CGMythology's Sketchbook

[Zarkatos]

Very solid work, nothing I can really critique maybe besides some of the work being too clean, but that could just come down to personal taste- maybe experiment more after you finish a piece with painterly brushes and loosen them up a bit, otherwise very good work much farther than I am currently. love your use of colour, solid drawing and sense of light.

[cgmythology]

Fedodika: Excellent point!  Sometimes I tend to oversaturate, especially in the beginning stages so I'll work on dialing this down.  I introduced some of your feedback to the piece, specifically the desaturated 'gold', really improved the image so thank you for that!

Zarkatos:  Thank you!  I'm trying to adopt a more painterly style but I always fall back to the 'clean' style.  It's a bit frustrating, but I'm thinking of experimenting with new painterly brushes to combat this.  We shall see!

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I worked on the image for quite some time, has come quite a long way. I refined it altogether and repainted the background to help it pop out some more, also began some detail and texture work. Here is the current progress:

[Fedodika]

so, when i was working on my raven piece a few years ago, i would have stopped around where youre at now but thanks to some feedback i just kept pushing what was possible with the lighting.

Find your lightsource, deck that out, then make a shadow source of that makes sense. The human brain we dont give it enough credit for pattern recognition. It doesnt take but a second to realize its a gold helmet, we often associate that shape itself with a gold helmet. really in a painting only about 5% of an object has to have some shiny gold on it for it for it to read as that type of helmet.

Often if youre in doubt, imagine the stripe of light, multiply layer the whole thing and erase out of a thin grey tone a light and build on that. Ive found just lowering everything and pulling one thing out gives me lots of ideas about focus and contrast. 

Also rapoza does this trick a lot is the sweaty piece of metal. He'll have most stuff in shadow and one little lit up area on metal thats got lots of little highlights and wear. It makes everything feel more metal since the rest feels less metal if that makes sense. 

You dont have to light everything with a strong direct light and then back light everything. The silhouette is strong enough you could just have this be entirely black and we'd still know what we're looking at. So play with this idea and keep pushing this piece past just rendering all the forms, tell a story with the light and use texture strategically. A lot here, and the rest is blurred out there. We'll still get the idea despite there not being a texture brush on every inch of the canvas. Take a look at some like magic illustrations for example they do this a lot as well

[cgmythology]

Fedodika:  Excellent input as always, thanks for the paintover as well.  I tried to incorporate similar lighting with this update... First time I ever used this sort of lighting scheme so it was fairly challenging!

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Did a significant amount of work with this update, reworked the lighting severely and did a ton of detail and texture work.  I think it's pretty much finished, although I'm open to any final feedback!

[Fedodika]

yea dude, it went from good to amazing! I think thats the best piece youve ever done! great texture great forms. The light placement is good but kinda harsh on the eyes, maybe dial it down just a little bit and youre good to go!

[darktiste]

I second fedo on the light being harsh.There also a little something that personally bug me down it the way the cloth wrap around the shoulder i think your trying to avoid a tangente there. It not that important honestly i think i am just unsure of why it is like this is the cloth attach by something at that point?

[chubby_cat]

It's progressed really well. Good job!

I third Fedo and second darktiste, haha. With the lighting, it's quite harsh. There's also a few nitpicks over it; like shouldn't (presuming the light is coming from top left, because that is where it is brightest) the helmet cast more of a shadow over her forehead? Her ear is actually the first thing my eyes are drawn to; there's a lot of darker values in comparison around it. Ears are (typically) quite flat, so adding a highlight to the helix gives it the feeling of her having sticking out ears. Which isn't a bad thing, but to have it that bright, the ear would need to stick out a lot.

The cloth around her back feels very flat because all the folds are constricted in this sort of overall bounding box shape. It would be nice to see if flow, like in the front.

Those are just nitpicks though. Otherwise it's looking super good and I've enjoyed seeing the progress of it.

