Critique #6: Leyla F.

Sara Bloem, Teaching Assistant

So, I am loving the mood in your drawing.  I see that you’ve chosen to keep the value range very limited, meaning that I’m not seeing a lot of lightest lights, I’m also not seeing a lot of darkest darks, except for in the pupils of your eyes and right under your chin. So the drawing is existing mostly in this mid range of grey tones. It’s lending your piece a sort of dream-like, hazy atmosphere. For me, personally, I am really digging it.

The one thing that I wanted to say was that in the face, all of the edges are developed to more or less the same level of specificity. So, your eyes are developed to the same level as say, the edge of your face on our right against the background. I think for example, with the edge of your face, as you’re coming down to the forehead down from your cheek, around to your chin, and then back to your ear on the left, there’s definitely space to make some of those edges softer and some of those edges really crisp against the background.

Going back to that background, I don’t mind that it’s kind of non-specific compared to the face, but the fact that it’s so uniform compared to all of this delicious detail in your face on the left, is kind of lending an unbalanced aspect to me, to this piece. Because, there is so much going on on the left, and not so much going on on the right.  So I either want to see more of a suggestion of depth in that background, or I feel like I want to see the face moved over a few inches to the right.

Overall, I think this piece is really an achievement, I think the face is modeled very confidently, it’s very believable, there’s a lot of beautiful, smooth movement across from your eye to the bridge of your nose and then back down.  It’s very arresting with all the eye contact that you’re making with us, the viewer. I kind of can’t stop looking at this drawing, so I think that should really be commended, and overall, I just want to see a little bit more choice with those edges.  But, it’s a very strong drawing overall.