This looks cool! I think this is my favorite one of yours so far. The lighting is very ambitious. Though color is a matter of taste, I don't think it's oversaturated really. Actually I think you could go a bit brighter with the colors in the mouth area and the hole in the cieling. After all, they are light sources. However, the colors chosen are very disparate. You have kind of blue-green, yellow, and red, all prominent somewhat equally. I would maybe push the hues of those lights closer together so they don't clash. Like make the red more purple, the blue-green more neutral, basically pushing them toward each other on the color wheel. The yellow could go either way. Or alternatively make the yellow more dominant and reduce the other two so there's more a hierarchy of which is brightest and most colorful. It's up to you though.
My real critique is not really to do with the color but how you are handling the lighting. I am not against effects like the bloom around light sources or fog or god rays catching dust in the air etc. But that should all come after the lighting itself is very well established, and it shouldn't disturb the composition. I think in this piece especially you are describing the light sources basically by just literally making light shoot out of them. It would be better in my opinion not to see that, but rather have the viewer understand what the light sources are doing by how they are hitting objects. The bloom and god rays around the light sources is honestly dominating the piece right now, and making it hard to see stuff. and it's also hitting planes that the light source wouldn't reach I think. Like the girl's arm is in front of a bright light, but it seems to bleed right into it. Light can't go around the arm and hit the back of it. we should get a contre jour kind of effect. But I think again it's due to the yellow bloom being extreme. Likewise with the red, that is clearly coming from behind the dragon, but I feel like it's also hitting her butt? Unless I'm misinterpreting, but it's an issue to think about.
This is a sketch of how I might try to do it. It takes away most of the haze, clarifies the lighting. But that's just my 2 cents on the subject, you can apply these things in your own way of course, or go a different direction.
wow @JoesphCow a most righteous critique, you hit on a few areas i do struggle with for sure in over identifying light sources and lacking trust that the vison will come across. Your paintover/sketch is spot on and i will study this for sure.
I did take a few liberties that i even knew at the time was wrong ( light bleeding through her right arm, when should have been in shadow and the red on her backside when it shouldnt be.) I made these in attempt to make her fit into the scene more but i now see that wasnt a great idea and thank you for pointing that out.
again thank you very much for the time you took with your excellent critique
Made a few tweaks here, following some good critiques i tried to push some of the secondary light sources and effects back a bit and made the mouth light source a little more intense. Tweaked the horns to lose the deep black that was distracting. I also i got rid of the wrap around light on her right arm and all (most) of the red reflective light on her bottom.
Comparing the two im liking this direction more and feel like it has a lot more depth.
(01-05-2022, 02:37 PM)CBinnsIllustration Wrote: I did take a few liberties that i even knew at the time was wrong ( light bleeding through her right arm, when should have been in shadow and the red on her backside when it shouldnt be.) I made these in attempt to make her fit into the scene more but i now see that wasnt a great idea and thank you for pointing that out.
again thank you very much for the time you took with your excellent critique
No problem. It's not a terrible idea in terms of making everything part of the same scene, but doing it without respect for the depth makes it seem like all light sources are on the flat picture plane, like they have and x and y axis but no z axis. I like your updated version better. I miss the cool tones a bit but I think the picture just reads a lot cleaner now.
i know what you mean about missing the cool colors, i have had these two sitting side by side for a while now and I keep getting drawn in to the cooler elements of the previous version. but that could just be the differences between viewing on my iPad vs my monitor
Im quite happy with all the other changes. might need to just cool the left hand side down a tad more, i think I also prefer her with a touch more lighting on her hair then put it down for a while, then in a month i will see all the obvious things i hate about it and proceed to vomit, rinse repeat :)
Looking for some inspiration today and doodled some loose thumbs. Gonna take one of these further this weekend, any advise on which one to throw 6-8 hours of my free time on :)
I don't know what going on in 7 but i feel like there something waiting an adventurer to jump on there head.I like dark vibe and the tension so that would be my choose.I got a creepy cave or forest vibe.It a bit similar to the other piece so maybe go with anything but number 7.
I like 4 for the dynamic foreshortning and the camera angle or just the floor not being fully straight. Number 9 would be a nice challenge to see how you tackle the wave at the surface and how you deal with the transparency of the water aswell as reflection and how you deal with the wet fur of the creature.I think it always a nice thing to try take something challenging but at the same time it doesn't mean it well made so it a balance of pushing the thumbnail further and establish where you are with your skill.Pick one but it doesn't mean it ready yet Trying different camera angle, color scheme,pose,cloth,time of the day,season etc.
I know you can spend an eternity on thumbnailling and everything but as you probably know illustration are worth investing a good portion in thumbnailling. It a safety net. I find to many artist do themselve a diservice by skipping or not showing this phase in there sketchbook and they miss the opportunity to interact with the fan and the community and not only that i find it hurt the artistic process at large because it set an example.I think the problem is we see to many artist doing video where they draw full illustration and they skip over the thumbnaling phase but what we don't necessarly know is how many speed painting they have done in the background.I think honestly that investing in drawing quick thumbnail probably teach you more about the fundamental and problem solving than any long form illustration will so i recommend them to any newcomer.I sure can't tell how many drawing you did before coming here so i encourage artist who are pretty new here to draw alot first(doesn't mean going sloppy just looser) and then do longer piece in between to test skill.Remember in school there study,mini quiz and exam and so on be sure to loop around the different level if you want to see your skill improve consitently.
Cheers guys! Appreciate the responses :) I think you guys convinced me to try 9. Darktiste you are right the water poses many challenges I’m not 100% comfortable with but let’s go for it.
