Leni Wiener

Currently, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC is exhibiting some of the photographic works of a relatively unknown photographer, Leon Levinstein.  Levinstein, born in 1910 in West Virginia, came to NYC and photographed people on the streets of NY, mostly through the 1950’s and 60’s.  His work represents everything I am drawn to in my own art.

A master of composition, his work beautifully represents the impact of the proper use of value.  In all art, value is key, but in black and white photography, it is the main event.  But it is his depiction of people, done in a way that pulls the viewer in closer to really examine the action, tells wonderful stories with a single image.

This photo of handball players on the lower east side captures so much movement.  The composition draws the eye past the foreground into the background and the smaller figure.  Photographers know that when photographing dancers, it is imperative to capture the height of the movement, the highest point of a dance move before the dancer begins to descend.  We can experience that height of movement in this photo, as well.  In fact, the figure in the foreground is at such a high peak of movement that his head moves out of the frame.

In “street scene, woman in dark short sleeved dress” we see again his uncanny ability to create so much depth and dimension in his images.  The shapes of the two bodies, the contrasts of values in the woman in the foreground, and the negative space between the figures all make this a dynamic piece.  But it is the thin white line that moves up at an angle and then diagonally across the frame to meet the white curb that adds so much beautiful movement and energy to this photo.

When it comes to story telling, this image of a man looking at a woman on the street does it masterfully.  This single image tells a story that is so identifiable, has so much nuance that it compels the viewer to be drawn in.  We can feel the twisting of his body, and the woman’s stance is a story in itself.

I absolutely adore this image of a woman on a park bench.  The weight of her body, the forward movement, and the way the textured path leads the eye to her are spectacular.  The contrast of the dark behind her, the crumbled white paper to her side, and that break in the line of the benches are so beautiful it is hard to believe the composition of the photo could have been random–and serves to remind us that “art” can come from the most ordinary places.

This photo of an elderly man in a stained white tee shirt is so filled with emotion.  The angle of the body, the contrast of black and white, the triangle created in the space of the ground, and the unexpected viewpoint, all make this a very powerful image.  Like the photo of the woman on the park bench, Levinstein has positioned himself so that there is a strong dark at one side of the central figure and a strong contrasting light area on the other.  Despite the fact that this man is sitting still, the diagonal line of his body and the light area of the floor create energy and immediacy.

Hipsters, Hustlers, and Handball Players: Leon Levinstein’s New York Photographs, 1950-1980 will be at the Met in NYC until October 17.  If you can’t see it in person, see more of his powerful images at the Met’s website:

http://www.metmuseum.org/special/se_event.asp?OccurrenceId={C9CE6916-DFEF-4B86-BDB0-EE290C523227}

(if the link does not work, copy and past it)

Choosing fabric for an art quilt differs from choosing fabric for a traditional quilt.  In traditional quilts, attention must be paid to print scale, if too many prints are the same scale the quilt will lose impact.  This is not true of an art quilt, where overall surface design is more important than the creation of a design and secondary design. As in traditional quilts, however, where each fabric sits will have a major impact on the look of the final quilt. You want lighter values to sit next to darker values, and control of the placement of complimentary colors, so the eye is drawn around the surface of the quilt and there is contrast and visual excitement. Each fabric should support those around it so the finished quilt has that wow factor.

If you are working with a photo and think that the values in the photo are optimum, then you have a guide to the value placements in your art quilt.  If you feel the photo lacks sufficient contrast, you need to either make adjustments to the photo or think about your value changes when choosing fabrics.

In “Yellow Hat” the colors of the original photo were changed to have greater impact in the final quilt.  By using strong, saturated blue for the water in the pool, and a lighter value for the ground underneath the woman in the hat, the stage is set and a pleasing composition established.  By dressing her and the chair on which she sits in purple, the complimentary color of yellow, the visual excitement is in their fight for attention, drawing the eye directly to the part of the composition I felt was most important.  Because purple and blue do not fight with each other for attention, the purple works with the water color and the only fight for attention is with the yellow of the hat.  It is no accident that the band on the hat is orange–the compliment to blue.

The first thing to think about is which color will set the tone and mood of your art quilt.  This will help you determine what other colors will serve to create visual interest and draw the eye of the viewer.

This piece, “The Boy in the Banyan Tree” has been discussed in this blog before, but it illustrates the point about using just a hint of complimentary color in order to establish where I want the viewer to look.  The mood is set using gray blues, and the grandfather blends into the color tones in his blue/gray.  But the boy (who in reality was wearing a blue shirt and blue jeans in the original photo) now wears orange (the compliment to blue) which allows him to jump out as the most important part of the composition.

