Been lurking for a while and I've been stuck on this particular piece for a while now. I just keep going back and forth on things trying to push and pull it into being something better. But clearly I don't know where to go with it so I'm hoping that you all can help me.
The major problem IMO is the guy in the front, on the left lower corner. I think he draws too much attention, altough he does give a bit of lifelike-quality or spontaneusness to the picture, our eyes just tend to move towards him. Maybe blur him some to give focus on the main character? Just an idea.. Awesome rendering on the main character! You could possibly boost the torso-part with some colour contrast as well..
So I blurred and desaturated the head in the bottom left. I also repainted the character in the bottom right and I think I like this much better, the pose is less stiff and looks more natural and I think that has helped the image a lot, though I am still not happy with it and I will continue noodling this painting till I figure it out.
So any more comments/criticisms would be greatly appreciated :)
Hey Ethan, great work on rendering and the candid shot. I think the comp works nicely but you could drive it a bit more with some lighting. While the realistic desaturated rendering is nice you could draw focus more with some more dynamic lighting and bring in a bit more colour variation to add vibrancy to the palette. I felt like some kind of embellishment around his neck / face area would help as it is a focal point and started to really pop his eyes out a bit more and give them a more focused gaze. The eyes are what we go to first, so make them count. Added some dust particles and atmo as well.Hope it's useful
Thank you Monkeybread for your help. I took your suggestions and ran with it. This is how it ended up. I know I can push it more, but again I am at a wall. So here's what I've got, comments and crits always welcome :)
There's a couple of things that I could see with this one:
1. There are a lot of bright highlights on his left shoulder (our right), but those aren't present so much on his head or right shoulder. Since it looks like his skin (or rock, or scales, or whatever) is pretty shiny, there should be some pretty hot highlights there too (especially on the head and face - that's where you want to draw the attention to, and right now the eye keeps being pulled to the right of his head, 'cause that dark shadow on his face and the lighter average value of that shoulder create an area of higher contrast). On that same note, given how shiny his skin is, some bounced light onto his chest would be a good idea
2. the other characters don't seem to have much texture to them. I know you're trying to blur them to draw the focus to the central character, but by keeping them dark and blurry, it forces the eye to not move at all through the piece. Those other characters would be a great way to pull the eye through your painting. With the pose your central character already has, you have a sort of spiral composition already; maybe try adding to the other characters so that the eye is drawn in from the upper right, down across the two characters on the right, let the eye rest on your central character, then out through the bottom left.
3. Another thing to think about with the composition is your use of space. Right now you have a lot of very dark space, which is good for bringing attention to the lighter areas, but since you don't really have anything going on in the lighter spots (it's a dude sitting down, there isn't a lot of drama to it right now), you might consider brightening up some of the other parts. Maybe add more going on in that window behind the scaly dude?
