"Shadows too dark" would be his own personal opinion and taste, and since this is art it is up to the artist to decide how the shadows should look. I believe there is a grain of truth though in what he says. A camera that is adjusted to properly expose the bright scene he was painting will underexpose the shadows, making the picture have dark shows with little or no detail in them. If the photo is taken of a scene with low contrast then it's not a problem. However, with modern cameras and computers it is easy to take several photos at different exposures them combine them to capture all of the detail in the light and dark areas.
If I had been there I would have told him, with a slight lift of my nose, that even a novice art student knows a painting made outside but displayed indoors will not look natural because of the difference in color of the lighting.
It's been a while since I tried my hand at oils or acrylics. Seeing your work may encourage me to try it again.
I did have an instructor in college who was very frustrated with me. He didn't have any problem with the oils I was doing in his class, but at this was at the dawn of computer graphics and he couldn't see why I was wasting my time learning 'the 15th Century art of pushing oil around a canvass with a brush' (his words) when I could be exploring what I could be done with a computer.
I don't see why you waste your time constructing a flying (or static) model airplane out of balsa and tissue, using your mind and hands to fabricate such an archaic mode of entertainment; when you could be exploring the possibilities of RTF and ARF.
(If you haven't figured it out, that previous statement should be read with great sarcasm).
Very well said! It's amazing how many people we disappoint in our lives that thought we were not living up to their vision of our potential by simply applying our efforts to what WE want to do.
Give you an idea of how long ago that was...anyone recognize the bottle? Wine with training wheels.