The complimentary color for pizzazz used in smaller amounts focuses in on the boy for maximum impact. Using equal amounts of complimentary colors would create visual chaos rather than sparkle. Evaluate the photo to determine what your focal point is, what the story is that you wish to tell, and let the complimentary color do that job for you. In art quilts, complimentary colors are often used in a single area, as a way of establishing a focal point in the composition, or as a way of pulling the eye through the composition.

In “The Void” the same principles apply, even though the colors used are not complimentary.  Here, I used only black and white fabrics for most of the quilt; the amount of black vs the amount of white in each fabric design setting the value of each; and used just a touch of orange in the bag that sits next to the woman.  There is no compliment to black and white; using the orange as the only color in the composition naturally draws attention.  Although in this case the bag is not the focal point, it serves two purposes:  the first is to draw the eye up to the color and then the woman sitting next to it; and the second is to assist is emphasizing the asymmetrical composition.

In “Lawn Chairs” (one of the patterns in my book, “Photo-inspired Art Quilts”) the house in the original photo was a taupe/gray color (not many people choose to paint their houses bright pink).  But as the green set the tone for the summer setting, using the pink creates a contrast that makes the entire composition more exciting and more interesting.  In this particular composition, the green and pink are in almost equal amounts, the resulting visual chaos adding to the mood of the quilt.

Many of the very same fabrics are used in “Tulips in a Green Vase” (another pattern from my book) but set against the lighter neutral background they appear slightly different.  The vase is made of the same fabrics used in the chairs; the same pink is used as the lighter value of the tulips.  Again, playing the red against the complimentary green makes the tulips and their leaves the most important element in the composition.  Isn’t nature smart?!?

Placement of fabrics in art quilts cannot usually be effectively determined before you begin work. As work progresses, decisions must be made about each fabric–how it works in this particular area and what it means to the surface as a whole. For this reason, it is easiest to work on art quilts from stash fabrics; auditioning candidates and comparing them before making final decisions. I have often gone to a fabric store knowing that I need something specific for an art quilt that is either in my mind or on my design wall, but have never been able to purchase all the fabrics I need at once before I begin. Creating an art quilt is much more of an evolving process, each decision laying the groundwork for those that follow.

Many art quilters work from their head–and I am in awe of that ability.  For me, it is not enough to see it in my head, I need more help in getting it to fabric.

This is the reason I work from a photo.  Using a photo as a guide, all the information I need is already there for me.  There is no need to reinvent the proportions, the perspective, or the light and shadows.   For me, this saves a lot of time and avoids a lot of frustration, time I can spend focusing on choosing fabric and building the elements.

Often viewers comment on my work that it looks so lifelike, that the body language is so effective that they can feel the life in the figures.  This is no accident, working from the photo gives me the tools.

Here is a photo I used for two of the figures I made for sightlines.

I acutally used the same photo for another set of figures, more on that in a minute.  I loved this elderly couple with their shopping bags and laundry.  One aspect of this photo that (I feel) would have been difficult to create without the photo is the sense of movement.  We can see that she is walking; he is leaning to one side which also gives a sense of movement.  Could I achieve this alone?  Probably.  Is it easier to simply work from the photo?  Absolutely.

Here, the couple as been isolated from the rest of the photo, making it easier to work with.  If you are comfortable with either Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, it is not difficult to isolate an area and remove others.  But it is not crucial.

Here they are translated into fabric.  The choice of fabric is the most important part of this transition–often the colors I choose are similar to the original, often they are not.  Although I do maintain the values in the original photo, I choose color based on what else is going on in the piece.  His blue shirt worked well; her white shirt and cap were not interesting enough, so they were changed.  Highlights and shadows did not have to be invented, simply transferred from photo to fabric.

Remember the other two figures in the original photo?  Here they are isolated from the rest of the photo:

I love the highlights and shadows in both the man’s shirt and pants, but also in the woman walking away.  Using the photo these are easily translated by choosing fabrics by value, despite the color:

Here the two figures are completed and ready to add to the larger work.  You can see the values used relate to the light and shadow areas, and convey that information to the viewer.  Body language is also translated by the subtle positioning that was guided by the photo.

Making changes to the photo or combining elements from different photos can completely change the context, and therefore the final piece.  These two photos were taken at different times, in different places:

This sun-worshipper…

And this man looking at his phone in the park.

