Editor: Patrick McEvoy
Artist: Irene Bressel
Reject reason: Unrefined or Lack of Detail
In this digital painting, Irene Bressel has come up with a dynamic scene, and spiced it up with some unconventional rendering, less detailed and line-oriented than her usual style. This sort of experimentation is always wonderful to see, and makes this piece stand out from the crowd in many ways. Unfortunately, while it has some very definite strong points, there are also some areas that could be addressed to make a stronger piece.
This should also be a good opportunity to address the Epilogue rejection reason “unrefined or lack of detail”, which was given to “Hercules” when it was submitted. This picture doesn’t have a lot of detail, and that’s perfectly fine here – taken as a whole, the lack of fussy details not only works well, but is one of the main strengths of the piece. The problem is that “Hercules” looks like a strong start that could be further refined (there’s the key word!) by more attention to overall consistency.
I’ll start by going over some of the things that were most successful. Above all, we begin with a very good composition. The birds form a strong diagonal, which is repeated in the bow, and this diagonal is crossed by one in the other direction, starting with the middle bird’s front wing, picked up by the arrow, and continued into the figure and the tree. This dynamic “x” shape helps the sense of motion being conveyed very well. Then, most importantly, the front bird’s large dark wing, the tree, and the bow, all frame the central character. The only minor compositional quibble I have is that the color of the blood in the water is stronger than the peach color of Hercules, thus drawing attention away from the center of interest.
Also working well are the three birds. They evidence very strong drawing skills, but the fact that they are mostly rendered with simple shapes and strokes, with only a few well-rendered details here and there, makes them interesting and artistic. All three birds are most successful in this respect.
