Crappy umbrella drawing

[Rognoll]

OK, I'm new at attempting "realistic" (If it can be called that) stuff, but here's a painting I've been foing for a few days. I had no idea how to to clouds, so I spent days trying to render them properly. It still sucks, but it's way better than the first ones. Anyway, what's your opinion on this? I need critiques.

Thanks! :D

[Patrick Gaumond]

"realistic" doesn't mean "gray and desaturated". I think this piece could benefit greatly from some more vibrant colours here and there. You don't need to go nuts with it but theres a lot that can be done to make the colours pop more and still feel realistic. Sometimes playing around with some of the adjustment layers can help a tiny bit, but most of it you'll probably have do to manually.

For example, you could put some saturated colours on the undersides of umbrellas that are facing the sun, to simulate light travelling through it. In general things that are under sunlight don't get super desaturated and white, they actually retain a surprising amount of colour and also rarely go to black in shadow areas.

Things like the jackets and umbrellas are more matte surfaces so they won't really go to white anywhere, or to black. Play around with the colours for a bit and see what they look like. Take a look at some photos of people outside or skydiving or something and see what the colours feel like. I saw the WIP versions in your SB and you had some really nice colours going on there that you lost in the final product. Also if you decide to use layers to change colours/values (screen, multiply overlay etc) I would recommend not using black or white if you are already using colours. Try using actual colours on those layers to see what kind of effect they have. It'll take a bit of experimenting time but I think it will pay off

As far as the composition goes its looking pretty good. Theres a (minor) tangent on the blue umbrella, where the guys foot in the back is just barely touching it. I would just move him more behind the umbrella to push that depth a bit more.

The clouds look sweet by the way, hopefully you learned something that will speed up the rendering next time you gotta draw em :)

Hope some of that was helpful

[Rognoll]

It was extremely helpful! Thanks a lot, Beardley, this helped me a lot. I couldn't quite figure out how to do translucent light on the umbrellas, but I'm still trying.