Coby's sketch book

[smrr]

o___________o 
Lots of fascinating stuff in here, Coby! Must be all the experimentation that you do!

Those watercolour fishies are divine, btw <3 

I guess I would say to try and vary your edges to get a more solid form happening, as well as taking material properties into account and how light would react with them, like for example:


Did a quick paint over demo'ing some stuff. 

So I used a hard-edge brush and tried to give the figure a bit more "weight" and "solidness".

If you're painting an image that has fire in it, it's really hard for the image to *pop* if the canvas isn't a bit dark from the get-go. So, by adding a multiply layer and filling it with a darker colour, then linking a layer mask to the layer by clicking on the [  O  ] button on the layer toolbar and painting in black where I wanted to subtract darkness, I was quickly able to give the painting a bit more dimension.

In addition to this, I adjusted the levels to get rid of any 0% blacks that you had in your image prior. Also painted over some areas that were unnecessarily dark, like her hair. Try to make it a habit not to use anywhere below 10% black in your images (and the same goes with whites, no large areas with above 90% white. Peak highlights are fine, depending on how you use them), because you illustration will end up looking flat/lifeless.

Also, really try to think about an object and its property in regards to light. It helps a lot :D
Oh and also concentrate on where you light source is in the image and stick to it!

I hope this has helped in some way, just my two cents,

Keep up the hard work! o/!