[cgmythology]

Fedodika:  Thank you!  I dialed back the lighting a bit, not too much though so I'm not sure it's noticeable, but hopefully it's not too distracting now!

darktiste:  Thanks, I refined the clothing a bit to make the folds more noticeable, hopefully it works better now!

chubby cat:  Thank you!  Great point regarding the cast shadow, just added added that in.  I refined the folds as well, excellent input!

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I finalized the image based on the very helpful feedback I received.  I'm very happy with it overall.  Here it is:




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I started work on a new illustration, experimenting with a Fantasy theme one again.   Spent a lot of time on the linework and I'm pretty satisfied with it.  Figure referenced from here.  Any feedback would be greatly appreciated as always!

[darktiste]

Would be a nice opportunity to experiment with some tattoo since there so much open skin.

[scrap]

Great sketchbook CGMythology — really nice to see you work towards your finished pieces. I think you've done a good job with the linework on your latest image but there a few things that stand out to me as a bit off. 

The perspective of the rock the dragon is standing on seems skewed? I'd say this for the top of the staff as well, I can't tell if it's meant to be symmetrical or not — if not maybe try and make it more 'designed' to be that way. The tangent of the wing touching the other wing could be an easy fix to get a more readable silhouette too.

The last thing I can see in a few of your pieces is your tendency to stick with either full front or full sideways poses (on the last piece you even made it that way) — I think one thing that could bring some dynamics to your illustrations would be more three-quarter views from different angles, imagine how sweet the dragon would look if it were towering above the woman and we were looking up at it.

All that aside you are definitely working towards being better and you can tell as you flick through the pages — exciting!

[cgmythology]

darktiste:  Great suggestion!  I just incorporated it :)

scrap:  Thanks for your honest feedback.  The rock is asymmetrical as intended, I'll probably refine the shape further as I paint along to make it look a bit more natural.  

You make a great point regarding my poses as well, I probably do this subconsciously because I'm more confident in those angles.  I'll try to choose much more dramatic and 3/4 angles as suggested as I feel that would improve my work as well.  Thanks again for the positive and constructive feedback!

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I began the painting process on the current illustration, focused on colors and lighting here while avoiding any serious detail work.  Overall I'm fairly pleased with how it's coming along at this stage:

[Ash]

Really cool, you're improving a lot!

I tried to do a paint over with some suggestions, like, to remove some tangents you could raise the wing. I removed a few black outlines  (nose, finger) for more contrast.  Tried to give her feet a little more space on the rock so she sits more comfortably.

[Fedodika]

I think her pose is pretty good but you can also think of the story more, like shes pointing at something off screen and the dragon is breathing fire... Why not have the dragon interacting with her? He could curve his head in to be pet by her, theres so much you can do with a dragon shape, like the tail and wings and stuff, i feel like a lot of it is just hidden.

I'm all for the nonsense fantasy boobie armor, but add some more little details to make her feel at least more like an amazon, you know more frazetta, luis royo, look to them for inspiration

https://www.borisjulie.com/wp-content/up...B-9261.jpg

If you want her to look hot and just be naked, just make her naked its not unheard of, but add in a fantasy detail to make her feel like shes part of another world

https://cafans.b-cdn.net/images/Category...riends.jpg

Also really emphasise her musculature, make sure she looks sexy and well toned and shes definitely getting there but her legs could use a lot more beefing up IMO

https://bookmanpeedeel.files.wordpress.c...=459&h=457

and look to frazettas pinups, how much more interesting would the image be if you built it around this pose

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0894/8...1532579845

The dragon and her are both really similar in their levels, like the size difference isnt very noticeable. It's almost like they are the same height. Most of what makes dragon/girl art cool is the size difference, though i feel shes like 6' tall heroess and hes also 6' in height. Her legs go horizontal and so his, maybe consider his legs going diagonal or vertical to contrast her pose.

Why is the sky like a friendly neighborhood blue behind them? also dont forget how powerful that isolated lighting was in the last pic, dont use it the same exact way, but experiment once you get the big forms down with a big interesting shadow shape to remove more and therefore emphasize more.

