I love this painting. Love the concept, love the composition, REALLY love the color. The way you worked the reflections across her skin is especially good.

There are a couple of places that I noticed some things that could be improved. It's mostly small stuff, but it's usually the small stuff that stands between "good," and "masterwork." (I wish I had someone to pick out my "small stuff" before I let it go, honestly...)

First, it looks like you have a pretty good grasp of anatomy and proportion, but there are two places that could use a little refinement. The first one is the face. The composition leads us naturally through the picture plane until we reach her face, but her profile is maybe the weakest part of the drawing. Even with the specular reflections, there should be more definition of the planes of her face, especially behind the nostril, in the hollow of her eye, and a little shallow area right behind the zygomatic arch. Given the placement of her face closer to the light source one could expect the shadows to be slightly more washed out, but the illusion we are left with here is of relative flatness when we should be perceiving a roundness of form. The back of her skull is also just a little bit squashed; her cranium should be more rounded at the back, with the form suggested by the flow of the hair.

The torso looks very good-- especially the abdominals drawn in profile-- but the ropes around her ribcage and breasts should be cutting into the flesh more. There is a suggestion of softness where the ropes go around the waist, but when you look at the ropes over her breast it appears that they are wrapped over plastic, although this is the fleshiest part of the body. Overall, there could be slightly more cleaving of the skin, away from the direction of pull, for all of the contact points of the rope. This would increase the tension visually, and give a slightly more realistic feel to the scene.

The other anatomy issue I had is with the arms. When the elbows are tied tied behind the back, the palms turn inward; here you have given the impression that they are rotated outwardly. Although they would, in fact begin to rotate with the palmar side of the hand facing posteriorly, we would still, at this angle, be seeing a foreshortened view of the dorsal side of the hand. In order for the hands to be rotated as you have shown them, it would be necessary for her shoulders to be dislocated, and her elbows to be broken (talk about dramatic tension, though!)

Finishing the critique of the figure, I would like to have seen more gradation of your edges. With the lighting you have chosen, you have give yourself incredible opportunities to vary your edges, but all I see is hard edges; not only would softening some of your edges help to suggest the roundness of your forms, it would also assist in incorporating the figure as part of the environment (where edges meld into the background softly) and assist in leading our eyes to the focal point-- hard edges attract and lead the eye, where soft edges give the eye more freedom to move.

Your background is awesome. I think you could have pushed the lights and darks a little further: the light on the surface could be a lot more white (brighter), since we are actually seeing the light at its point of reflection, from behind. Just a few large highlights in a couple of your ripples would give the illusion of a brighter light source; this might also create more dramatic effect by suggesting more strongly how agonizingly close to freedom she actually is.

As for the darks, I really think you should have pushed the dark at the horizon line. Again, it would heighten the drama, but in this case it would also give the horizon more depth. With the blue that you have chosen, it would be a very simple matter (although a little time-consuming) to add great depth through the use of glazes; with that cerulean hue I would recommend glazing with ultramarine or possibly prussian blue (both have nice transparency); the ultramarine would require more layers of glaze but would likely look more natural and give it a greater sense of depth (which is caused by the number of paint layers that the paint must travel through before reflecting back from the canvas). You could add a speck of alizarin crimson or madder lake (or possibly quinacridone red or quinacridone rose) to the ultramarine on every second or third glaze, which would also increase the depth by breaking up the color just enough to cause the light to reflect unevenly at the horizon.

Overall, this is an amazing piece. You've done a ridiculously good job at working within a square composition-- VERY difficult for painters-- and the eye is carried naturally through the entire composition with relative comfort; my eye comes in at top-left, follows the legs through the curve of the torso and back up to the face, where it is led back to the feet by the flow of her hair. Its a beautiful use of the ellipse.

The color is amazing, aside from the issue of depth that I hit on. If you are a fan of that sort of deep, rich color, I might suggest using cerulean with a glaze of lapis lazuli. Ultramarine is the "replacement" color for lapis lazuli, but it can't match the color in glazes. Lapis is available from two sources that I am aware of; Daniel Smith Artist's Materials, and Natural Pigments. The Natural Pigments color is far superior, but it is also $87.00 for a 50ml tube. It's absolutely pure Afghan pigment in linseed oil, though, with zero fillers or binders. Excellent paint.

This is a great painting, sir. Keep up the awesome work; I hope my suggestions prove helpful.

~Allen

Great! Awesome! Epic! Beautiful! Exquisite! Cool! Nice! Excellent! Fantastic! Extraordinary! You sir are a great artist! Best Painting Ever! It should belong in an art museum! I would rate you work a 25 to 100 stars! I want too see more of your artwork in the future! keep it up and maybe you will be a greater artist than Leonardo da Vinci! I seriously almost jumped put of my chair just now and almost hit the ground hard! I love your work dude! Great background and character! Was this your idea or are you just expressing your self? I need to know!