How to Critique your Own Art Work

     Be sure to photogragh your work in progress. Reduction is the best way to immediately see how things are progressing, alert to problems, and unfinished areas separate out easier. Often, a simple solution provides you, the painter, with immediate direction and an overall sense of accomplishment where you couldn't see it before. If you don't have a camera handy, get one. In the meanwhile, surprise yourself. Walk out of the room, engage your eyes and brain with something new, like " my, my, I wonder how sis is doing", trick yourself and pretend you forgot something back in the room you just came out of, return, and take a fleeting look around the room as if your painting does not exist and BEHOLD you stumble on your painting! Oh my, you see it with fresh eyes. You can immediately see it objectively where you might not have for the last hour of working on it. The same thing happens, (but without the drama), as it does when you see it reduced in a photo. As an art director, my photographers and I always took polaroids before the actual photo shoot, just for that crisp view of light and subject and to check the composition. In the small photo, you can see needed lighting changes, too much or not enough value or intensity, all along with what is working, and it is subjective instead of personal criticism that you accomplish. Now, it's all digital and on computer monitors, where an Art Director can see instant corrections and play with what if's! Amazing time for creativity because of being able to quickly see another view.

   Also be sure to take a completed-work photo. It helps you learn even more in the future.

   This is an in-progress painting of "Sweet Catastrophe", a young lady from the Illinois Renaissance Fair, painted in 2002. I painted 2 versions of this delightful subject. This was 24"x 36", oil on canvas. Afterward, I finished the lower arm, hand, and upper rocks, leveled the mirror and painted it as brown wood dropping it into the background. I also took some of the intensity out of the skirt because it demanded too much attention. I had a  Solo Exhibition coming up and hurried to meet a deadline for a postcard photo image and used this photo, then finished the work after. (No photo of the finished work survived my divorce, sorry).

     Conversely so, take a photo and find it is finished! Chelcey Offill, a promising young artist, painted this impressionism-style painting in one session during our Van Gogh Class. We were on the edge with it not being finished. Photograghed at the end of class, produced sound evidence it was finished. The photo here is a little cropped because of  wet glare edited out. I hope you enjoy this painting as much as I did. Impressionist work is rarely varnished, however we varnished this because it was perfect, but dry, Chelsey was disapointed that some of the color darkened when it dried and liked the wet fresh  paint look so we varnished it in the next class.
    Varnishing is easy with a sable-soft flat brush. Dip your brush in varnish. Place your brush outside the edge of your painting to contact the most remote edge and draw a long uninterrupted, one-stroke application of varnish across the painting, starting from the top edge of your painting's shortest side until you reach the opposite side of your painting,(portrait orientation), drawing the brush off the edge as you finish your stroke.The brush is held parallel, low to the canvas, so that the face of the brush contacts the surface of your painting as you draw the stroke from side to side across your canvas. Slightly overlap the next application with the prior stroke as you travel down your painting in horizontal strokes. BE SURE your painting is laying FLAT when applying varnish!  KEEP IT FLAT TO DRY. The finest varnish I have found is Maroger's Mastic Varnish. With the Maroger's Mastic Varnish, unlike other varnishes you can varnish within 2 weeks of the painting if the surface is dry to the touch. Longer than two weeks, you must wait a year for wet paint to cure. More on Maroger and varnishing later. More on keeping archival records to create provenance to come in future issues of Susan Sprigg Daily Art Weekly.