Combined, they tell a completely different story.  Here they are a couple sitting in silence, back to back.  Removing his phone, he now is simply looking into his empty hands–changing the tone of the photo.  I often combine elements from different photos in order to tell the story I want to tell.  Two crucial things to keep in mind are:

1. The scale of the different elements must be the same (this can be changed in photoshop)
2. The light source must be the same (often achieved by flipping one element so that the light source is on the same side as the other).  If the light sources cannot be reconciled, then light and shadow have to be “figured out” or a different element must be chosen instead.

Keeping a large, well-organized file of photos, I always have the right thing to add to a work in progress.

This figure that has been the topic of the last several blog posts has really been making me crazy.  Why is one simple figure so difficult, and giving me such a hard time?  The answer, when I took the time to be honest with myself, is that I was seeing what I wanted to see–not what was really there.

As you know if you have been following my frustration in the past few posts is that I decided all was well with this figure except for the highlight areas of his jacket.  I kept changing those, having decided there was too much contrast between the highlights and shadows.  Well, that was a problem, but it wasn’t the whole problem–or the real problem.

I took a break from working on this, primarily because in the last few days my life has gotten in the way of my work.  When I did go back to work on him, I started with another highlight fabric in the jacket, but he still didn’t look right.  I had assumed that all else was fine, but that assumption is where I made my mistake.

Sometimes when working on something closely, we tend not to see it for what it really is.  I find that this is the hardest part of evaluating and making changes.  I become immune to the element as a whole, and tend to get too focused on one little piece of that element.  Such was the case here.

When really looking at him I made a few decisions:

1.  All my fussing about the highlights in the jacket was pointless.  I had entered into this project hoping to simplify and create “broad strokes” that had subtlety and nuance rather than detail.  The highlights didn’t look right because they were detailed.  With no other real details in the rest of the figure, that jumped out as the most important thing to look at, and consequently the whole figure didn’t look right.  So my decision here was just to eliminate the highlights and go for nuance.  This certainly helped.

2.  Looking at the rest of the figure (the parts I was so sure were fine) I saw that the two fabrics used for the face were too close in value to make much of a statement.  In changing these values so that there was greater contrast, I was able to show highlight and shadow on his face with only three small pieces. This also served another, more important, function.  With greater contrast in the face it is now much clearer that he is leaning on his hand, and the separation of the hand and face is more obvious.  Because the face is the most important part of this figure, the greatest contrast here draws attention to it, rather than the jacket.  I also trimmed the shape of that hand slightly, so that it has a cleaner and more elegant line.  This small change is probably the biggest problem I had been experiencing, but I never even noticed it.

3.  The real changes were the most subtle, and are difficult to show even with photos.  These were the slight changes in positioning of some of the pieces–the head was brought lower and cocked slightly more to one side; the shoulder on the right was cut back just enough to look like he was leaning over; and the angle of the legs was brought over to one side.  These were not done by eye, they were the subtle changes indicated when the tracing template was layered over the work in progress.  These seemingly insignificant adjustments were a bigger problem than the highlights in the jacket.

Now he really does work.  I have achieved what I had set out to accomplish–that with very few pieces,  the body language comes through.  Now to move on to another figure in this (hopefully) large and complex art quilt.

What I want you to take away from this post is not just the rantings of a frustrated artist, but an understanding that often the biggest problem is not the one we think it is.  It is so important to step back and try to see a work in progress for what it really is, not what it is in your head.  Until I addressed the parts of this figure that I thought were fine, I was not able to find the problem; a little detective work and trusting my eye (not my brain) was the answer.

Here are my words of wisdom.  The most important two things to remember when making art quilts are:

Value, value, value

Use your eye, not your brain

Having reworked the figure for the third time, and pretty sure I had it, I looked again and discovered something interesting.  I was more on track the first time than in the two re-dos.  This is because I used my brain not my eye, a common mistake and one that always trips me up.

Here is the original photo and the three attempts at capturing it in fabric:

After completing the first figure, I felt there was not enough contrast between the two values in his jacket, which meant that the shadow areas were not clearly defined.  So I chose a fabric that looked lighter than the shadow fabric and used it without first comparing it to the value I wished to represent.  I could have (and should have) compared this fabric to the orignial photo with a ruby beholder (or red acetate) so be sure they were the same value.  But I trusted my brain because I really love this fabric.  I was wrong.

