12-31-2015, 10:40 AM
Quote:Hi Hedgie,
Thanks for stopping by my sketchbook. You look like you're off to a good start yourself. Your line-work looks great; lots of good gesture and characterization. As far as color and light is concerned; focus primarily on value first. Don't get bogged down in color and details in your studies before you establish the proper relationships between values.
As for the image with the horse: I think that establishing your full range of values as soon as possible will help a lot. It would allow you to set the mood of the piece very definitively, before spending hours rendering something that may not convey the story properly. Usually this is done with a small color study so that you can experiment with a few options quickly and easily.
The characters could also relate to each other more. Right now they each sit on opposite halves of the image. Perhaps you could try changing the position of the horse so that it overlaps with the man. this would also help to move some more color throughout the image. I made a small paint -over to show you what I mean. I'm not sure what the story is, so I'm sure there are many equally valid alternatives to my example. Hope this helps, and keep up the good work.
Thank you so much for the wonderful critique! You're right, I don't spend enough time in the preliminary stage; especially in terms of planning values. I'll have to drop the color studies for now and get some black and white images
Your paint over is extremely helpful! Moving the horse like that makes the image so much better; because it is about them two, not so much about the letter that the soldier is reading. Also the change to the background is simple but really effective! I'm so used to drawing individual characters with no backgrounds I'm kind of lost when putting an illustration together hehe. Thank you again for taking the time to help me out :happy: