Monday, October 19, 2009

Red light- sold


Oil on canvas, 6" x 8"
This is kind of an odd composition, split almost down the middle by a beam, but I felt that the brightness of the windows across the back, plus the light on the wall on the far left, gave it a strong enough horizontal to compensate, and to keep your eye moving around. Maybe it's too busy, though. I'd welcome any opinion you might have.

5 comments:

Gilhootie said...

The post in the middle seems to stop the eye for a moment, but then it goes off to the left, then back to the right to the barkeep, then around again. I like it. Somehow it seems right. Keep up the good work.

StoryPainter said...

The post in the middle is thick and difused enough to not bother the composition - it is complimented by the vertical position of the waitress and opposed by the soft red light. It's not too busy and has a warm feel to it, despite the obstacles you encountered....keep it up - don

Kathy Weber said...

Great critiques. Thanks, I really appreciate it.

mike rooney studios said...

i read an article online where they hooked a machine to peoples head and could tell where they were looking when they were shown a picture of something. seems alot of what we learned you HAD to do in compositions was wrong. the people didnt follow around a certain way from this to that. they looked in order of prominence from the greatest value change, sharpest lines, and most saturated color. it didnt even matter if a figure was looking off the page. these people's eye didnt go off the page but instead went to the next sharpest line, value change and brightest color. this article has changed the way i think about "flow". my take on this is that most of these composition books were written in the early nineteen hundreds (or earlier) before "moving pictures",TV and videos and that we've learned to look at things in a little bit different way? jumping from most interesting to next most interesting instead of linearly. just my guess. it has liberated me tho' i'll say!

Anonymous said...

i searched for paintings of "waiters" and this came up in google images. looking at it led me to your blog. i LOVE this painting, and i am a new fan of your work! too bad i'm poor college student! but thanks for putting your work on the internet.