Having completed the figure the second time, and feeling it didn’t look right, I simply redefined the shapes of the lighter fabric, without really asking myself why it didn’t look right.  That didn’t help.  Why?  Because there is too much contrast–the jacket fabric is much too light and should not so far in value from the shadow fabric.

Too often we rely on our brains without really looking at the photo, as in this case, in assuming the jacket color would be much lighter than the shadow color .  This is the biggest advantage to working from a photo–all the information you need is right there for you.  Trust it, and it always works.  Second guess it, and usually it doesn’t look right.

I didn’t listen to my own advice–”trust your eye, not your brain.“  Tripped me up again.

So back to the studio, knowing NOW what the real problem is and able to fix it.  See what a wonderful tool a digital camera and a computer screen can be in evaluating and comparing your progress?

Lying in bed at 2 AM (I get my most creative solutions in the middle of the night when my mind is clear of all the other stuff during the day) I decided not to try the swirly fabric positioned horizontally, but to go in a different direction.  The speckled fabric on the side of the face, which I think is very interesting, takes too much attention away from that gorgeous shape that I wanted to be center stage in the piece.  This is the graceful curving line that goes from behind the eye down the face and into the lips.  Doing it again in that fabric, however it is oriented, would not be as important as the speckled fabric around it, and therefore would be the wrong choice.  Solution?  Something the same value (because the value worked perfectly) but in that red violet I had rejected.  By using ONLY ONE of the red violet fabrics, it would take center stage and draw attention to the shape that I thought was the most important in the face.

Here is where I was yesterday.  I like where it is going, but that fabric behind the eye and down the face isn’t standing out as much as I would like.  The value, however, works just fine–darker than the face but lighter than the eye.  So it has to remain the same.

Of the red violet fabrics I tried in the beginning, this was the one that was the same value, so this is the one I tried first.  It is very strong and stops in the middle of the face, so it must be extended into the lips.

Now that strong colored line runs down farther into the face, ending almost at the bottom–so the shadow under the chin is next….

I am liking where this is going.  The strong color creates a line that runs from one side at the top in a curving interesting shape down to the bottom of the composition.  This takes away the attention from the speckled fabric of the face, and makes the whole face appear more graphic and less representational.

Adding the hair will help define the shape of the face and will help me decide if that highlight on the side of her face needs to be changed.  In the original photo, the value of the hair is the same as the value of the eyes, but I did not want to use the same fabric.  I did not want the two areas to blend together as if they were the same thing in different parts of the face.  This fabric, with the cross-hatch design on it is the same value, is also a blue with a purple under-color, and the perceived texture of the surface is reminiscent of hair.

As soon as the hair and the shadow under her ear and around her chin goes it, the face begins to take shape–literally.  The dark value next to the white on the highlighted side of the face defines the shape of her face.

Here I have added just a touch of a golden yellow at the side of her face in hopes of lightening that side and providing color compliment to the purple/blues.  I am not sure it works.  When I get to this stage, I often find that it helps to walk away for a while and then come back.  There is a saying about getting dressed up that you should look in the mirror and take off the first thing you notice.  The same is true here.  Walking away for a while and looking at it fresh, I need to take it all in with one glance.  If something is wrong, it will jump right out at me.   That is how I will know it needs to be changed.

After evaluating the changes that needed to be made on the current piece, I went back to my stash to pull the fabrics I was going to try.

Here you can see the seven fabrics I have chosen–white is number one and the dark blue with the dots is number seven.  There is a more gradual change from each value to the next, with no real big leaps between any two.  The first three fabrics have remained the same from my failed attempt; number four is the back of a tie dye blue that was very dark, but just the right value on the back.  Number five is a wild card, I love the fabric (the purple with the lighter blue specks in it) but cannot be sure if it is too “out there” yet.  The number six fabric, the one with the swirls on it is perfect for that section around the right eye where I wanted a zinger with a lot of fluid movement.  The final one is a dark that still has some interest.

So here she is reworked.  This is coming along much better than before.  It still needs tweaking, but I feel that I am more on the right track.  What has changed:

The colors are on a single path from light to dark.  Even though there is some movement between blues and blue purples, there is no more of that red violet that was throwing everything else off.  I still love those fabrics together, so I will use them in another piece.  It is always important to remember that you can’t get every idea into every single piece.

The values are more contiguous.  Here the fabrics flow more gradually from light into dark, with no big leaps from one to the next, and allowing the lighter side to be less contrasty (but still enough) from the darker side.

