Those hair are so nice and i like how the pink interact with the green on the skin and those eye men those eye i think just changing the color would make them even more beautiful.Adding the nail was really the little detail that was missing to avoid the sausage look but i think you should study the shape of thumb a little more this look to rounded on the right side.I also like how you used the blur effect to put the focus on her but still had a bit of interest to the picture.
Your feedback was ridiculously helpful as always, so thanks again for your input, really helped push the image more and I'm very happy with how it turned out!
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I continued to do some lighting studies traditionally, will post them all at once when I have the time along with some movie still studies that I completed. Right now I want to do one more illustration, this time featuring 'She-Hulk'. I started on the sketch a very long time ago and re-visited it recently to improve it, and I'm fairly happy with how it turned out. I had a reference for the general pose which you can view here. Below is the sketch, any feedback before I begin the painting process would be most appreciated!
Love your recent pieces! Really nice work all round. Looking at your new She Hulk piece I commend you for tackling a tough pose. I personally feel there could be couple subtle tweaks to help. I think the hip section is a little compressed and perhaps we need to see a little more hip joint and side bum. Also i think if the legs were rotated just slightly a few degrees it could help with the dynamic pose and foot positioning. I scribbled out a PO to show what I mean but just my two cents. Good luck pal keep up the great work!
I think the pose is dynamic but many just a bit to much like it hard to make up the shape of the torso or if the back arm make sense because we can't see how it attach to the body all i am saying is when you create visual shortcut you better make sure your volume don't occupy the same physical space or that can end up looking unrealistic and by occupying space i mean volume intersecting like in a video game.
Here some similar pose that seem to support what i mean. You see the torso.It better to take reference from movie for pose because those are deliberately choosen pose if you take pose from pose outside of video cinematic or film it not always well thought pose that should be use outside of gesture drawing.It why i encourage you to do more of your own imaginated pose atleast you learn the do and don't of posing and your work just get better as a result of thinking more about how to get the most dynamic and realistic pose possible with the best angle.
Captain America and Poison Ivy are AMAZING. You really did go to school on the skin tones and IMHO they both look really great.
You asked for more input on Poison Ivy — so I'll suggest a little more work on her hands. Something seems anatomically off about them and because there a focal point a little more effort in that area could really knock that one out of the park.
Dunno if you used a reference for them — but I'm never above asking someone if I can take a pic of their hands etc for something I'm working on.
She Hulk looks like it's going to be another excellent piece and CBinns' suggestions are very good — looking forward to seeing that one completed
CBinnsIllustration: Thank you! Love what you did with the linework for She-Hulk and just incorporated your feedback, great input as always!!
darktiste: That makes sense. I feel the pose is fairly dynamic, hopefully it works better now that it's finalized! Thanks for your input!
Jephyr: Thank you kindly! The hands for Poison Ivy are tricky as they're at an extreme angle. I might revisit it in the future, we shall see! Just finished She-Hulk as well :)
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Thanks for the feedback on She-Hulk everyone, was able to improve and finalize the image. There's still time to update it further if needed, so if something feels off please feel free to let me know! Below is the current preview followed by the steps for those interested:
The anatomy on She-Hulk has the common problem I see in artists who don't do nearly enough studies from life and photo references. Everything is drawn and rendered too sterile and unnatural like bulked-up cadavers, without consideration to how the muscles actually look underneath a layer of skin and fat. In this day and age, we have a shit ton of amazing free and paid artists' anatomy/figure references, and it would be smart to take advantage of them. There are so many on artstation alone it's kind of mind-boggling: https://www.artstation.com/marketplace/g...nce/humans
There are also lighting issues like the illumination from the explosion should light up some facets of the flying rocks but it doesn't. The hair is also something that's easily back-lit prominently, yet we don't see any backlighting on the flowing hair strands at all.
I don't know what your current situation is in terms of where you're at in your art career (or even if you want one or just enjoy doing art as a hobby), but if leveling up is something important to you, my very serious advice is this: Stop doing these illustrations for now, or at least very very infrequently, and focus on your foundational studies. If you keep going like this as you have for the past 15 years or so, you will improve and grow very slowly because you're not putting time and effort toward the most efficient way to learn and grow as an artist. You obviously put a lot of time and effort into your art since you're quite prolific, but the amount of improvement has been minimal compared to how many years you've been at it. I can guarantee you that if you put the same amount of time and energy into foundational studies, you will improve in a year or two far more than you ever did in the last 15 years. I know I'm being blunt but I feel like it'll do you a lot of good because I see how passionate you are, and it's hard to watch you go around in a circle and not moving forward nearly as far as you could.
I wanted to touch on what I said earlier on your viking piece, about stepping back and checking for distracting parts of your work that need attention.
This paint-over isn't perfect, but it's pointing out areas that immediately took notice for me.
