DANCERS 1C

Jeremy

Acrylic on canvas 10"x11". I see it as study at this stage 

The departure point was this photograph from the NY times. I did not copy the photo, just the concept.

   

Hi Bob

Looks good.  The dark blue background makes the colours really sing.  I like the colours and loose brushwork in the dancers dresses.  I think that the placement of the group on the paper offset to the bottom left works well.

Some of the dancer's faces (especially the one in the middle) look less than elegant. 

With your style of impressionistic brush strokes its very difficult to suggest detail in a single blob of paint.  I always think of the initial study version of Constable's 'Haywain' painting (I am not sure if the image below is the right version but it looks like a sketch).  Its difficult to see in the image  but dog in the foreground I remember is done with few simple brush strokes but still looks like a dog.

I am not sure how he did this, maybe he was just lucky, or took great care in making the marks or possibly he just kept trying with different blobs scraping back and starting again until it worked.

Anyway the point I was trying to make was that you could rework the dancers faces to make them suggest femininity in a few simple strokes, without overworking or getting too detailed.  Not an easy task I know but an important especially in this work.

Its interesting that the work has a good sense of movement in the dancers arms, and I guess that this is what the original photo and your interpretation is all about, yet you have interrupted this swaying vertical flow (from the legs up through the dresses to the arms) by accidentally? joining up the shadows from the frills in the dresses into three curved horizontal lines the first of which is the hemlines.

I have mixed feelings about this.  While it interrupts the movement from legs to arms it also creates a strong harmonious set of curves which add to the sense of movement.  I suspect that this is one of those subconscious effects that adds to the work but was done without your explicit knowledge?

However I think it would benefit the painting if you increased the curved vertical movement of the dancer's bodies while still retaining those horizontal lines from the frills and hems.  I think that its just a question of delineating the dancer's dresses a bit more clearly.

The legs.  It looks as though you gave up when you got to the legs as they look very wooden and do not match the bodies.  Its this conflict between alla prima freshness and the need for the work to hang together properly.  You can get away with distortions in landscapes but its much more difficult when painting human figures (Freud and Bacon notwithstanding).

To retain the freshness you either need to rework areas that have not worked out (such as the number and shape of the legs) or think very carefully before you apply each brush stroke.  Myself I rework but using a crude brush and often pure colour which prevents it becoming muddy and overworked.

I hope that his helps.  I recommend that you do another study version.  Do ten if you need to.  In each version you will learn something else about the painting and each will have its own intrinsic value.  Look at the number of sunflower paintings that Van Gogh did!

I think that the design and colours are easily good enough to be worthwhile carring it through to a finished work.  The trick will be to retain the fresheness of course.

Jeremy

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