Student Critiques
Elena Sokolova, Misty waterfall
Very fluid and colourful work Elena! Great to see. You’ve really captured the tumultuous fall of the water. Especially powerful are the vibrant contrast of cools and warms and the atmospheric effect created by the lost edges at the base of each rock. Beautiful!
My only suggestion would be to spend a little more time to soften off the brushwork in the distant cliff of the waterfall, removing most traces of texture there and adding more soft mistiness in order to give it more depth. Good job!
Sharon Repple, Waterfall
Great work Sharon! Scott will be chuffed that you put him in there. I’ll send him a copy. That red/orange is pretty punchy! The colour scheme was worth a try but to my eye it’s battling against the foreground making an un- earthly looking scene. What do you think? If you like it, great. If not, try a different scheme.
The waterfall has been really beautifully painted. I’d just challenge you to make it recede further up by lightening the values a little and pushing the colours all toward red a tad. Other than that, all good!
Fay Thomson, Mystic Falls
Beautiful work, Fay. Really nice transitions from dark to light in the falling water with strong impasto highlights and thin, alluring darks. Great!
Toska Courbron, Waterfall
A captivating painting, Toska! Beautiful work making all those interesting colour variations. I guess you used masking fluid to preserve the white of the water itself? That’s worked well to allow you to paint the darks in there, but it’s left hard edges everywhere which is more indicative of a frozen waterfall rather than the soft edged look of water in motion.
If you were to paint this again (because you only get one shot with watercolours!) I’d suggest that you try painting it with masking, all into moist paper to achieve softer edges, which can always be sharpened up in places with subsequent washes. You’ve already achieved that a little at the base of the waterfall. I’d also expect to see darker water and reflections in the pool. Great work!
Barbara Magor, Waterfall
Hi Barbara, good effort here using a simplified palette to create a a complementary colour scheme. The strong orange and blue makes for a dynamic painting.
Two things I’d like to see you try are to make softer edges at the base of the rocks to give the impression of the water spray in the air, and also to lighten the rocks a little as they recede into the painting to help give this some atmosphere—a sense of misty depth filled with light. Just changing those two things will take this painting to the next level. Because you’re using acrylics, use a water sprayer to keep the painting and palette wet as you try to make soft edges. Keep at it!
Denis King, Waterfall
Really nice work, Denis. All good except for two small things—the background waterfall is too light against its cliff and the trees on the right are nearly clones and could be a bit less regular on the edge of the foliage—a pattern has formed there presently.
The colour of the sky is too grey for the vibrant yellow of the cliff. If anything the sky would be higher chroma in this situation. That’s why it currently looks a bit like a yellow cliff instead of a light-filled space.
Frank Brooks, Falls
Really nice design, Frank. A good variety of shapes and sizes. The physics falls apart a bit at the top where the river seems to be all on a single slanted plane toward us.
Reference photo
Lovely painterly work Barbara. I like that you’ve kept your brushwork bold and focused on the big shapes, but contrasted that with some nice fine detail in the lower trees. Your composition is nicely done, excluding everything that’s surplus to requirements.
I would have liked to see a stronger light and atmospheric effect in the sunlit area beyond the top of the falls. All you need to do to achieve that is make all the darks a little lighter and add a little of the colour of the light to every colour in that area. The easiest way to achieve that is to apply a light glaze over that area, maybe two. It can look a little chalky using glaze with white in it so I usually try to achieve the same effect by adjusting each colour as I go. Tricky, but well worth a try.
Notice in the resource photo that the mist rising from the bottom of the falls lightly obscures and simplifies the background behind the foreground trees. It’s a great method to create depth and enhance foreground objects. Again, you can achieve that with glazing or pre-planning.