The eyes show now.  In the last incarnation, the eyes were lost, but now they are much more important to the overall composition, adding the drama that the first attempt lacked.

Finally, that speckly fabric that I wasn’t sure was going to work–I think that maybe it does work.  It has a lot of movement, and it becomes even more of a zinger than the number six fabric (which was intended to be the zinger) but I think it makes the whole piece kind of interesting.  Not a “texture” that one would normally associate with skin (it looks like really bad acne) but I think it makes this much more of an artistic interpretation than a realistic portrait.  So, at least for now, it stays.   But nothing is set in stone until everything is in place and I can evaluate it all.  Then I can confidently glue the pieces in place and move forward.

Where do I go from here?  First of all, that swirly fabric (#6) around the eye and down the side of the nose to the lips doesn’t look right to me.  I had thought that using those swirly lines in a vertical position would draw the eye up and down the composition.  But now that I am looking at it, I think I will try re-cutting that piece so that the lines run horizontally and then compare it both ways.  This is when it is great to have a digital camera, so that I can make the change and then look at them side by side to see which I like best.  Even when you look at this image on the screen now, step back from the computer or squint your eyes and the image appears as it would across the room in a gallery space.  If you don’t have a digital camera (get one, they aren’t expensive anymore) you can use the back end (the reducing side) of binoculars to get an idea of what the piece looks like if you step way back.

Then I want to relook at the right side of the face, where the highlights are not quite working for me yet.  The same for the bottom under the chin.  Both of these may just be waiting for the hairline and the shape of the chin to be determined, so all of that will be evaluated at the same time.  Baby steps, but I am glad I did not just abandon it and start something else.  Slow and steady wins the race, remember?

I have always believed that it is easier to learn from seeing what goes wrong than seeing what goes right.  Sometimes it is difficult to see a finished piece and hear discussion about why this color, why this fabric.  It is more instructive to see a piece that isn’t working and discuss why.  For that reason I am airing my “dirty laundry” so to speak, and showing you my disaster du jour.  Hopefully, if and when it is fixed, you will understand what I changed and why.  So here goes, it is like standing before you in my underwear!

Here it is.  I was so excited to get started on this piece, it looked so awesome in my head.  There is the seed of something decent in here, but it isn’t working.  So let’s discuss why.

1.  Color:

In my head this piece was blue tones on one side and purples on the other.  In reality the purple side goes in too many directions, some are red/violets and some are grape purples.  Too many different places to look, no real harmony.

2.  Value:

If you have ever read my blog before, or my book, you know that value is a biggie for me.  Makes all the difference in the world.   Where do the values here go wrong?  First, on the blue side, the dark area of the eye is much darker than the blues around it, making too large a leap in value.  This needs to be fixed.  On the purple side, the values are too close to each other, there isn’t enough of a leap.  Plus the purple side is so much darker than the other side that it looks unbalanced.

Here is the pattern from which I am working.  You can see that although one side is darker than the other, the difference is not as extreme as it looks in the fabric.  The eyes are the darkest part of the face, making them very dramatic.  In fabric, they almost blend in and disappear.

The solution:

1.  first, although I will keep some of the fabrics, I need to revisit the fabric selection to make sure that they blend from one into another, probably staying more blue into blue purple and losing the red/violets.

2.  secondly, I need to lay the fabrics out and look at them again through the red viewer to be sure that they not only move from light to dark,  but that they do it in a way that looks more even–that is to say that each incremental step is about the same change in value from the one before and the one after.  This will give the piece a more coherent and harmonious look.

Sometimes it helps to reprint the pattern or photo in black and white.  This prevents the brain from being too distracted by the colors and allows me to focus on the values from light to dark.

3.  finally, I want to make that piece that runs a ragged line from the eye to the lips a fabric that will stand out more, as this is the most interesting shape in the piece.  It will also (probably) be the inspiration for the stitching when I get to the quilting part.

So there you have it.  What went wrong and what I plan to do to fix it.  So many times artists get started down a path and when the emerging piece doesn’t look right, it is abandoned.  But when you do that you lose out on two scores–the piece is never realized and you never learn how to evaluate and analyze in order to make it right.  Learning to fix the pieces that go wrong is crucial in being able to move forward and evaluate your work with a critical eye.

hello out there in the blog-esphere–me again.  It has been a bad month for me, having somehow sprained my right hand and damaging the two tendons on either side of my middle finger, making it difficult to work and to type.  But I am improving, and pushing myself to get things done.

