why would a centaur need three umbilical cords during gestation?
I figure the centaur womb has three connections to the baby either for supplying 3 different nutrients, or for redundancy. Or the centaur is parasitic and has two extra umbilical cords which reach out of the mother to attach itself onto something else... *shrug*
The three navals going up into the chest cavity freaks me out. It just doesn't make sense. there would be no room for his other organs. If anything, I'd think they would start where the naval actually is on a human and go down.
he's got plenty of room for organs in the horse/goat part of his body though.
Notoast:
Flipping the thing to look at the guys head, hair, and side of the face are too flat, along with the neck.
He has no lower eyelid, and they eyesocket in general could be lowered. The chin looks a bit too sharp.
The angle of the cheekbone seems far too sharp, along with the ear which looks elven. The hair is also problematic in that you use long brushstrokes from the points at the top of the head to the base of the skull which read as single long hairs when the cut looks shortcropped.
I don't mean to be harsh, I just love the piece and needed to articulate what was seemed wrong for my own benefit, just cause it looks so great otherwise. Very nice.
So I've been working on this painting. It's in acrylic. And I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on how to handle the clouds better, and overall suggestions.
Notoast:
Flipping the thing to look at the guys head, hair, and side of the face are too flat, along with the neck.
He has no lower eyelid, and they eyesocket in general could be lowered. The chin looks a bit too sharp.
The angle of the cheekbone seems far too sharp, along with the ear which looks elven. The hair is also problematic in that you use long brushstrokes from the points at the top of the head to the base of the skull which read as single long hairs when the cut looks shortcropped.
I don't mean to be harsh, I just love the piece and needed to articulate what was seemed wrong for my own benefit, just cause it looks so great otherwise. Very nice.
Something about clouds and the sky that Wakkawa once told me was that always search for reference even if you do something that doesn't nessecearily exist. Look what kind of texture the clouds have in general and try to implement that into the painting.
Overlord: Emphasize a few more perspective suggestions. The cloud "floor" is pretty uniform in the size of cloudy bumps. Make them smaller/busier as they approach the horizon line. It may be helpful to put a higher atmospheric contrast on that cloud floor, most importantly making the clouds at the horizon line a bit hazier, indistinguishable, and take in the color of the light. As for the three clouds in the sky, they are all too much alike. Use overlapping to your advantage. It is a great visual cue for depth. Yay for complimentary colors! I love the two mountainous forms in the back.
Thanks for the suggestions no_toast and NeoRedXIII. I'm going to take your guys suggestions and I'll probably update in a couple days of how its going.
Something I've been working on on and off for a while:
Hope this doesn't break any scrolls
Nice piece you have here. My only thoughts on this is that I find the arrows to be distracting. You already achieved the spiral in the quality and direction of line in the background. I think they can speak for themselves without needing the arrows. The simple flat shapes also aren't helping the three-dimensionality the portraits have. The + symbol, though, I don't mind as much as the arrows for some reason.
Was it wrong that my first thought was "batteries" when I saw the +? Haha.
I kinda like the "flat shapes" sorta adds to the art nouveau-ish look of the whole thing. Haha and I guess in a way the battery thing could work and toast could probably tell us but "positive charge" works well with the painting
i'm doing cover art for a bi-annual literary journal with the theme "heroes and villians"
my first idea was just some boring generic hero chick:
then i got the idea to have a little kid in super hero jammies on the front with "heroes" written in like crayon, and then his bitchy sister on the back with villains spelled wrong also in crayon:
sorry for the poor quality, my scanner died so i had to use my camera.
i'm doing cover art for a bi-annual literary journal with the theme "heroes and villians"
my first idea was just some boring generic hero chick:
then i got the idea to have a little kid in super hero jammies on the front with "heroes" written in like crayon, and then his bitchy sister on the back with villains spelled wrong also in crayon:
sorry for the poor quality, my scanner died so i had to use my camera.
those're pretty swank ma'am.
What'ld be kinda cool is to give them alter egos and show them battling it out.
