Hey, Gail, Thanks for submitting this assignment. You have now moved into a very different phase of fine art painting techniques. Each critique will be based only on technical merit. And there may be times you may not totally agree but I assure you my main goal is to push you to the limits of creating high quality professional work. Now the composition and main elements are painted well but the over all tonal elements are fairly flat and dull. This painting was designed to be very clean, crisp bright with the wow factor built. So starting with the sky the pink horizon is good but the dark area looks kind of muddy. It should be a little cooler with a touch more purple in the mix. I would use ult. blue, bt. siena and purple. Now the very distant mountain on the lower right is too warm/brownish. It should be cooler and more on the purple gray tones. The next big gray mountain to its left is too gray. it has no life. So create a more purplish gray tone for it as well. The value is ok just change the tone. Now the large formations in the middle and foreground are fairly well painted and the shadowed side of them are good. But the highlights dont pop. You may not be used to this but these final high lights need to be applied very thick, clean and even with some pure cad. orange, cad. reds cad. yellows. Just play around with some very bright tones and even use a palette knife to apply the final highlights. Your snow is in pretty good shape but the cast shadows from the rock formations are not rich enough. They need to be about two values deeper in order to help create the drama this painting requires. The little snow drift just to the left of the stream needs to be deeper in tone both the cast shadow and the dirt banks showing thru. The water is fine but the white snow drifts are to busy and all similar in shape. Granted there is suppose to be quite a few of these but yours over power the fore ground. So take some out make some flatter and and create more connection for better eye flow. The lower left snow is good and your pine trees are good. The grasses are ok just a little busy you could play with those a little bit to create better negative space/eye flow. I know this sounds like a lot of work but you have actually done well you just need to bring it to life. Good luck God bless you and stay inspired.