In this blog entry I wanted to focus on using unexpected fabrics.  When working on photo-inspired art quilts-or any realistic art quilts–there is a tendency to look for fabrics that have the same “agenda” as the area you want to fill.  For example, often artists will look for a fabric with feather patterns when doing feathers.  This is fine, and it works, but (in my opinion) part of the joy and the excitement of working in fabric is the opportunity to use them in completely unexpected ways.

I want to discuss specifically skin and hair when depicting people in art quilts.  People are almost always the center of attention in my art quilts, and I try very hard to use fabrics that give the artwork a layer of complexity that they wouldn’t have had if I had painted or drawn the subject.

Let’s start with skin tones.  These are not easy to find in fabric.  And many people look for solid fabrics so that skin tones will be subtle and look natural.  I move in the opposite direction.  I look for fabrics that have no agenda as skin tones.  Look at this assortment I chose for a series I am currently working on:

you can see in this assortment that there is a dot fabric, a floral, a leaf pattern and a spotted batik.  None of these look like anyone I know…

but here are three children I am working on for a series of seashore “sketches” and if you look closely, you can see the fabrics.  Because the values work, the patterns work.  And the use of heavily patterned and “unexpected” fabrics makes the finished figures more interesting.

Hair offers the same kinds of opportunities.  Here is a favorite fabric of mine for hair (I am running out of it!):

(excuse the out of focus photo–it’s early!)  This commercial fabric looks like a tie dye, in fact, the pattern looks to me like butterflies.  But here it is used as hair in two different people:

In this detail of a recently finished quilt “the boy in the banyan tree” you can see the butterfly shape fussy cut into the top of his hair.  Instant shadow and highlight, instant texture.  One cut piece does it all.

in the boy from the above photo, you can see the same fabric used again.  Here I fussy cut the lighter part of the fabric to coincide wtih the highlight around his ear.  (Also note the lighter fabric in his face is a paisley)

This indonesian batik does not look like a fabric that might be considered a good choice for hair:

(again, out of focus, sorry about that).  You can see a background geometric and spaced designs in shades of white, brown and black.  Here it is in one of those children from the beach scenes:

I love this fabric choice, even though we all know no one has geometric hair, the value works and it makes the figure more interesting, and more whimsical.  Also notice in this photo that the skin tones, due to their value, already suggest the shape and contours of his face even before the details like nose, mouth and eyes are added.

Another figure in the “boy in the banyon tree” quilt is the grandfather we see from behind.  His balding head and remaining hair are shown here:

In this case, the fabric used was a swirly batik with shades of gray, brown and taupe.  I like the movement, which (at least to me) looks like the way hair grows.  It would have taken a long time to cut all the highlights and lowlights in his hair, not something I want to spend time doing.

So I hope the next time you look at skin and hair in your art quilts, you will think outside the box and use something unexpected.

I thank you all for your comments (most came through email and are not on the site).  The opinions were mixed about equally between the photo and the quilt.  I decided that what I didn’t like about the quilt was that it got puffy with the batting inside, so I spent three hours pulling out every single stitch so that I could redo it without batting.  (Yes, I am crazy!).

Having done that this morning (while baking for thanksgiving) I still didn’t like it.  It just didn’t look like me. The jaw and chin didn’t look right.  The answer, as it almost always is–VALUE.  Although there was a difference in value between the fabrics I used, their relation to each other was wrong.  So I started again (I told you I am crazy).

Look at this photo and you will see the problem.  The finished (first) quilt on the right, the photo in the center, and the new piece (in work) on the left.  Even without the eyes, the new one looks more like me than the finished one.

Looking at the finished one, there is a difference in the values of the skin tones and shadows but not enough.  So even though the pieces are the right shape, the chin and jaw don’t show up enough.  The face was redone using six different values, #1 and #2 being fairly close to each other (in fact, #1 is the back of #2) and then a bigger jump in value to #3.  That means that the jaw and chin are more well defined.

On the other hand, the lips were too dark, lightening them looks more natural.  And the hair in the first quilt is too contrasty–my real hair has only subtle highlights.

The point?  Value is often more important than color in creating the image.  Just look at these portraits I did a while back in completely non-naturalistic colors:

So that is my thought on value and their importance in the final product.  I hope to have this finished by tomorrow, and will post the finished quilt for your opinions again.

Have a wonderful thanksgiving.  Thank you for supporting my little blog!