Anyone interested in critiquing my paintings?

Cafe Society
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Inexpert opinion follows:

I really liked the background of Abstract5. I am not sure I care about what happened on top of it. Several of your painting show similar monocrome textures that work pretty well. Consider that one your strong suits and try to take advantage of it.

I don’t much care for the rest of your abstracts. I don’t much care for 95% of abstracts out there, so filter my opinion through that.

The two faces I like very much. Cillian could use a flatter brown for the shadows or a more purposeful direction of the brushstrokes. As it is, it looks a bit haphazard.

Flying is just wonderful. I loved it. It really captures the orderly but still somehow chaotic feeling of bird flocking.

Umbrella has a charm that I can’t quite put my finger on. There is nothing nice I could say about it, other than I keep liking it after studying it and finding nothing worth of notice in it. (hey, I could be an art critic)

Butterfly and Plane look like clip art. Sorry.

Dark Sky I could like as a mural on a kid’s room. I am not sure how I would feel about it as a mounted piece, though.

I like your patterns: Gummy bears, Falling Leaves, Red and White Flowers, Sky (without the birds), and Yellow. They would have to be very large format, though.

Eclipse has very nice use of colour and brushstroke directionality.

My top favourite, though, is White Flowers. It has the simplicity of a kid’s drawing on a blackboard. I cannot quite appreciate the background on my screen (I am on my laptop in a very bright room), but I can see it is not flat. If it is a play on greys, then it would really look like a blackboard. I would pay for it. Again, the uneven backgrounds are something that can play in your advantage and you can really exploit it.

The rest, meh. I just don’t feel any motion. They look too flat, too unconvincing.

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Thanks again for the critiques. I’m going to print out this thread and save it and keep y’alls thoughts in mind for some of my future work. I also found a screen printing class that starts next Monday that I will sign up for.

I haven’t found any painting classes that I would be interested in taking. I only found one that sounded somewhat worthwhile, but it costs much more than I would be willing to spend.

Does anyone know of any books that would explain some of the paintings basics? I realize that a book probably wouldn’t be as useful as a class, but it would still be something to start from.

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Thank you for sharing these with us. I think screenprinting or woodblock would be cool because you have a sense of the essential shapes, and of the balance of color, geometry, overal composition. I’ll be envious if you end up getting into fabric design at all because that’s what I wish I could do! Good luck and good for you for pursuing this.

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Interesting collection. I’ve been painting for just less than a year myself–it’s addictive, isn’t it??

Some of your nonobjective pieces are very nice, though several feel too “contained” within the borders of the page. For example, I love the organic nature of “Swirl1” but I wish it went off the edges of the canvas.

I also liked Flying and Eclipse and Colin is quite nice. Cillian is, I realize, abstracted, but there was something disconcerting to me about the way the eye was no bigger than the nostrils that I just couldn’t really get behind.

I liked Abstract2 and 4 the best of that series, (though technically, “abstract” usually means that the picture is of something real, but it has been distorted, rather than something completely nonrepresentational)

In “Birds” I really liked the sky, but the birds were a little too much like a church logo or something.

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How much do you want for Abstract 5? Completely serious. PM me.

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BA Degree in Sculpture/fine art from Florida State:

I like the simple and graphic nature of the work. It reminds me of a certain type of graphic design style that one often associates with comics and film noir.

I agree with other posters that “Abstract Five” is the best of that series.
I also agree that you would LOVE block and screen printing.

Critique: You’ve a good eye for design and perspective but often fall short in rendering. Try to crisp up all your lines and edges. Most of your colours would benefit from being blocks of solid colour rather than inconsistently filled spaces.
I have a difficult time reading any emotion in most of the pieces, they feel more like excersises rather than executed work.

Overall: Rather good considering no formal training. I like most of the work and would love to see more of the splatter/drip abstract series as well as some more realistic pieces executed with the above comments. Nice work! :cool:

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What is block printing? Is it similar to screen printing? What are the differences?

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If it hadn’t been for the two pictures ‘Colin’ and ‘Butterfly’, I’d have said that like me you can’t paint at all. Most of the rest of the pictures are not to my taste at all, and the non-abstract ones apart from those two have issues. For instance in ‘ChristmasTree’ there is no coherent vanishing point. Abstract is not my cup of tea.

