Environment - Please Critique

[Zachary McLean]

Hi, my name is Zachary McLean, I'm new to Crimson Daggers so here's a little bit about me:
I've grown up in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, all my life and I'm currently going to High school. I'm 16 years old and I've been working very hard at my dream of becoming a concept artist & illustrator. Since I'm a student, I just paint on my free time, but I hope to go to art school once I graduate.

Please feel free to comment, critique, and do paint overs on this piece.. I have lots to learn and would appreciate all feedback! I'm struggling with the composition and I'm currently not sure what to do with the left portion of the illustration. Thank you!

[jjeeaann]

Hi, I did a paint over:
-Added a path to guide the eye to the selling point of the image.
-cropped most of the sky out and changed it to add a little more depth.
-added a mountain on the left to make a V shape of the composition.
-Darkened the torch and added wind direction pointing to the center.
-added sun light affecting the rocks near the blue cave.
-darkened the edges to get the viewers eye to stay on the center of the painting.

[Zachary McLean]

jjeeaann:
Thanks for the paintover!! It helps a lot. I still am not happy with it though, but I guess that's possibly because the POV isn't all that dynamic. If you or anyone else has any other crits, please feel free to help out. I've attached my rough progress and will have to clean it up, but I wanted to get the basic light and composition down.
Process:

[Olphelia]

Hi Zachary,

I think what I like the most about jjeeaann's paintover is the winding pathway that directs the viewers eye to what might be beyond. At first glance at your recent piece I'm looking at the foreground torch first. You can't really darken it to the point of being a silhouette since it's lit. Also, atm the torches are favoring the left side of the path. Just my first impressions here :)

[Zachary McLean]

Hi Zachary,

I think what I like the most about jjeeaann's paintover is the winding pathway that directs the viewers eye to what might be beyond. At first glance at your recent piece I'm looking at the foreground torch first. You can't really darken it to the point of being a silhouette since it's lit. Also, atm the torches are favoring the left side of the path. Just my first impressions here :)

Thanks! That is true.. I just don't want the viewer to follow the path too much, because the path is quite straight and is in the very center of the image. Might just make it not quite as bold as jjeeaann's paintover. Totally agree with you on the foreground torch. I'll figure something out... maybe even get rid of it. We'll see. Opps.. didn't realize all the torches were on one side. Thank you for pointing that out! I'll try to work on it more if I can find some time.. Keep the C&C's coming!

[Amit Dutta]

Are you sure you need this in landscape format, when all the focus is in the centre third of the image? Perhaps consider cropping the image to portrait for a better comp. or consider moving the people and the path around the image more to justify the format.

[Zachary McLean]

Here's the final.. I'm happy with it. -sorry for not replying for a while. C&C's are still welcome. I think the comp. is working alright though..?

[Amit Dutta]

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!