[darktiste]

Well a good idea is to check the work of other fantasy artist and get inspired sometime a good reference make all the difference.You also collect a few idea you can mix and match and extrapolate from there.One thing i didn't see you do is a few thumbnail for composition before settling to one it something i think you either not doing or your ''hide'' from us.

I would like to see her hair blow in the wind and maybe perhaps add a even smaller draon familiar at the end of he extended hand doing the same thing as the dragon for a humouristic touch.

[cgmythology]

Ash:  Thank you!  Great suggestions as well, thanks for taking the time to illustrate your point, really appreciate it.  I'll incorporate all your suggestions by the next update!

Fedodika:  Some really great suggestions as always!  I agree about her anatomy, will try to emphasize here musculature by the next update - although not too much, I still want her to appear feminine altogether.  I chose cool tones to make both figures pop as well, although I reworked the background a bit since that update.  Hopefully it flows better now!

darktiste:  Great suggestions.  Regarding thumbnail sketches, I always do them for commercial work, but for personal pieces I have a  much clearer idea from the beginning so I tend to avoid this step.  Maybe I should incorporate that to my personal works?  I'll try to do this in the future! 

 I also tried to to connect the figure more in this update with colors and such, so hopefully that helps in that regard.


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I resumed work on the image, spent a lot of time on it thus far and it's coming together quite well I think.  The rock still needs a bit more work and I want to do some more color variations on the dragon as it's looking a bit monochromatic, but it's getting there!  Feedback welcome as always :)

[chubby_cat]

Cool new piece, cg. Just a couple of things to note:

Her ribs are very intense. While you can see the ribcage on some thin women, it's often made of softer forms. Whereas yours give off the feel of hard edges, which would only be possible with emaciation

The contrast between her shoulder and her (outstretched) arm is very intense and it makes her arm feel like a cylinder (but I feel like this part is still a work in progress?)

The dragon fire spans more area than it should. It's coming out of its mouth, but there's orange flames/heat up around its face. You would expect dragon fire to be more like in a funnel shape; thin at the origin and larger at the end. Check out the dragon's breathing fire from Game of Thrones; they are pretty good examples.

[ognjiša]

Yo,cg! I hope you wouldn't mind a quick critique.

The biggest problem i see with the last painting (and many older ones as well) is weak composition, more specifically, the values not being grouped and all over the place. Another thing (which ties into composition) is your use of saturation. You seem to have a tendency to oversaturate almost everything. The same thing applies to your use of edges and detail - almost everything is a hard edge and everything has minute, hard-edged, high-contrast details.

You obviously have a pretty good grasp on drawing - you can draw figures fairly solidly and construct objects in 3 dimensions. There are the occasional perspective problems, but i think those are mostly due to a lack of planning, focus or patience, maybe (nobody wants to draw the perspective grid lol)

Now, the problem with not grouping values is that the viewer gets confused about where to look - the value contrast is the same allover and so the eye can't find a focal point, which is very unpleasant. 
The problem with having high saturation all over the place is much the same - the viewer can't tell the important from the non-important stuff, and the whole image becomes just jarring and confusing. 


Here's my little overpaint of your thing. I think you had it going a bit better in the earlier versions before you brightened up the bottom of the sky. 



Firstly, i just lowered the saturation of everything that wasn't going to be the focal point. The whole dragon, for example, was wayy too saturated all over. I also lowered the brightness of the sky (you had a very small, very saturated and bright chunk right in the corner, horribly distracting), and that lowered the value contrast between the sky and the rocks at the bottom. You don't want people seeing the bottom part of the image 1st because you don't have anything important there. You want  the first thing the viewer sees to be your focal point, after which he moves to the secondary focal point, and then is guided through the image and brought back to the focal point once again. That's the effect that i was going for by lowering the saturation and value contrast on the peripheral and unimportant parts. I also cropped the image to have a bit more space on the edge so that the fire (being the brightest and most saturated thing) wouldn't be all the way on the edge.

