luke by Deborah Furr

To be flippant, one of the things wrong with it is that I've just put my neck out trying to see it..... you need to re-post in portrait layout (please!). However, I can't actually find anything specifically wrong with it - there's a lot that's good about it: the features are mobile, the teeth aren't that startlingly brilliant white you sometimes find, the face is symmetrical, the clothing is well sketched-in without fuss, the background is sketchy, but I presume you wanted it that way: and it does work... I think all you need to do is - more like this. Keep practicing. The one thing that did strike me was the colour of the lips - the upper lip is nearly always going to be darker than the lower, and here you've reversed that. This may not be wrong - haven't seen the boy, of course - but it might impede your efforts to get a likeness - it MAY be that you just need a touch of dark in the upper lip and a very thin line of stronger dark beneath it, but I should be loath to spoil your painting by fiddling. So maybe it's a thought for the future. But it's good - you've produced a lively and characterful painting, in clear and bright colour - he looks human, not as though he's made out of moulded plastic, which is often a problem with portraits of children! I think you can be proud of it.