*Smiling at Rick's comment about "magic"* Thanks, Rick.

Well, it looks like the empties have it! I am beginning to agree with what people are saying. Thanks for the input, Folks. Thoughts on the rest of the collage are also welcome :-)

Here's how it's looking now........
The different look of the colors is due to lighting. What has changed is the foliage in the middle ground (not finished yet) and the chain-mail sleeve and collar. All of this is done with hole-punch dots. The chain-mail is metallic in the highlight areas. The dots in that area are punched from yogurt lids.

http://i1138.photobucket.com/albums/...e3db550a39.jpg


http://i1138.photobucket.com/albums/...f7701e4057.jpg

Yes, fill the foreground with shiny things because the background is dull. What are you going to do with the hand? It's the weakest part. Bare. Uninteresting. Waste of space. Crush some pearls or shave some gold.

:)

Miya

I've been thinking about this. The reason I like the empty hand is because the viewer doesn't know if the girl has just relinquished something or is asking for something. An empty hand works both ways.

Or perhaps she is beckoning.

This was an aha painting for me Sharon, because I didn't see the photo before I looked at the painting (as it now stands). I realized how closely the creative process is in art and words. I should have known this, but it was brought home so strongly. What you first observe bears little relationship to the final product; it is distilled until only the essence remains.

Thank you. Much enjoyed.

Thank you, Janice :-) I agree. The arts are also similar in that they are all about relationships and contrast. That makes them a cousin of cooking too!

Miya, any part of this canvas that is only bare paint is not finished yet, actually, not even begun yet, aside from very sketchy layout.This means the area behind her hand, her cloak, skirt and armor (the black areas) her hair, and especially the palm of her hand. None of these are done.

http://i1138.photobucket.com/albums/...st/roughly.jpg

The reason I am posting unfinished work is to see if this will work better for this forum. It seems clear to me that the art forums can not function the same way the poetry forums do.

Visual art is different than poetry in that, because a poem is text, it can continue to be work-shopped even when it is very very close to its final form. This is not true of visual art. Major changes in a painting can ruin it at that stage. How do you make use of a critique of a nearly finished sculpture?

This has always seemed problematic to me as far as this forum goes. So far it has been mainly finished work getting posted. You can critique finished work but you can't workshop it, it accomplishes nothing. It's like pointing out a run in your friend's stocking after you get to the restaurant when it should have been said at the house. If we could get at it while it's in progress we could have lots of fun, especially in this computer age where we can mess with the digital copy before touching the real one.

But...

My instinct tells me that visual artists don't want anyone to see a work until it's done. Hmmmm a bit of a dilemma huh? Soooooo....this is my experiment. I would say this collage is about 50% finished. In the end every bit of canvas will be covered with "stuff". Sadly, pearls and gold won't be happening.

Sharon, I'm not nuts about the empty hand, or the look on her face.

Hand: empty is a very easy way out. Were you to have a fraction of something, to the viewer's left of her hand, right on that margin, at hand level or slightly above, we wd be wondering: what is it? is it about to fall into her hand, or did it just blow away? Were it below the hand then we are left with nothing to ponder.

Face: a touch of surprise might be more interesting. What happened that was unexpected? Is this thing about to fall into her hand? did it slip away unexpectedly? Let the viewer reach her/his own conclusions, perhaps.

good luck with this, nice to see how work's progressing.

sic transit
 

I thought of some kind of momento mori in her hand. Her expression seems to grow more sombre as the collage progresses.

Steve

Hey Sharon,

"And I will show something different from either
your shadow at morning striding behind you
or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust."

--from The Waste Land, T. S. Eliot

I could see you doing something here that touches upon mortality, like Eliot's "handful of dust," or, really, anything that juxtaposes her youth and air of innocence. A wasp could work.

I hope that helps stimulate your creative process.

Best regards,

Wes

PS. Can I post my horse now? (<--You probably have no recollection of my reference. ;-) )

I would say the black dress/dark colours of the figure and the dull green of the background is making the hand jump out too much into the foreground, in the version where the colours are lighter the hand looks more natural.
cheers
Ross

For some reason, this reminds me of Joan of Arc saying, "Come. Join me. Let's fight in the name of God." It's the metallic material, I think, resembling that of a body armor. I can't wait to see the finished product.

Raul