Practice Infinitum

[nphill19]

Heya! Nice to see you hard at work and trying on different challenges. I really like the shading on the charcoal guy, the direct light, shadow and reflected light all read very well. Seems like a nice practice.

As for getting better at painting digitally, it's hard to give good general advice. I guess just paint lots of stuff digitaly to get used to the medium, get a feel for how things like value and saturation in your chosen digital art program compare to painting traditionally. What medium you use shouldn't really matter, as long as you can apply what you've learnt about art in general.

Don't really know what you refer to when you say that you flub up the figure. In your latest painting you've succeded in conveying a good expression on the character's face. The values seem a bit odd though, the lighted area is a pretty dark half-tone while the shadows are very dark. A strong light is needed to produce such shadows so the parts of the figure in the light should be brighter and more saturated.
Also the areas before the shadow should have more saturation I think, otherwise it looks kinda dull. And some more reflected light, like that on her hair, on her torso and arms couldn't hurt. Reflected light in another color will make the painting more interesting to look at *breathes*

*exhales* Damn, once i start writing crits i just blurt out lots of stuff, but if anything helps then I'm glad. And if it doesn't help then at least I gave you something to think about and that is one of the keys to development anyhow ;D Keep at it fellow Dagger!

Let me just say thank you. Any crit is exactly what I'm looking for. I really don't have a lot of access to people telling me "hey, this looks kinda off, think about this" The school I'm in is full of students who pat each other on the ass. So thank you.

Do you think taking a traditional approach would help me over all in digital? Like focusing on things like still-lives? Or should i just act like a shotgun and continually study everything same time?