StardustLarva's Visual Explorations

[JyonnyNovice]

Hey man, I think it's nice, I could see it was a sculpture coming out of his shell but the connection between the crab and the shell is a bit hard to see right away - having some more / stronger shadows where his neck enters the shell would make it clear. Also if I squint at it, the crustacean thing on the left kind of gets lost a bit with both the background and the statue, so darkening / lightening some stuff to make that crab clearer. The 3D'ness of it, and the forms, perspective and stuff work great though! I know you've been battling with that stuff for a while, so great job ^^ I can't really comment on the content, since your paintings are so out there, and symbolic I guess, but I never know what they are supposed to mean, and this one doesn't bring up anything personally - but that's not a negative thing at all, just different tastes ^^

[Eyliana]

I think what a lot of your paintings miss are defined edges and contrast. And this one has a bit of the same problems. I think you did great on the shell, you can see that there are darker shadows there and harder edges to define it more, which makes it also more recognizable for the viewer. It also helps with giving things shape.
What you can try is making a picture while working on it and translate it into black and white and see if you can still make out what you wanted to paint, if the image is still there.
I do think your last piece is one of the best so far, so keep pushing, you will get there :)

[StardustLarva]

Jon-Thank you! Yes, looking back it could have used darker shadows in places. I'll keep in mind what you suggested for future paintings. 

Eyliana-Thank you for the suggestions, I think thanks to what you and Jon have said, I've started to get more of an idea on what to focus on. 

I've recently thought more about how one's paintings can be stronger if your drawing capabilities are stronger.  Therefore, as well as focusing on studying light and shadow, I've been continuing drawing from life and have also started looking at more resources. I have been working through bits of Keys to Drawing by Bert Dodson, which I feel I have found useful. 

Below is a loosely followed exercise from the book, in which you draw a subject from life, marking the shadows and mid tones with sectioned areas of flat shading, as though one were marking territories on a map. I've found this quite useful for understanding how light hits certain planes on objects.