Not all of these questions will apply in every situation, because “it is art” and “all the rules are meant to be broken”, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” etc. etc. Whether they apply to your painting depends on your goals, your style, and possibly your current skill level, which all together constitute your unique visual “voice.” If a question doesn’t apply to your paintings, then ignore the “should(s)” related to that question in this post.

By the time you are ready to decide if your painting is finished or not, you probably have been looking at it closely for a while, so the first thing to do is to “step back,” both literally and figuratively. There are a variety of common techniques used by artists to help them “see” their painting through the eye of the casual observer, including:

• Step back and squint.
• Take a photo and look at the small image.
• View in a mirror.
• Turn your painting upside down.
• Take a photo and convert it to greyscale.

All of these techniques help you see the painting differently. Just the act of stepping back helps you to take in the painting as one visual unit, versus focusing in on particular details. When you squint, the details disappear from view, and you can only make out the shapes that have a high contrast in value from the shapes nearby. A similar visual shift occurs when viewing your painting at a size that is significantly smaller than the actual painting.

Ask yourself:

• Do I have a strong overall composition?
• Where does my eye go first?
  • Does my eye travel around the painting?
  • Are there any marks or shapes leading my eye off the canvas?
  • Or away from my focal areas?
• Is my quiet space quiet enough to support my focal areas?  But still interesting?

The above questions may create more questions for you in the beginning, such as:

What constitutes a strong overall composition?

The easiest way to evaluate the quality of your composition is to look at an image of your painting in greyscale so you can see the value shapes without the distraction of the various colors. In an “ideal”* value composition:

• Most value shapes should be large, connected shapes.
• In the focal area(s), there should be smaller more interesting value shapes that create a high level of contrast.
• If your goal is a fairly realistic or impressionistic representation of your subject matter, then you will want to have at least 10 values.

Why Does Eye Travel Matter?

Again, I’ll answer with a question: “Have you noticed how some paintings captivate the viewer, while others are more easily passed by? The reasons for the captivation can vary of course, but one of the ways we know our painting might get quickly passed by is if our composition, and/or details within our painting, lead the viewer’s eyes right off the canvas.

So, what types of compositions and details can be problematic?

• Positioning of anything with eyes.
• Placement of the start of and/or end of a “path”.
• High contrast shapes, if used in the wrong places.
• text

If your painting contains anything with eyes, so a person or an animal, the eyes usually grab the viewer’s attention first, and then, the viewer’s eyes tend to look next at thee direction that the eyes in the painting are looking.

Paths, actual paths, or any visual paths created by your value shapes, can easily that lead the eye off the canvas. There are fairly simple ways to prevent this:

• have your path lead to your primary focal area
• the start of your path can be on a canvas edge, but if it has the following characteristics, then it shouldn’t cause an issue:
  • soft and/or disappearing edges
  • less value contrast
  • less interesting brushstrokes
  • less saturated and/or vibrant colors

Quiet Spaces

So, what is a quiet space, and why is it important? A quiet space, also referred to as a “place for the eye to rest,” serves an important supporting role to your main characters, i.e. your primary focal areas.

Without the quiet area, the focal areas would not stand out as much, and the whole painting might be too chaotic. A quiet space doesn’t have to be blank. Instead, it just needs to have one or more attributes treated with less intensity than the rest of the painting. These attributes include:

• saturation
• texture, visual or actual
• range of colors
• range of values

What’s Next?

If you are not sure what to do next after answering “no” to one or more of the “big” critique questions, there are a few more you might want to ask yourself, or you might want to resolve any issues you identified first. Other questions you might want to ask yourself are most about personal aesthetic preferences, and may include:

• Do I like the color palette?
• Do I like the brushwork?
• Are there enough differences in my “X”?

As you progress, you may start to ask yourself even more specific questions, primarily around the “differences”/variety question above, as this usually happens as you are refining and/or evolving your artistic voice. These may include lots of “what if” questions around the X factor, which could be color, contrast, shapes, edges, lifework, etc.

Resolving Issues

If you have identified any issues during your critique of your painting, you may be asking how to resolve them…check back here later for a blog post regarding different approaches and covering some different techniques for testing out changes.