@Chip-Valecek This is such sad news - Here is his website if folks want to check it out -

https://www.richardwcartwright.ca/

@Braden-Hallett This is looking awesome! I did a quick and hopefully not too annoying cut and paste of my thinking - i do still feel like the parents are possibly too far in the background and may be a different scale than the children? Was thinking a window over the sink might really free you up and allow you to do more things with the lighting in the room - but maybe would change the mood too much? - just a thought though

@evilrobot I have been trying to remember Bernie Wrightson! I had a book on him many years ago and loved his work and have been trying to recall his name recently - so cool to find the answer here on your thread - great to see you back on the forum too - I really enjoy seeing your excellent work.

@Jonas-Zavacky Looking good! I did a quick cut and paste of my thoughts too - my only thought was that moving her to one side of the composition would help balance the image and possibly give you the opportunity to do a longer stretch of the interesting lighting you are doing between the trees in front of her - i went a bit far with the light in my quick cut and paste but it shows the idea - just a thought though

@Raymond_Kaselau I’ll vote for #4 - better moment for me I think , especially if the seated figure is just noticing the paper airplane - maybe a tiny bit more space between the figure and plane? Very nice concept!

@Braden-Hallett This is looking great! For feedback I would say that it feels like the scale of the parents is too small for where they are and especially for how low our eye level is - feels almost as though we should see a bit of the underside of the table and their heads should break the line of the upper cabinets? Was just thinking that the entire read of the piece might be dictated by the expressions on the faces of the parents so bringing them forward might be good even if their scale is correct - a couple random thoughts would be maybe having the teddy bear stretched more but not ripping...it really does pull the attention right now as possibly the most important thing happening in the frame - another random thought would be to maybe scoot the baby a hair to the left or flipped and moved all the way to the right - but it really does look great as is - so feel free to ignore

@inkandspatter This is looking good! - i had a couple ideas about composition - it feels like the main story is the octopus beating the heat with his discovery of the fountain and the reaction of the fellow with binoculars towards the scene - it feels like the composition may be too squished on the right hand side of the canvas - there is a lot of visual weight there and it is hard to come back to the left to enjoy the humorous details there (love the guy reaching out for his ruined ice-cream cone!) My thought is to flip the canvas and then flip the direction that the octopus is leaning so you have a left to right read in the composition - other random things i thought might be showing more pinkish skin on the octopus tops of forms to show that the sun is bothering him? also the elipses of the fountain seem to flatten too soon - lastly possibly adding a bit of texture to the octopus to reinforce it as a focal point? here is a quick cut and paste/paint-over of some of what i was thinking - (i know he should not have a mouth

@Naters-Calderone I always enjoy your work! Only thing that popped into my mind for this is scale. Possibly having the pig be a different scale than the rooster.

@inkandspatter I am remembering someone mentioning that they painted with the screen brightness down a specific percent ...ten maybe? If i had to guess who it was it would be @Art-of-B but i am not sure. I think the idea is that the powerful backlight on the iPad adds a richness to colors, and for me, nuances in the dark areas, that might be lost on another screen - i definately had the problem that my drawings seemed much darker when i sent them elsewhere so the idea that the screen may add a bit too much brightness could be a piece of the your color puzzle.

@art-of-b I am not sure of how to describe the improvement - but i think i am drawing better than i was a year ago.... Was not thinking i would be posting any more Oz stuff here but i think this might be a good example of my possible progress