Anyone interested in critiquing my paintings?

I’ve been painting for fun for about a year now, and I was wondering what people would think of my paintings. They’re posted on my Flickr site. I’ve gotten some opinions from friends and family, but I can’t trust them to be completely honest.

I’ve not taken any art classes, and if I was going to categorize myself in any art style, it would be Naive Art. But I was wondering what people’s honest opinions would be of my work. Don’t be afraid of offending me, I make my living as an engineer, and I don’t have any plans to quit and pursue a life as an artist.

All the paintings are acrylic on canvas, and the dimensions are listed in the description.

I really like the more abstract pieces like Swirl and the Drip series. To be frank, the pieces with representations of real-like objects (umbrella, butterly, etc.) look like they were painted by a young child (sorry!).

I’m not an art critic, but I wanted to let you know I really like your use of color and I think you have a distinctive style. Obviously, it’s all subjective, but I think if your pieces resonate with people, then you’re good to go. Sorry I can’t critique them from a technical perspective.

Here are the pieces I particularly identify with: Red & White Flowers, Flying, Falling Leaves (nice color), Bouncing, and Abstract5.

You should take a class sometime. It can only serve to give you more inspiration and perhaps take you out of your comfort zone.

Thanks for sharing!

I like “Rorschach” sort of looks like the logo of the Mexican soccer team UNAM Pumas. I’d tend to agree with lilflower on some of the others. Keep at it!

Heh, don’t feel sorry. When I tell people in real life that I paint, I usually say that I’m not that good - if they were paintings I did as a 9-year-old then you wouldn’t think they were that bad, but since I’m 22, it’s not that impressive.

I am planning on taking some sort of art class, partly to improve artistically, and partly to meet people, since I still haven’t met that many people in Houston. I think I might do a screenprinting class though, since I think my simplistic (or childlike) style might be work better with that.

I think you might have a talent for faces. Those two paintings had more depth and feeling than the others.

I like plane and abstract5.

The rest seemed more like therapy paintings (man, I hate critiquing). I could see a real technique in ‘plane’ such as attention to dimension and detail (although I suspect there was some tracing going on, but no worries… I like the execution!)

Abrtract5 was just a pure initial response from me of “Ungh… Mmm… Good.” And most times, that’s all it takes.

To echo others, I’d buy Abstract5.

You have a good eye for faces. I’d definitely try and get some formal training.

Art criticism from an English major turned librarian with a background in theater and a tiny little bit of accomplishment in visual arts*, so take it for what it’s worth:

It looks like you have a well-established sense of shape. Look for ways to grow from that and stretch the boundaries of what kinds of shapes constitute things like birds, umbrellas, leaves, and faces.

Your understanding of line and movement often go hand in hand from what I see. Work on ways to separate them and appreciate them for their individual strengths.

Your use of color is bold, but does not suggest boldness coming from confidence. Consider experimenting more with nuance and gradation to both gain and provide a fuller appreciation of the power of a bold swath of color.

  • I became my art teacher’s pet in high school by correctly using the term “negative space.” A piece I did while in her class was added to my school district’s permanent collection. This was a long, long time ago.

I really like Umbrella, Lines, Gummi Bears, and Plane. I think you should definitely try screen printing; the portraits you did would work wonderfully there. I think you have a nice style, but (please don’t take this the wrong way) maybe painting isn’t for you. Your work reminds me a lot of my own paintings, which always disappointed me. When I tried screen printing and appliqué I began to really be happy with the way my pictures turned out. Both those mediums lend themselves well to large areas of solid color, which seems to be what you’re most comfortable with. But overall, I really like your work.

Well I like the majority of them.

I myself prefer color and color contrast over content or artisticliness. (Hey I made a new word.) Though my bias comes from my own paintings which are like yours simple shapes and lines but colorful.

And I really like Eclipse and Dark Sky especially Dark Sky but I would buy both as posters and hang in my bedroom with my other night time posters.

