Wyvern slayer

[futurespaceghost]

Hey everyone! :)

I posted this painting in a FB art group and the only critique I got was that the placement of the hands were wrong. Not to say it wasn't helpful but crits on how i can improve on lighting,color, anatomy, and composition are much appreciated :)

also recently I've been to make my paintings more "economical" where the forms and light read so well you don't have to over render. So any tips on how to that would be nice :)

[EduardoGaray]

It is obvious that this is a frazetta like illustration right?
Well, Frazetta had a background as a comic artist, and that was reflected in his illustrations as he usually divided everything into either shadow or spotlight. (Like a Black and white comic, only two values)
Here, all the values are in the same range. He also played a lot with strong vs earthly colors to give even more impact to the piece.
There are tangents all over the place, lots of tangents! i suggest you to be more careful with that. And the way you placed the dragon make it look like the picture has been cropped.

Where the light comes from? decide the light sources beforehand and paint according to them, because the light in this picture looks really chaotic. The background is really bright, but some things like the characters hair isnt getting any light from it. And if there is light coming from the background, the head of the dragon shouldnt be casting a shadow over his/her tits.

Now for the anatomy of the characters, take direct references and previous sketches if you are going for something complex. The barbarian look much better than the demon dudes, so i suppose you used reference for the barbarian but not for the demons, there is nothing wrong with reference, dont hesitate to use it.

Finally, there are chunks of the piece very well rendered, but the most part looks unfinished.
If you want to improve your brushtrokes economy, you will have to plan carefully every brushtroke.

There are other issues, but i think this is enough to keep you busy for a while! xD

All the best mate, the piece has lots of potential so make sure you upload a new version if you keep working on it.

Cheers, and i hope you will find something useful in all of this.

[ZombieChinchilla]

As far as composition goes, what is the focus here? Is it the wyvern, or the barbarian? If it's the barbarian, I would recommend putting the wyvern more in the foreground that off to the side. But if it's the wyvern, I would put more of a focus on it by accenting it with the lighting.

I would also recommend doing some more spokewheeling, which is a term coined by James Gurney, and is basically just subtly pointing small elements in your painting towards the focus. The demons and the sword on the right are already doing that towards the barbarian, and I think it could be even more enforced with the spear on the left.

That's all I've got. EduardoGaray makes some great points, too. Good luck!

[futurespaceghost]

thanks so much for the crits EduardoGaray and zombie chinchilla!

@eduardo Yes this was definitely a Frazetta inspired illustration! As for the tangents i was sort of aware of all those horrible tangents around the sword handle but Ignored them :(

for the lighting, I was trying to make it look like the light source was somewhere behind the dragon but i guess the background doesn't help communicate that at all

@zombie chinchilla I was trying to use the hands of the three demons in the left conner to direct the viewer to the barbarian and have his arm lead the eye up to the dragon. I don't know if that works but I've just recently started doing illustrations 2 months ago, so composition is still difficult for me.

Thanks so much again for the crits :)