo and behold these issues are laid bare: your all comments above are much appreciated

for anyone who is curious and has not lost the will to live on this one- here's the record shot I took before wielding the crayons- Deborah is bang on: viewpoint is standing on the seawall looking down
 

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stick the owl higher and chuck a load of blue at the right - that's my answer to everything. Wherever you go with this piece, there is a hell of a lot of excitement in it, so don't play about on this one and mess it up until you know what to do, get out your coffee, marker pens and other edible art equipment and scribble out what you want to do to it, then go in and finish the job - I'd say, half an hour maximum left to do on it.
 
Much to like here. The one thing I may be tempted to look at regarding the comp would be the direction of play, so to speak. The sweep of illuminated water forms a comforting arc in the lower-left of the scene. The design could work nicely if the bird were to be floating past and above this holding shape from left to right; the whole of the landscape for it to explore.
Just a thought.
 
there is a good idea Ed...and now that I get to see the shot, think about how beautiful that right side of the channel is, not a straight hard edge like in the painting so far, by using the more dancing line it makes I think you'd add a great deal to the shape of the water and the pleasure of the eye to see it.
 
there is a good idea Ed...and now that I get to see the shot, think about how beautiful that right side of the channel is, not a straight hard edge like in the painting so far, by using the more dancing line it makes I think you'd add a great deal to the shape of the water and the pleasure of the eye to see it.

hello all- a bit side-tracked and between things at the moment, but here's an interim of black and white doings in the absence of scraperboard supply: this time the helpful Teal were neatly spotted along a sheet of ice where the cattle stockade reflects in what's left of the open water
 

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