I think you need to work more on color schemes. At the moment, a lot of the pictures don’t really pop even though the style is pretty right on for what you’re going for. Abstract5, Flowers, and Falling Leaves seem to be about the only ones where your color choices worked together (though I think that the background on Flowers needs to be more chaotic and the flowers flatter, so that one still doesn’t work for me quite.)

I wouldn’t know how to categorize them, but I’ll give my overall impression. You seem to have two main themes, high contrast and abstract/paint drip. I like the high contrast better. Abstract/paint drip probably takes a lot more practice to get something aesthetically pleasing out of a inherently chaotic technique.

Pluses:
As for the high contrast stuff, I love your concept (idea) and composition (layout / where you put elements in relation to each other).

Improving:
Your painting technique needs some work though. Seeing as it’s high contrast, it would be a lot more pleasing if you perfected the sharpness of your borders. They should look a little more like they were done as stencils or in an illustration program (and actually using your own stencils and/or masking would be fine). And the object fill colors could also be a little more clean. Use enough paint so you aren’t still seeing the brush strokes in the fill color. You have a couple choices here:

  1. fill is just one block of color
  2. fill is a specific texture, but the texture is flat, it does not follow the shape it’s in, it is just sharply cut off at the border of the shape
  3. fill is a monotone gradient of just one color, either flat or following the shape - for example, light blue to dark blue

Some more specific critique:

Lamp: You could do this in just three flat colors, grey, black , and brown, make the colors more uniform, and the objects have cleaner crisper edges. Additional options: Could do a wood grain texture for the table, but flat, not realistic. Like you had a large piece of paper that was just wood grain, and you cut the whole table shape out of that. Looks like you attempted a gradient on the lamp shade. Could try that, but make it a smooth gradient with no texture.

Yellow: this one, and others with flowers, and the gummi bear one, you seem to have a circular motif. I would either make the circles one flat color, so you can’t tell where one ends and another beings, or especially inthe case of the gummi bears, I would use a smooth spherical gradient so the circles look like monotone balls.

white flowers: pretty cool. would just make the edges a little crisper, and make the color a little more uniform so it looks like all the flowers were cut out as one shape as opposed to being seperate shapes in layers.

Rorschach: points just for spelling it! hard to tell how much was your idea and how much was just abstract, but pleasing nonetheless.

umbrella: very nice. just crisper edges and more uniform color.

redflowers, red and white flowers. R&W nice! Better executed than redflowers, which was good concept/composition but was a little sloppier in technique.

plane: nice!

lollipop: nice, maybe just a more geometrically perfect spiral.

pigeons: maybe make the birds more uniform and crisp, and the sidewalk too, and the grass be more of a cut out texture like my wood grain suggestion.

leaves: not clear if these are close ups of leaves, or if they are branches…

gummibears: nice general idea. the top row is a little too linear, i like how the bottom half seems more random in placement. again, I would either make them flat color, or made up of monotone spherical gradients.

flying: neat!

flowers: cool idea, but would make the flowers a flatter uniform color. the background texture I would make a little more regular.

fish: again more uniform colors and crisper edges. if you are going to use the brush to texture, i would make the brush strokes linear, all in the same direction.

falling leaves: nice composition. use enough paint so it doesn’t look transparent and you can’t see the brush strokes as much.

eclipse: fairly standard idea, but nice choice of colors. the brush stroke texturing works well here, as does the subtle gradient in the background.

darksky: not too much going on here. not fond of the pattern of stars, the low contrast between treeline andsky, or the use of texture in the trees.

colin: nice! did you do this purely from your head or did you posterize a photo first?would just do crisper edges.

cillian: general composition, color choice good. wispy hair bits is nice. proportions of face look a little too distorted.

christmastree: general composition good but basic drawing skills are a little off on this one. boxes should probably be uniform color internally, or have much sharper corner lines. i like how they are all blue but different shades of blue, maybe use more than just 2 shades of blue for different boxes. the perspective is not quite right. it would be better to all have them in exactly the same angle, or have them at much more random angles. i would use a more realistic christmas tree stand shape. the lights would probably look cool if they were in even more straight lights, and more perfect circles.

