first finish painting, critique welcome!

[hexo]

here goes guys, my first painting, no refs. nothing fancy design wise, just practicing me rendering skills. I struggle with lighting a lot.





click on the image to enlarge.

[Elmst]

Hi Hexo,

Very nice start. I like that you did a value study first. Some people wear the fact that they used no reference as a badge of honor when the fact is ALL GREAT ARTIST use or have used reference material. The people that can work from memory have spent ALLOT of time studying and have built up an incredible visual library for them to pull from.

Use reference and have fun!

Can't wait to see more.

[hexo]

Hi elmst, thank you for the response. Actually, come to think of it, i used Daarken's chainmail tutorial. I don't know if the chainmail is recognizable in one glance though.
I know great artists use reference but this painting wasn't a "planned" painting. I just started scribbling and the painting just evolved.

The more i look at it and compare to other "tigher" paintings i think the face looks too muddy.

[DoubleThink]

Hey man.

Looks like you're staying too close near the middle of the spctrum with your colors. You've got a lot of grays going on. You should saturate a lot more.

Lighting is indeed really hard, you'll learn it by copying masters and pictures and through life drawing.

I added some crits and a quick messy paintover.
If you're painting digitally, try flipping your canvas once in a while.

Hope that helps

Also,
memorize this picture: The first and 2nd head are the most important. If those aren't correct, don't bother skipping to step 3 or 4, you'll never get it right. Also, Proko on youtube explains the construction of heads and it's features quite well

[hexo]

Hey man.

Looks like you're staying too close near the middle of the spctrum with your colors. You've got a lot of grays going on. You should saturate a lot more.

Lighting is indeed really hard, you'll learn it by copying masters and pictures and through life drawing.

I added some crits and a quick messy paintover.
If you're painting digitally, try flipping your canvas once in a while.

Hope that helps

Also,
memorize this picture: The first and 2nd head are the most important. If those aren't correct, don't bother skipping to step 3 or 4, you'll never get it right. Also, Proko on youtube explains the construction of heads and it's features quite well

thanks for pointing out about the face man, I think that's what you get by using liquify too much to fix your painting. I also get about your point on putting some saturation more into my colors. I promise ill be spending lots of studies on masters and pictures very soon and post it here.

[meat]

I salute your patience in painting the links in his chain mail! If his armor is not shiny due to age and wear, put some signs on the armor that shows age and wear, some stain maybe, or small scratches. Otherwise metal armor are quite reflective and shiny!