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I’m not an art critic, but I work for a company that sells art books, so I get to see prints of a lot of different kinds of paintings. Your work is interesting and has quite a consistent style, which is a good thing - sets it apart from random and unstructured children’s daubs.

I wouldn’t bat an eye if I saw a book of your work - by which I mean to say that it is already of a standard comparable to, or on a par with, lots of other contemporary artists that are out there.
I don’t think you need worry too much about making your paintings flatter or crisper - if your style is such that it shows the artist’s hand, so be it.

I especially like Eclipse. Can I buy it?

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Couple of questions…

Firstly, when you finish a painting, how do you usually feel about it? How close do you generally feel you’ve come to actualising your vision for it?

Secondly - and this is a dumb longshot question, but I still have to ask it - you’re not by any chance a relative of this rather more famous Lowry, are you?

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Wow, I think your work is very nice!

The way you’re working really reminds me of Lee Tracy, who’s in Chicago. I took a class from her at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, but I think she’s only teaching privately now.

I don’t think you particularly need a painting class at all, because your use of paint is very assured and complete – your colors aren’t sophisticated (yet), but that’ll come. You’re definitely on your way.

What I think you need is to study Drawing 101 for about a year. I say that because your use of negative space is the biggest weakness I see. Once you get that down, your work will really “pop”, and your compositions will be stronger. It’s a small difference, but that’s what sets “good” work apart from “excellent”.

Go for it!

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Wow, I didn’t realise LS Lowry died as recently as 1976! I had him pegged as a much earllier figure.

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Yes, I remember the event - his life was commemorated a couple of years later by a truly glurgy song that made it to No 1 in the UK charts:

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I know nothing about nothing but I do wish I had your talent. The abstract ones aren’t my cup of tea, but everything else is, especially that “eclipse.”

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There is a technique where you carve out a relief pattern or image on woodblock and then ink it and press it where you want on the piece. I’ve seen footage of fabric being printed by hand this way.

Have you thought about a price list for the works you have? Then you could e-mail it to interested Dopers. It might be good to ask the mods but you didn’t come in expecting to sell anything. :slight_smile:

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Since art critiques are so subjective, I can only tell you about my own opinion.

I like Colin, Flying, Eclipse, and Leaves.

I usually don’t like abstract paintings, but I like Swirl1. The rest of the abstract like Lines, Drip, the other Swirls, and Abstract, I could definitely do without.

Some of the paintings seem unfinished to me, like the one with the airplane.

Anyway, thanks for showing us your work! Keep at it, and maybe put some more effort into making human paintings, because in my opinion that’s your best work.

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This is true, but that strict definition seems to have fallen out of favor since the early-to-mid-20th century for a more loose reading of “non-representational art.” (I mean, look at the movement called “Abstract Expressionism” Most of that work is thoroughly non-representational.) I suppose some art professor somewhere might want you to be more precise, but I can’t recall anybody not using the term interchangeably. Not all abstract art need be non-representational, though.

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Wow, these are all much better responses than I was imagining. I’d never expected anyone to be interested in buying any of my work. All my paintings are unframed and unfinished on the sides. I also don’t have any hardware on any paintings- I just stick some push pins in the wall and hang the stretcher bars on those. But for those of you that are truly interested, I will look into shipping and such and send you private messages.

  1. I usually like my paintings when I’m finished with them, even if they aren’t exactly how I imagined. I usually don’t start out with completely concrete ideas of what I want anyway. I get an idea like I want to paint a fish in a fish bowl, then I get started on the painting, and stop when I’m generally happy.

  2. I’d never actually heard of L.S. Lowry before, but after looking at the links from the Wikipedia page I do like his work. Many of my family members have been either semi-serious amateur or professional artists, but no, I’m not related to L.S. Lowry. I took my name from another Sam Lowry.

I think a drawing class sounds like a good idea. I think I know what negative space is, but I know I don’t know exactly how to use it.
Thanks again for everyone’s advice!

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Yeah, that’s why I said “technically”.

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Just clarifying for our readers out there…