Bust officer 5th French Hussar regiment.
Andrea Miniatures.

Well done whites and blues!

Love it Dmitri very well done !!

great work Dimitri.
Very vivid colors.

marc

Very nice, especially the face.

The blue is too light, referring to the famous 5th regiment's "bleu céleste" (litterally sky blue but actually closed to the deep blue of the sky). It should be darker and deeper, just like the left and right samples in the below picture:



I would also work a little more on the gold laces, which look too metallic on the colback and too much yellow on the pelisse and dolman. On the latter, you should exagerate the contrasts between extreme lights (pale yellow to pure white) and extreme shadows (dark brown with a touch of purple). The base should be in the ochre tones.

Dear Paul
Thanks for your comment. These are very valuable thoughts. I will remember your words in I realize your remarks in the following work.

Dmitri, I think you've done an excellent job on this bust. The painting is crisp and clean, and the shading is very subtle - almost a "classic" approach. Very well done, and thank you for sharing it with us.

Paul . . . IN YOUR OPINION, the blue is too light . . . I'm sure your intent was to express a personal opinion, rather than to attempt to state a fact - right?

In the future, before you comment on the "correctness" of colors, please include a letter from your eye doctor, certifying that you have perfect vision in all pertinent color ranges.

Next, please make sure that all of our monitors are displaying the EXACT same shades and hues of color, so we can have a relevant conversation.

And further, please provide assurance that the lighting used in the photographic process did not lighten the "actual" shade of blue on the figure when viewed outdoors at precisely 12 noon on a cloudless day in the Northern Hemisphere.

And lastly, please provide complete verification that EVERY SINGLE Napoleonic French 5th Hussar uniform ever made conforms to the assertions regarding color which you have advanced.

Look, we've all fallen down the slippery slope of "correct" color. None of us have ever seen an authentic Napoleonic uniform as it appeared on the parade ground or battlefield. (Think about what I just wrote . . .) Some of us have seen 200 year old garments in museums or private collections, but do we REALLY know how the aging process has altered those garments?

Most of us have used prints of paintings as our resource materials for painting figures - a notoriously imperfect melange of photography, plate-making and colorization that can (and often does) result in significant differences between source image and reproduced image.

The point is this - Dmitri posted images of his hussar bust. Absent any reference to the piece being a "work-in-process", we must assume it is a finished piece. Paul made some comments regarding the appropriateness of certain aspects of Dmitri's work - comments which, due to the limitations of this medium, came across as pedantic (at best), or wholly inappropriate and vindictive (at worst).

I'm choosing to believe that Paul did not mean his comments to come across as they did, and that he was simply trying to express his opinion regarding the shade of blue as it appears on his monitor. Additional factual support for the assertions made would have been helpful, perhaps, as would the inclusion of a few "in my opinion" or "based on my research" phrases, but I believe that Paul was trying to express his appreciation of Dmitri's work.

On the other hand, if Paul sought only to belittle another artist's work, then his comments should be ignored.

I loved the bust, Dmitri, and I hope to see more of your work here on the Planet!

Don

Don, I find it hard to believe that anyone on Planet would belittle another artists work and found nothing in Pauls comments to suggest as such. I sincerely hope that Dimitri felt the same.

Keith

Dimitri.
That is some awesome white jacket and I love what you have done. Wish that I could do my whites as well as you.
Cheers
John

Dear all,

I feel very sorry that my remarks have been misinterpretated. The aesthetic qualities of this bust painting are absolutely not in question, I was just expressing a personal opinion about the historical accuracy of the colours.

The 5th hussar blue is a very famous debate among Napoleonic light cavalry historians and reenactors - which I am not; however, having done some research about this regiment for a figure I painted long time ago, and seen authentic uniforms with my own eyes - in the Musée de l'Armée in Paris and Musée de l'Empéri near Marseilles - I just wanted to share my findings.

Dimitri, I feel very confused if I have offended you. If this is the case, I humbly apologize. Your paint work is excellent and I am always watching your finished pieces with great enthusiasm.

Dear Paul
I am very grateful to you for your comment and you don't need to apologize. You give me to me very valuable thoughts for the further work with yellow color and color of a uniform.
I used paint Andrea (NAC-16) and thought that this color the true hussar for some regiments.
This color looks on a bust more dark than that is on a photo.
I paint figures for different clients much, but to make a good photo it is the BIG PROBLEM. To me helps to make a photo the professional photographer, in studio, with good light and the camera, but even its results not always satisfy me.

The blue is too vivid (high in chroma). If you have evidence to the contrary I'd like to see it. The lightness (value) could be correct, assuming the fabric was washed out and/or faded, but I'm fairly confident in stating that it is lighter than it would have been originally.

Incidentally one can make a good educated guess at the pigment responsible for the colour in the paintjob and it was developed in the early 20th century Thiscolour was impossible to achieve in dye on this type of fabric at this period. Again, if you have evidence to the contrary I'd like to see it.

Oh do we all have to do the same? Because I can actually show that I have better-than-average colour vision and more importantly, colour discrimination, not that either is a requirement for posting a comment on a colour issue on pF!

By the way, sarcasm is hardly winning your case for you here. In fact quite the opposite.

And I'm sure you didn't intend your comments to come across as hectoring

Paul was trying to help on a technical point - which may not be important to you but is to others... and as we can now see, appreciated by Dmitri. He did start his post with a compliment or did you miss that in your haste to state that we can't ever know the real colour of things (true, but a red herring) and give a quick lecture on posting etiquette?

...

This argument is actually quite unpersuasive in a number of ways. If you'd like to discuss it further then I urge you to start a thread on the subject so we can hash it out.

Einion

I've read Dmitri's response, and Paul's, and it is clear that only I misinterpreted Paul's comments. Paul, I apologize, and ask your forgiveness. Don

Hello Don. Your apologize accepted. Thanks for your honesty.