Digital painting critique

[jinno20]

Having worked 15 hours on this piece I could finally say it's finished as I don't think of anything else to add or polish. I'm fairly new to rendering a drawing and wanted some advice or critique to keep improving my skills.

[darktiste]

Well if that took you 15 hour to come to the conclusion that this was the best you could do than so be it.Personally do i think this should take 15 hour no.10 hour no. 5 hour no. 3 hour that more likely atleast for what i see here. If this take you 15 hour to do it hard to tell you what you are doing wrong exept that you are ''over rendering''(more like unsure) and have no clue when to stop.Most likely you are pushing pixel as some say meaning you don't understand how to organize and plan where you want the illustration to go.

As for what i see here that as nothing to do with render but to me is way more important is that i believe you are avoiding perpective but i suggest to avoid asking for critic if you don't have anything specific to address in the case here you ask about render...realistically do you need someone to tell you it look like a rock?If it look like a rock that all it really matter no?Rendering is just good observation and application of light principle and no body can observe for you or make decision for you so rendering is very much a style.

But there isn't much to really critic let be honest if anything it a rock... just draw rock... like i don't see a more logical answers to how to learn to render.Draw different type, different lightning find way to draw rock but don't try to make something pretty just for the sake of making something pretty if it to learn to render...

Developping the ability to be self critic to a certain degree is important for example would it take realistically 15 hour to draw this? No there is something fundamentally wrong about the way you go about it. Probably to little referencing of real life rock can make the work more of a guess work than anything or using brush that are microscopic can result in enormous amount of time being wasted.

For now i think the important thing is to address some of the reason this took you 15 hour.I can't do this for yourself completely as any work require a certain amount of honesty toward yourself when the work is done in privacy.Honestly the best thing you could do really is go into the physical world and face the critic and by that i mean have people you can call peer or mentor to critic the drawing you do as often and necessary as possible... else you won't be able to understand how to self critic and this mean you spend alot of time unable to move on because you just stare at the drawing perplex about what next decision to make logically.When i say physical world i mean that it better if someone can observe the way you work because it not just what we do it how we do it that determine how much time we spend and i think you are in situation where you need to learn to save time.Because avoiding loosing time is the difference between getting the result you want and getting frustrated and accomplishing little to no work.

But if you ask for critic is probably that you are not at the point where you understand what wrong or you are just not yet to the point where you are honest about the way you look at the work and self critic is fairly easy but you won't learn alot about self critic if you never get to a point where you understand the flaw in what you do.So don't be so quick to ask critic learn to see your own flaw and seek help when you get stuck.

[JosephCow]

Hello! This is a cool concept, I like the concept of this interesting massive rock formation against a super simple and desolate landscape. I wouldn't worry about it taking 15 hours. I've easily spent that and more on stuff that didn't merit it, and didn't even turn out good. But that's how you learn, though. Were there things you could have done more efficiently, and was there a way someone could have done this and more in the same time? Probably, but it's fine.

My first thought on it is that the horizon is super low. That's not an issue, but if our eye level is that low, we should be seeing the underside of the rock formation. There's really no way around that. It could be how you have it, but then we would have to raise the horizon. You don't need 2pt perspective to draw this scene, but I like to put a grid on sometimes just to get a sense of space. I think with it you can see the rock is not really following perspective, and it would be more interesting to me if it were looked up at a bit rather than just straight on.



Besides that, I think you could really up the contrast, and make a big difference between light and shadow. A desert scene in full sunlight absolutely calls for it. Adding temperature difference in the shadow where the light from the sand bounces into it also for me improves the image. It makes it feel like the light is very bright, and hot, so it starts to give information about how we should feel looking at the concept beyond just what it is.

In terms of the design of the rock itself, I would say practice designing interesting shapes of shadow and light. Always paint with form, as if it's a sculpture you can carve into, starting with you biggest forms. Like this is basically a cylinder, with a big dome on top of it. If I can get that to read then I can start to cut into it and make it more fun to look at, and that's kind of what you need to do to level up. It's not anything to do with rocks specifically, it's just about giving things a sense of volume and interest

[darktiste]

-JosephCow 
I like what you did to with the reflected light in the shadow it make what might be a boring scene into something that as visual interest atleast to an artist like me just because it not just one solid shadow it as contrast and that part of creating interest in my opinion.It certainly take a certain time to get to the point of adding light to what i would say we generally think as dark and only that.It just small thing like that if they were not added you would feel less harmony and flow to the piece.

Light is a very important part of rendering because it not only create mood it marry the color once your eye start to pick up on the concept of color proximity.

That shadow is also kinda smart because it help to anchor the rock to the scene and it create a path for the eye because of the pretty empty left side that move us toward the rock mass and since it contrasted it not just the shape that create the flow it the contrast aswell.Double use of principle to create flow intentionally or not is atleast something worth mentioning obviously not necessary but i guess it doesn't hurt.

[jinno20]

Hello! This is a cool concept, I like the concept of this interesting massive rock formation against a super simple and desolate landscape. I wouldn't worry about it taking 15 hours. I've easily spent that and more on stuff that didn't merit it, and didn't even turn out good. But that's how you learn, though. Were there things you could have done more efficiently, and was there a way someone could have done this and more in the same time? Probably, but it's fine.

My first thought on it is that the horizon is super low. That's not an issue, but if our eye level is that low, we should be seeing the underside of the rock formation. There's really no way around that. It could be how you have it, but then we would have to raise the horizon. You don't need 2pt perspective to draw this scene, but I like to put a grid on sometimes just to get a sense of space. I think with it you can see the rock is not really following perspective, and it would be more interesting to me if it were looked up at a bit rather than just straight on.


