05-24-2013, 08:02 PM
Hey Zach, nice work for 16. I think you're on a good start to make some gains that will get you really well on the way to your dreams :D
I found a few fundamental things that I think could help you think about your paintings and simplify things down a bit. The paintover is below. I've added comments following it.
Firstly Values. In general terms you want to accentuate depth using dark to light going from foreground to background. You have got that going on and you do understand this I think but I think you could think about controlling that even more and being more blatant and specific about the differences in value and how you apply that to your work. Checking your values in grayscale can help you keep that sense of depth going. I basically darkened your foreground and lightened up things as they went into the background and reduced their contrast to push them further back.
Next you really want to have clear focal points and detail only where you want the focus to be. Comp. wise I found the focal point smack in the middle of the image a bit boring, so I pushed one of the mountains back a bit so the focal point was a bit off centre. On second thoughts I should have pushed the other one back instead, because that would have created a nice zig zag to the comp. Anyway I also moved some stuff around (birds on poles etc) to be clear what the secondary focal points were. I found the level of texture across your entire painting a little distracting and you had detailed in places that didn't really require it. You need to provide areas for the eye to rest so less is more in non focal areas. I simplified a lot of your foreground and midground for this reason. Also remember that things scale down as they get further so generally the shapes you want to use should get smaller the further away they are if they are made of the same stuff, like your rock textures.
In terms of colour you have a nice sense of colour and complementarys but I felt that you went a bit too saturated overall and didn't control it to direct focus as well. I basically did a really quick overlay paint to show that just a tiny bit of saturation at focal areas can help them pop out. it's poorly done but I hope I got the point across.
I think that's about it. Hope that was useful. Keep it up dude!
I found a few fundamental things that I think could help you think about your paintings and simplify things down a bit. The paintover is below. I've added comments following it.
Firstly Values. In general terms you want to accentuate depth using dark to light going from foreground to background. You have got that going on and you do understand this I think but I think you could think about controlling that even more and being more blatant and specific about the differences in value and how you apply that to your work. Checking your values in grayscale can help you keep that sense of depth going. I basically darkened your foreground and lightened up things as they went into the background and reduced their contrast to push them further back.
Next you really want to have clear focal points and detail only where you want the focus to be. Comp. wise I found the focal point smack in the middle of the image a bit boring, so I pushed one of the mountains back a bit so the focal point was a bit off centre. On second thoughts I should have pushed the other one back instead, because that would have created a nice zig zag to the comp. Anyway I also moved some stuff around (birds on poles etc) to be clear what the secondary focal points were. I found the level of texture across your entire painting a little distracting and you had detailed in places that didn't really require it. You need to provide areas for the eye to rest so less is more in non focal areas. I simplified a lot of your foreground and midground for this reason. Also remember that things scale down as they get further so generally the shapes you want to use should get smaller the further away they are if they are made of the same stuff, like your rock textures.
In terms of colour you have a nice sense of colour and complementarys but I felt that you went a bit too saturated overall and didn't control it to direct focus as well. I basically did a really quick overlay paint to show that just a tiny bit of saturation at focal areas can help them pop out. it's poorly done but I hope I got the point across.
I think that's about it. Hope that was useful. Keep it up dude!