butterfly: nice, would maybe make the body part just all black rather than mix in brown.

bubbles: neat

bouncing: neat. would the bounces closer to parabolas

boom: good, but crsiper edges, uniform colors

birds: didn’t quite like the shape of your birds.

balloons: great! again, would make all the white balloons look like one big cutout of white rather than layers of different objects. make the strings a little crisper, and either perfectly straight down, or a smoother slightly S shaped curve.

so that’s seeming to be my general advice: crisper edges and more uniform color. use enough paint so you don’t see the brush strokes and it doesnt look translucent. if you use texture, do a more uniform cutout painted texture rather than a brush texture. if you do use brush texture, do more linear or uniform. for gradients, use a smoother gradient. for circles, do either a uniform color or a smooth spherical gradient.

good start! some of these would make nice tshirts!

Wow, thanks everyone for the critiques and advice. Now that I know that I’m not horrible and without hope, I’ll definitely look into some classes, whether they are painting or screen printing classes. I’ll still just be painting (or screen printing) for fun, but if I’m doing it, might as well be doing it as best I can right?

I usually cringe when someone asks people to critique poetry or art so I was prepared for boring. It’s not. You have talent definitely. ‘White Flowers’ really struck me and won me over. I don’t like them all; I agree that in some places ‘Naive’ turns more into ‘not mature’ but I think with some classes you’ll be able to overcome that and do very well.

On p. 1, I like the second row, Tree, Swirl 3, Sky, and the flowers. Actually, Swirl 1 is growing on me, too.
On p. 2, I like them all but Fish - that one doesn’t quite work. I really like Flying.
On P. 3 - not crazy about Abstract 4 but I like the rest.

This was a treat! Best of luck. I hope you will post more of your work as you continue creating.

I think my favorite is “Vase.” But I don’t know why. I would actually hang this in my house.

I like the simplicity of your pieces (both in subject and style).

I agree with other posters in that your style needs refining - especially some of your “real life” pictures - you seem to be aiming for a realistic style, but your perspective and shapes seem a little rough. But with some polish you could definitely get a very good set of work going on here.

However, I absolutely adore “Flying” - in that piece I think the simplistic nature of your work really shines. Honestly, looking at that piece I can see a flock of birds flying overhead on a sunny day, and it feels beautiful.

Overall, I think you have the beginnings of something there. I actually like the flatness of a lot of your work. (I don’t like it so much in your final abstracts–those would benefit from more layering & depth). It looks very deliberate and works with the style. Composition is solid. Nothing really jumps out at me as being weak compositionally (“Birds” feels a little off kilter, but not bad). It seems you definitely have an intuitive sense of composition, as your Splatter and Swirl paintings feel well balanced. I think “Swirl1” is my favorite painting overall. The Flowers, Pigeons, and Lollipop I could do without.

I hope you continue growing in your paintings. I think this is pretty good for only being at it a year, and some art instruction might benefit you.

Good luck.

I kind of like it. I’m not an art expert and wouldn’t call it brilliant or anything, but I think I would want to use one as an album cover if I were in a band. Or like someone else said, on a t-shirt, especially Fish and Plane.

Don’t confuse me with someone who knows what he’s talking about, but I think Tree would be better if the colors of the tree and the background were done differently so that the leaves had more of a contrast with everything else. It also looks a little weird because with the darkness of the sky and everything else, the leaves look kind of like red light bulbs because they’re too well illuminated for the dark.

To me, of the represenational ones the only one that shows any connection with its subject, any emotion, is “Colin”. None of the others say anything to me about you or the subject and your feelings about the subject. The point of painting is to communicate, to express something (hopefully to your audience but at least to and of yourself). Before you start a painting ask yourself what you are actually attempting to achieve, to show or express, with it? Only then will you know as you go on whether it is succeeding.

I agree #5 is best of the abstracts.