Besides that, I think you could really up the contrast, and make a big difference between light and shadow. A desert scene in full sunlight absolutely calls for it. Adding temperature difference in the shadow where the light from the sand bounces into it also for me improves the image. It makes it feel like the light is very bright, and hot, so it starts to give information about how we should feel looking at the concept beyond just what it is.

In terms of the design of the rock itself, I would say practice designing interesting shapes of shadow and light. Always paint with form, as if it's a sculpture you can carve into, starting with you biggest forms. Like this is basically a cylinder, with a big dome on top of it. If I can get that to read then I can start to cut into it and make it more fun to look at, and that's kind of what you need to do to level up. It's not anything to do with rocks specifically, it's just about giving things a sense of volume and interest

Hey Thanks Joseph! This paintover was exactly how I wanted to envision it! This is so sick and I realized I've so much more to learn. Those are really helpful pointers. I didn't really considered the underside of the rock as I wanted it to look massive in a really great distance and focused too much into that. I actually tried showing it off whilst im trying to build the initial shapes but for some reason it looked off so I scrapped the idea. I feel so overwhelmed knowing that there's so much I needed to oractice even after learning/studying extensively for 4 years. I guess I'm doing it the wrong way. As for forms I'm really already confident to construct anything from just my imagination with also a little help from reference but the problem is that I can't apply light onto something imaginary, maybe basic shading but to really feel the sense of believability is what I really have trouble doing. Maybe life drawing could help? 

[dimensional-knight]

It's okay, it is a lot to learn. But if you break it up in very small chunks it's manageable!

I have a small tip for lighting: Render the volume as if there was a soft frontal-top light, thinking of it at first not as a complex shape but as if it were a lowpoly object. You don't need to bake the full light setup into your initial painting. Prioritize the macro shapes, the larger planes, and once you get a sense of where your planes are it gets easier to cast lights.

Scroll down to the end of this old post and check the bottom paintover for an example. Knowing the volume made throwing side light easy.

And welcome to Crimson Daggers!

[darktiste]

To understand light you need to understand plane shift which is simply to imagine the surface relation to the light source for each plane change you assign a value to that relation. You can imagine the surface of an object as if it was a chest board texture wrapping around the form if it can help you imagine that every plane is seperate but also act as a whole .

The hardest part might be to stay consistent or to get the right value and it become harder when you get more organic shape because now you are not just dealing with flat surface so when you get a plane change the value change isn't as step as would be an hard edge form such as a cube but with softer shape you gotta adjust the control of the value to be much more gradual in general.That why it a great exercise to draw soft vs hard edge rock it might be boring but it a really good subject matter for form study when you think of it the subject matter of rock as a great range between hard edge rock and soft rock and you know what? Rock are free so just pick a few and draw them if you find the idea of drawing rock worth the shot try to pick them up from different place and remember to have variety if you wanna try it out...

[JosephCow]

Hey Thanks Joseph! This paintover was exactly how I wanted to envision it! This is so sick and I realized I've so much more to learn. Those are really helpful pointers. I didn't really considered the underside of the rock as I wanted it to look massive in a really great distance and focused too much into that. I actually tried showing it off whilst im trying to build the initial shapes but for some reason it looked off so I scrapped the idea. I feel so overwhelmed knowing that there's so much I needed to oractice even after learning/studying extensively for 4 years. I guess I'm doing it the wrong way. As for forms I'm really already confident to construct anything from just my imagination with also a little help from reference but the problem is that I can't apply light onto something imaginary, maybe basic shading but to really feel the sense of believability is what I really have trouble doing. Maybe life drawing could help? 

Yeah no problem! I think with how the rock looks, it could work as you've drawn it if we are seeing it from a distance. But you have to remember that the horizon represents our eye level, so though it does depend on how far away the rock is, I would think it would look more natural a third of the way up the canvas or so.

4 years is a decent amount of time, but art has a huge learning curve, it's something that really does take years of practice before a payoff. So keep going, you might find with a couple more pieces to the puzzle everything will start to come together. In terms of doing it wrong, i haven't seen anything else from you so idk. But it would probably help to do some study of lighting and modeling staying close to reference. Life drawing, big yes. Light follows certain laws, so if you can figure out how it works more in depth, you can use it to make imaginary forms look convincing by sculpting them using light/dark to make it look like planes turning in space. But more than that, the lighting is what makes compositions fun and interesting so for environment stuff especially you wanna be solid.

I think painting a lot from life/reference was really good for me, but also doing form study from imagination helped a lot. Like drawing different forms in space and making them interact, constructing cast shadows, trying to logic your way through different lighting scenarios with basic forms like in darktiste's example. The only issue is that it's hard to know if it's right or wrong without someone critiquing it, since there's no reference. But it at least helps to figure out your blind spots, like you realize you don't actually know how something would work, and then you can investigate and find out how to do it. You learn more by solving specific problems that way I think than doing more general practice. People learn in different ways, however.

[JosephCow]

Scroll down to the end of this old post and check the bottom paintover for an example. Knowing the volume made throwing side light easy.

i don't think that link is working, and i wanna look at it lol

[dimensional-knight]

Scroll down to the end of this old post and check the bottom paintover for an example. Knowing the volume made throwing side light easy.

i don't think that link is working, and i wanna look at it lol

Ah damn, it seems the copy part of copy-and-paste didn't went through when I selected the URL. Fixed, thanks! It's a super plain paintover, I've done better ones on planes-to-light approach in the past but got none up over here in CD I could point at. :<

Very nice critique btw, your bounced light game is so strong!