@darktiste well put I couldn’t have said it better myself. Having been on this art journey for close to 40 years now I still learn something with every piece i create. Pushing the boundaries is what it is all about for sure. But please keep in mind, and i would imagine a lot of artist on here are similar, in the fact that they dont post their entire process for every piece. For every thumbnail I show, there may be 20 I didn’t and for every initial idea there may (very likely) have been 4 or 5 sitting in the trash can. We are our worst and best critics at the same time. For me with forums like this and CA back in the day having knowledgeable artists it is a vital tool that might just provide that small thing that was missing with a certain piece for a. seasoned artist or the foundational support for a budding or emerging artist.
Art is a complex subject and so very subjective we just have to keep that in mind. If We all draw or painted an apple the same way from the same angle in the same light it would be quite boring, the key is have fun and just create something. Keep up the great feedback you provide on the forum it is very much enlightening, helpful and appreciated!
Sunday funday! Having some fun with The Bone Dog Ferry. Still need to spend more time on the texturing on the water and fur but pleased with it so far. Considering the lighting I wanted with a backlit moon lighting and foreground under light From some luminescent fish I know there is a few improvement areas. I know more atmospheric light the would be bouncing all over the place with the moon and water, so I’m gonna revisit this with some fresh eyes later on.
Doodled out a few more thumbs this morning for my next piece, with a couple duplicates from my last set that I still don’t hate., surprisingly.
My initial thought was 3 as I have yet to tackle a snow/arctic scene. But does anything stick out to any of ya’ll that would be fun too? That being said I’m hoping to flesh out a few of these. As always crits are welcome!
I see a mix of 5 and 9 some kind of action scene in the jungle.Where the hydra is going berserk breaking everything in is path and ''jane'' as no choose but to ''parcours'' around the canopy like a tarzan chase scene.What can i say i got a tooth for epic proportion monster.
I am still interest by n.7 but instead of what i would suppose would be ruin imagine something really sci-fi i don't know if you got any interest for this kind of content those.If you don't like the sci-fi approch you might think of a secret underground cult something like of necropolis in route to hell.
I really like how the dragon piece turned out; the changes make it feel much more grounded (I have to say it looks even more like a Frazetta now)
Dog ferry is looking cool also; I only have a general critique, which is that it doesn't quite read as a moonlight scene to me, because the values (in HSV scale) go all the way from 0 to 100, the brightest being from the moon itself. To give it a more realistic feeling one would keep the values constrained to the middle range. This is largely a stylistic choice though.
My favorites from your latest thumbnails are 2, 3, and 5, though I'm also fond of 7. 3 and 5 because of their simplicity, and 2 because I looked for the frog for 10 seconds before realizing that it made up the whole foreground. I don't know if that was intentional but it's a delightful surprise.
@Darktiste you nailed it with the visualizations of mixing those 2 and your take gives me even more inspiration to develop them and mix the static and dynamic. This gives me something to think about so thank you for that :) I agree with you on 7, I initially envisioned a lost city of hell-bound devil worshipers, but never thought to make it sci-fi. I would love to give that a go also to push my comfort zone a bit more.
@PubicEnemy thanks! i'm glad you liked the Dragon piece. it might my personal favorite so far. Your take on the Bone dog is spot on. I was 100% comfortable with the moonlight (having a propensity to use too much white. ~facepalm~)and to swap the primary light would have helped a lot. I might do a revision with this in mind.
yeah for the frog piece I would like to hide him just well enough in the piece to make you look for him just a little longer than you should, but not sure if I would pull it off. I think you both convinced me an I'll take a stab at 5 first and see what we can do about incorporating some Background mayhem to contrast the sexy static foreground.
stay tuned and thanks for the advice and thoughts!
Ok how about a little compromise courtesy of Darktiste putting it in my head. This is a lot rougher than I would normally share (besides thumbnails of course) but wanted to share a bit more of my preliminary process. Any crits before I throw some time at this one?
I feel like the tree should go in the foreground it missing depth because it leak branch and i think the foreground is a bit to empty of vegetation where the tree touch the ground what going on there isn't it suppose to be a jungle?I see the little skull story in the tree but i don't understand the connection and it not working for me but i am still interest to see where that would go.For jane I feel like she should be leaping at us just to add to the savage storytelling creating an overlap with her basilisk to link the two together in essense.If anything the only thing for that i could suggest is to look for reference to push it probably looking a something like acrobat and rope from refrence such as le cirque du soleil.For the cloth i think something a little bit more original than the classic tarzan look would push you to find bit outside of the cliché already seen costume.
I like the look of it but I think the sky should take up more of the picture. The background trees being up so high makes it feel like we're sinking into the tree canopy a bit rather than soaring above it. Depends on what you're going for, of course.
@Darktiste i can appreciate the idea of her leaping, my thought was for her to be more posing than active in this one but we can always see how it looks with a more protruding pose. The thought behind the skeleton was a darker one, I wanted the Skelton to be Tarzan… Jane took over the jungle with her beast and stuffed him in this tree. I know the cliche outfit is dated but im a fan of the old Tarzan films and simplified wardrobe.
@PubicEnemy I was 50/50 trees or clouds and went with the clouds to give the scene more height as I agree with you.
This is the first rev of this one, my first instinct is to add some elements to the lower left quadrant. Perhaps some chimp friends admiring the view. Any thoughts?
I really like what you've done with the texture and the bit of color variety on the basilisk's skin, definitely an interesting effect. I guess it would be a bit too late to change this much but I think that the relationship between Jane and the basilisk is not entirely clear. I think it's a combination of the basilisk having its mouth open and being behind Jane where it could be interpreted that she's unaware of the creature behind her. A physical point of contact with the basilisk would probably help, if she had one hand on its snout or was riding it or something like that, showing that the two are on the same side. Maybe something to consider next time since the image is pretty far along
