David's Sketchbook ;)

[Fedodika]

Hey Dev, so the latest piece is interesting, I think the biggest issue is a sense of depth.

So, when i first look at the image i see three different objects, the girl (with the rock underneath) the trees to the right, and the castle in the distance. If you were to put a block of flat tone to cover each of those things, their sizes would be quite close, hence killing a sense of size difference. I love the mood though and the colors are killer.

So you have two options here to improve that. Either make the girl WAAAY smaller to show how vast the castle is or the landscape. Or make the castle waay smaller and in the distance to show a great distance between her and it. Also try to vary the size of the trees, especially the one on the left, as they feel very cramped in the composition, maybe add more canvas to the left side and have some more breathing room from those trees.

Same with the clouds you know, make some tiny, some medium, some huge. I mean you're doing that but make it very intentional and push stuff, try to work in flowing lines and C or S curves in the clouds, like see how the clouds "move" on the canvas in a line that flows. Some of your clouds are very close to doing that but they seem very stumpy and while they have a cool texture and color, they don't feel like they're "moving."

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c...ntains.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c...GA2134.jpg


Hell even pull up some nice landscapes and draw lines on top of it with a strong color on a layer to find how they use flowing line in all composition!

http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/sites/de...60_dc2.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/7d/5d/2e/7d5d2...ntings.jpg


As for the ice and fire first one, I'd try to play around with the values more as pretty much everything is a midtone or slightly dark and theres only one big highlight, which is essentially the best thing going for it.

The nudey girl in the woods has the same issue with value placement, she really meshes into the background and only reads so far as her silhouette. Like you could peak the blue tone in the distance behind her in more a v shape so she reads better. All this stuff is hard to explain...

I'd reccomend getting your pencil and paper out and give the color studies a break for a while. instead do value studies of these master paintings you're into with pencil and paper and take notes and really think about why they're placing this and that there. It's something I'm seeing is a consistent issue in these latest things is just values being too samey or not serving the composition.

and do very tiny thumbnail studies, dont spend long on them and try to break things down into simpler and simpler blocks of tone. The more you simplify the better, no detail, just blocks and shapes

Also read through this if you haven't and take lots of notes! the tone part late in it could give you some good ideas. The more you study, you'll naturally see more patterns in placing just the right amounts of mids highs and low value, but FOCUS ON VALUE and shapes, give color a break and see what happens ;)

https://illustrationage.files.wordpress....ration.pdf