If it's obvious, read no further. If not:
1. It's very apparent a lot of care went into her face, it's the focal point and the most details and evenly rendered part of the image.
2. However, it's almost like a head floating on a flat background - her body is distorted.
3. Major areas are the joints, shoulder, knees and rear foot. They ought to be in perspective, with foreshortening and rounding the curve. In the original her left, forward leg is facing us from the knee down, but her thigh is extending to the far right. Her left backward lag is awkwardly bent with toes curling upwards, instead of flat on the ground with heel bending upwards. It's also not in perspective with the rest of the image.
4. Aside from the muscular structure, the proportion on the arm is a touch unbalanced - and also needs to be blended into the form to avoid the paper doll effect.
5. Minor point but small things like the hair curling in uniform C shapes is blocky and unnatural. Like hair is curling into the head out of thin air. Try painting into the hair with the negative space to get more variation.
Definitely try getting a few adjustments into it before the colour stages as these are all structural.
darktiste: That's a great point, and the reference you posted was very helpful. Just refined the image, hopefully it works better now!
Lunatique: That's interesting regarding the anatomy - I was going for a bit more of a stylized look to show off the muscle groups. Not sure if that was the right call but I just tried to make it look more natural now, hopefully it works better.
I agree regarding your feedback, it's something I needed to hear. Right now I'm focusing on some freelance work and I'm currently doing studies on lighting on my spare time, both digitally and traditionally. Sometimes I really want to paint a full illustration, but what I do now is if I have a good idea I just sketch it out and will paint it at a later point as to keep the focus on the studies.
Thanks for your honesty and advice as always, means a great to deal to me and I really appreciate it!
RottenPocket: Great feedback! Love what you did with your paintover and you made some very valid points. I refined it based on your input, hopefully it works better now!
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I have a ton of updates today. First She-Hulk, did some final adjustments to the image to try to improve it based on the feedback I received, hopefully it's an improvement:
Next I decided to go work traditionally to do some lighting studies. I haven't drawn on traditional media in over a decade believe it or not, but I just adjusted fairly well I think. This was the first time I experimented with toned gray paper as well, and I'm glad I did because I absolutely love the format and it works ridiculously well for lighting studies:
Finally I continued my digital movie still studies. These are speedpaints pretty much, I try not to spend over an hour or two on these as the goal is to understand light better, not refine/detail them to death as I don't see the point:
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and that's all for now! I'll continue doing these studies as I learned an immense amount for them as well, so I'll have more updates in that regard soon.
Those film study will surely pay for the light in your work.It will be fun for you to explore more illustration inside it certainly give a more yellowish tone to the whole color palette and the value range can be very wild to. Also night exterior scene which is not necessarly something i saw you do alot.
Nice seeing all the foundational studies you've been doing. You're on the right track. I would suggest you render the lighting studies with a bit more nuanced polish because capturing form and lighting accurately requires it. Here are examples:
Here's a sphere study I did for students during class live-demonstrations:
Any quality art school around the world would expect your primitive form value studies to be around those levels of accuracy. They expect it (and I expect it as well from my students) because rough renderings hide unintentional deformation of the forms and you won't know you got it wrong unless you render to a higher level.
As for the She-Hulk, one thing I think is important is to define what "stylized" really means, because it's a complicated subject. In the classes I teach, I define it for students as taking reality and do any or a combination of the following to it: simplify, exaggerate, idealize. When it comes to human subjects, those three parameters create an endless range of styles--from The Simpsons, to American superhero comics, to anime, to Disney, to the Final Fantasy video games. In the case of your She-Hulk, what is the target style you're going for? I assume some level of idealization with some exaggeration and simplification. But if we look at both the macro and micro level, what exactly are you simiplifying, exaggerating, and idealizing? If the anatomy looks unnatural/awkward, while it might satisfy the goal of exaggeration, it also works against the goal of idealization, unless you can exaggerate in a way that's actually more appealing than what appears natural to us. From Rob Liefeld to Jim Lee to Alex Ross to Boris Vallejo, there's a huge range. Liefeld and Lee are both stylized, but one looks awkward and one looks idealized--albeit exaggerated. Ross and Vallejo are both in the realistic camp, but Ross always looks natural while Vallejo can border on caricature (in his later works) due to how far he pushes things sometimes. Defining exactly what your ideal level of stylization is at the macro and micro level and how far to push the sliders on the various parameters is a really good mental exercise for any artist to think deeply about.
The gray paper form studies look good but seem rushed. While no one can dispute your work ethic — I suggest slowing down a little and really understanding each study.
Instead of doing oodles of them - I'd suggest just a page or two of concentrated study — where you're really working at understanding form and lighting and blending with a stump or finger or cloth etc between values.
Also your shadows don't have much or little reflected light and many generally have overly strong edges.
