05-20-2024, 02:34 AM
Really cool to see all the improvement you've made over the years! I think the mermaid piece has a lot of great qualities (really nice vibrant colors, depth, expression on her face, etc.). I like CBinn's approach to the more night-time paintover, I wanted to also add in my two cents.
Take this paintover with a grain of salt since I don't fully know the story of this image and the world etc., but I wanted to make a couple of points from the perspective of a daytime scene (the rainbow is what made me think daytime).
I think simplifying the image would help to push the story a lot more; right now there is so many details that are taking my attention. That may just be because there is a lot of contrast in a lot of stuff. Using less contrast in places that aren't focal points could help solve this I think. So I just sort of simplified a lot of the background to make it only about the approaching ship coming from a rocky area and made her eyes look even further in that direction to reinforce the connection.
I also pushed the rocks and the ships detail and contrast lower to increase the sense of depth (this could be pushed further by adding more depth to the water and having more overlaps and such as well. I think having the ship being so close just feels unrealistic at the moment because of the sizes of things like the masts in relation to the people etc. I'm not an expert on nautical stuff though so again, take this with a big grain of salt.
I would say NC Wyeth is probably a great artist to look at to study for this kind of thing since he did the Treasure Island illustrations and was a grandmaster of composition. Not sure if any of my notes helped but I hope you were able to take something away from it at least. I think you added a lot of really cool details and textures; I just think overall playing some of that down in order to bring more attention to the focal point might help, and just increasing the sense of scale relationships between the approaching ship and the foreground and stuff could help.
Take this paintover with a grain of salt since I don't fully know the story of this image and the world etc., but I wanted to make a couple of points from the perspective of a daytime scene (the rainbow is what made me think daytime).
I think simplifying the image would help to push the story a lot more; right now there is so many details that are taking my attention. That may just be because there is a lot of contrast in a lot of stuff. Using less contrast in places that aren't focal points could help solve this I think. So I just sort of simplified a lot of the background to make it only about the approaching ship coming from a rocky area and made her eyes look even further in that direction to reinforce the connection.
I also pushed the rocks and the ships detail and contrast lower to increase the sense of depth (this could be pushed further by adding more depth to the water and having more overlaps and such as well. I think having the ship being so close just feels unrealistic at the moment because of the sizes of things like the masts in relation to the people etc. I'm not an expert on nautical stuff though so again, take this with a big grain of salt.
I would say NC Wyeth is probably a great artist to look at to study for this kind of thing since he did the Treasure Island illustrations and was a grandmaster of composition. Not sure if any of my notes helped but I hope you were able to take something away from it at least. I think you added a lot of really cool details and textures; I just think overall playing some of that down in order to bring more attention to the focal point might help, and just increasing the sense of scale relationships between the approaching ship and the foreground and stuff could help.
My Sketchbook: https://crimsondaggers.com/forum/thread-9338.html