What’s your critique on these paintings?

Skillful work but not my cup of tea at all. Far too bright and garish for my taste and the second one looks like the black velvet paintings you used to see. But everyone’s taste is different.

These scream “traced from photographs”.

@ragingloli

That’s exactly what I thought, especially the first one

Although to be fair, the first painting was meant to be a gift for a child.

I mean, he even painted in the camera flash in the second one. Which means he doesn’t understand where the light comes from.

Don’t people on Reddit generally rave about paintings if they don’t think they could do it themselves, and get excited about paintings that copy photographs?

My impression is:

* they have the technique to copy a photograph using paint
* the second one is about someone liking that girl’s face, and not much else
* the first one is cute and I’m sure is a beloved family picture/gift, but artistically I’m not sure what it would add over the photograph

I agree that they were done “with a heavy hand”.

They look like photographs that have been put through a poster effect on PicMonkey.

They both looks like a photo to me. Nice .

My mom painted a portrait once. Her client provided a picture of his daughter holding a huge array of flowers and she painted if from that. I did’t really care for it. People are hard to paint.

I like them.

A talented artist painted those paintings. Sure they look like photographs. They were likely generated from photographs. Nevertheless they’re very well done.

Well, of course they’re painted from photographs. How else would those images have been captured in the first place? Does anyone realistically believe that a child of that age could hold a pose like that – and facial expression – long enough to capture the image by hand? And the second image, of a highly made-up young woman in the evening, is of a girl who is more interested in getting on with her evening than she is in posing.

Painted from photos. Big deal. What’s the complaint? I couldn’t have colorized B&W photos that well. Kudos to the artist – and to the photographer/s.

@CWOTUS
Of course.