The second thing relating to the composition is the amount of tangents you've got going on, most notably the ones where the rocks touch the edge of the painting, the aforementioned tiny bit of sky in the corner, and that little sliver of sky left on the right side between the edge of the painting and the wing. Tangents are generally very distracting and unsettling, and it's best to avoid them unless you're really putting them somewhere on purpose to cause a specific effect.
Sinix's got a good video on tangents: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJIWllIMHsg

Next thing that i fixed up a bit and had already mentioned is the undiscriminating application of texture (i like that you haven't got the dragon scales going on in the shadows, but the shadows are so deep that you couldn't even put them there if you wanted). The texture of any object under direct lighting (such as you've got here) is going to be the most visible on the edge between light and shadow, and so that's where you ought to emphasize it the most. Elsewhere it's best if its merely implied and not too distracting. A small part of the object with clear texture and some loose implication on other places is enough to tell the viewer that the entire object is textured.

Here's a good example of the texture being most visible on the terminator (especially if you squint at it), although this texture seems way deeper than what you've got going on,:


Oh yeah and i just did a quick version with the dragon being larger. If you made the dragon large enough, his shadows side would have been one dark mass, and the light parts on the girl would read much better


A few other smaller things i would look out for:

Breaking up the spacing, and the shapes of your rock pieces so that you've got a nice variety of big, medium and small shapes (specifically having more large shapes so you don't distract attention from the focal point)

Probably having lighter shadows since they're being filled up by the indirect light coming from the sky

Having stronger contact shadows aka ambient occlusion (especially for the dragon, he hasn't even got a contact shadow)

And practical stuff i would suggest to improve:

Doing composition thumbnails and focusing on the big massed of grouped value (try using only a light, medium and dark value for your composition planning)

Reading Framed Ink, it's a great book on composition and narration in art (if you can't find it hmu ill shoot you a link)

Studying paintings of artists you admire/old masters and figuring out why their compositions work 

Hope that was helpful! : D

[Shuty]

I struggle with making lines, before the actuall painting phase starts. You are great at that.
You have a solid drawing at the beginning. That is something I myself need to work on, I just eyeball everything most of thw time :D

I enjoy your progress and paintings. Can't wait to see that painting with the Dragon and lady finished.
Others already gave you nice feedback, but yeah I would try to control the amount of a details and where to show them. you can easily control the viewers eye. Some lost edges may help as well and also contrast and saturation.
ogjiša did such an amazing job with his advice!

[cgmythology]

chubby_cat:  Great advice regarding the ribcage, I softened it up a bit, hope it works better now!  Great advice regarding the fire, reworked it based on your input as well!

ognjisa:  I never mind a critique, especially one as helpful as yours!  You make a great point regarding everything from  the values and contrast on my paintings, I have a tendency to push contrast to far and not group the values correctly.  I like what you said in regarding to grouping them as light, medium, dark, I'll try to be very conscious of this for future planning and have a mental note of it.  Excellent point regarding edges and detail work as well.  I tend to over detail everything as that's part of my style, but I'll to to tone it down in the future!

The overpaint you did was ridiculously helpful, really helped to (literally) illustrate your point.  I love the new composition as well.  I reworked the painting significantly with your image in mind, as well as your critiques, and I feel it is a huge improvement, so I'm ridiculously grateful for your advice and encouragement.  I also have 'Framed Ink' on my Amazon wishlist, planning on purchasing soon and very much looking forward to it.

Thanks again for putting so much effort into your input, really appreciate it!!!

Shuty:  Thank you!  I prefer spending a lot of time on the linework before beginning the painting process as I have a clearer idea of how it'll turn out, and it leaves things less to chance.  The only downside to this technique is if you have to rework portions of an image which can be annoying, but I find this technique to work very well most of the time.

Great input as well, I have a tendency to overdetail everything so I'll try to work on this more!


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I spent a ton of time on this new update based on the input I received.  Reworked everything from the composition to the values and colors, and I feel the image is quite improved now.  I think it's pretty much done, I will take time to do some final touches on it this weekend, so any input now would be incredibly helpful!  Here is the current progress:

[ognjiša]

Good job, nice improvement! im glad i could help! : D
Btw i sent you a drive link for a pdf of Framed Ink