Anywho — your tireless work and willingness to seek advice are to be admired.
Kudos to you on the traditional studies, man! It really helps by paring down art to just the fundamentals. There's nothing to distract from just basic drawing and shading. It will help you improve for sure. I agree with Lunatique, try a little more polished modeling
darktiste: Most definitely! I illustrated a night scene just recently, and I applied what I learned to the image so it was great timing!
one_two: Thanks, much appreciated!
Lunatique: Thanks! And I agree about taking it slower with them. I think I'll do the slower studies digitally now as it's much easier to apply shading. What takes minutes to render with pencil can take a few minutes if not seconds to render digitally. I just completed some more primitive studies digitally with this post below.
Regarding She-Hulk, I guess the stylized look I'm going for would be for the muscle groups, I want them to be a bit more apparent than usual as I think that compliments the subject matter, especially since it's based on a comic book character. Hopefully I didn't take the stylization too far, however! I have an update below, as well as previous painting you gave me great feedback for in regards to light!
Jephyr: Thanks! I have a tendency to work fast for my studies, especially when working traditionally. I think I'll do these studies digitally for now as they're much faster to tackle this way. Thanks for your input and support as always, really appreciate it!
Joseph Cow: Thank you, and I agree! I'll take it slower with the traditional ones when I get the chance!
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I went ahead and continued my studies, this time digitally, although I'll go back again to traditional studies again shortly. First up are some simple shapes painted from reference. The cube is based on a photo reference (from geoartref.com specifically), and the rest are based on some quick scenes I rendered in Poser Pro with the primitive shapes tool.
Also did two movie still studies, didn't spend too much time on refining these as usual... just want to learn what I can in regards to light and shadow and go on to the next one:
Next up I revisited an older painting based on Robert Chang's feedback on lighting, hopefully things look more natural now!
Next I revised the She-Hulk image. I think I took it as far as I could, so if nothing major feels off then I guess it's good to go, please feel free to let me know!
And finally I got to illustrate a Tarot Card for a client, the '7 of Wands' card specifically. I was asked to have a female Viking defending herself with a torch against 6 figures also carrying torches. I spent a lot of time on this one as I also thought it would make for a strong portfolio piece, so any final input on what can be improved would be greatly appreciated! Below is the current image followed by the steps for those interested.
The way you made the death line up make them look as if they are going down some step it kinda weird I find that putting object in the foreground tend to flatten the overall piece and since they are side by side that amplify the visual focus it something i cant really put my finger on to explain.The angle of the shield reinforce the flatness due to it almost being perfectly circular.The sail in the background also play into that flat effect.I think it far past any constructive critism at this stage.Just observation i guess...
This one is certain hard due to the unique format that is a verticale composition.Not only that you probably had to include many figure in this already cramp space which create just general hard to read composition and silhouette.The many light source is also pushing this piece to absurd level of difficulty.Also light tend to flatten the form when there many light source but here you ignore some of the light source and it a problem because something just doesnt feel right.
I hope you had fun because for me this look like a nightmare commission to pull out.
darktiste: Yes the placement could have been made more natural; Initially I had the figures surrounding her in the concept stage, but the client requested I align all of them in front of her which was quite challenging due to the tight composition. Great point regarding some of the flat shapes on the image, I'll keep this in mind on something to avoid when sketching in future illustrations. And yeah, the image was fairly challenging as I'm used to keeping the light sources limited - this having so many was tricky to pull off!
Porcini: Thanks, glad you enjoy the refinement of my illustrations. I'm open to a collaboration, but I due have my hands full at the moment with freelance work and studies, so it would have to take a backseat to my current WIP. I'll let you know as soon as I'm available, however. Thanks for the reference photo as well, it helped me incorporate more dynamic and natural lighting which you can see below!
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I revised the lighting further, made the flames brighter and added some bounced light coming to the figures from the torches. Hopefully things look more natural now!
I decided to combine a new illustration with a study on lighting to slow things down. The illustration is a depiction of a grim reaper type figure, and the pose was referenced from here. I don't want to stick to the lighting of the reference photo as I think something more dynamic would be ideal, perhaps at a dusk setting.
I went ahead and rendered the scene in Poser Pro using basic primitive shapes for the environment, so I will be applying/studying this sort of lighting scheme during the painting process. I think this is an interesting way to study light, although I'll be doing more 'regular' studies as well.
Below is the sketch followed by the render. Any feedback on the sketch before I begin painting it in would be most appreciated!
I would suggest learning abit more about how sythe are made and hold together specially since you made the scythe a center of focus.Just a hint they didn't glue the metal piece and the wood together...
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![[Image: geo-art-ref-example-study-jpg.jpg?1550728694]](https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/016/057/724/large/geo-art-ref-example-study-jpg.jpg?1550728694)
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