seeking crit !!

[gumby]

hey guys, i consider this pretty much finished, but was wondering if you had some crits to improve it. Thanks you !!

[brianjohnson]

I like where you're headed with this piece. I think you need to adjust your values a bit, as well as define some of the forms a bit more. At present, it is overly airbrushed, so nothing really has definition. I have attempted to put together a bit of a paintover to illustrate.



I darkened the top of the painting to further push the emphasis down to her face, but I really like the particle effects that you had up top, so I added a bit of that into the foreground in an attempt to add depth. You could probably get away with doing a bit more of it without distracting the viewer.

The paintover has lost a bit of that crazy-eyes that you have in your painting, which I should probably try to add back in, but my son is up from his nap and chompin' at the bit to play. Because of your lightsources, and such, the eyes are going to be a challenge to get right.

As I mentioned, I like where this is headed, and hope you continue working on this piece. Hope this helps.

[Amit Dutta]

This is nice. I like what brianjohnson did with values to get the contrast between the face and upper part less separated, but not sure i like the angry expression. Overall the picture has no purpose and is just a face, so maybe add a bit of narrative...is she drowning, is she some sort of water witch....it's all about the expression here, so make it count and tell the story. Maybe there could be some floating necklace or pendant or something that adds something else to focus on. Rendering wise that big light stripe down her face is a bit strange, if you're going to go impressionistic maybe go a bit more abstract in your overlay forms. Not sure what that shape on the right of her face is. It's a bit distracting.
I think you should push the composition even further by using her hair to drive it even more. Define the forms in her hair with some highlighting and use the fact that she is in water to create some interest in how it interacts. You could do some really nice playing with values and depth between floating masses of hair to give more of a sense of the environment as well as make the comp more interesting.

[brianjohnson]

Monkeybread, I think the light stripe down the face is the reflection on the glass of a helmet.

I wasn't sold on the angry expression either. There is a hint of it in the original, but I overcompensated for the loss of the crazy eyes.