(of course from the boys point of view he'ld be the hero, and she'ld be the villain... and vice versa)
I only say this 'cause the first girl you drew looks a little like his sister
not too proud of this one, but it's a doodle, eh? i was distracted by all the boobs and vags i was seeing; my clockwork orange cherry has finally been popped o_o
EDIT: Beav, that little boy's dog is marvelous. just look at those little paw-toes!
Illustration I'm working on for the book I finished writing. Does this look too dark for print? How much should I lighten this while still keeping it a somewhat darker picture? (still very unfinished at the moment)
so people had a point about the black-shading thing
Because now grey-on-grey bald-dude looks a lot less like he's had holes punched through his skull.
Of course I can never admit to this because Ori would never let me hear the end of it.
EDIT: Might as well post this one as well and see if anyone can recommend how I should be doing hair/beards.
I think the beard is shaping up fairly well but the hair is really suffering because I stupidly tried to add it after rather than during the drawing of the head and so the whole thing looks a bit misshapen- proportions are kind of getting to me...
@edcrab: Are you using references? Right now you need to do a butt load of observational studies from references. The anatomical flaws are too numerous to just list off.
@sharky t: If that's gonna be coloured you need to give it some smoother lines, use one long continuous line instead of "petting" the line along like a sketch. There's a few proportion issues as well, the head is way too big for his body. I suggest you work on the human figure by studying from life.
don't use straight-up black when you're rendering forms, most of the time it reads as a hole, especially when the background is black
of course, it ain't true all the time, but it's a good exercise
Because it is my nature to be contrary.
The trouble is not whether there is or isn't black. The trouble is the understanding of form and light and shade, in rendering and design, isn't there yet. Without that understanding, yes, the use of black was not well-considered and didn't conform to reality. Not using black may temporarily mitigate that problem, but will not actually solve it in either the short or long term. It's a half-ass solution, like Liefeld cutting off people's feet instead of learning how to draw them.
But, like the solution to that problem wouldn't be to just throw a bunch of feet into every panel, it doesn't make sense to say you should take up using black all the time either. Whether it is appropriate or not- and this goes for everything, black, white, yellow, polka dots, lights, cars, figures, cocks, walruses, etc.- depends entirely on the specific situation- the style, the lighting situation, the desired mood, etc. etc. Saying "use black" or "don't use black" as a general rule would be entirely arbitrary, and has nothing to do with any sort of actual, physical reality.
I realize that you did qualify your statement with "it ain't true all the time", and maybe you did not intend for it to come across as strongly as I took it, but I really fear people latching on to "rules" like this because they start following them (often more because they are easy to remember and apply, regardless of whether they actually make any sense) and then never think to question it, crippling their advancement as artists.
Pet peeve and all that. Gets under my skin, especially considering I use black all the goddamned time and very few people have ever really complained about it.
@Ed: I would recommend taking a step back and doing some lighting studies from life. Throw some simple objects under a desk lamp in a dark room and observe how the light reacts, draw or paint the tones as accurately as possible- take your time with it. Once you get a handle of basic lighting on objects with one light source, you will be in a much better position to make lighting choices on more complex ones.
Try to avoid using small, extra strokes in your paintings, in both versions of the head painting you have a lot of scribbly junk, making it look like the face has been gouged in to. Try not to use 10 scribbly strokes with a tiny brush where 1 stroke with a big brush will do. It'll save you time and keep your eye on the big picture instead of mincing around little patches of it.
Also, some studies of skulls from ref are probably in order, to improve the basic form of the heads you are drawing.
@ DeeLock and Bacon: cheers I think it's a given then that I should dig out some references and go back to basics. I mean, I'm beyond the stage where my people aren't recognisably meant to be people, but screwing around with different styles isn't doing me any favours.
MustangArbiter of Unpopular OpinionsRegistered Userregular
edited March 2008
Great concept, road rage of epic proportions, made me smile. The cars ain't too bad, just the perspective on the wheels that really need work.
All in all though, I likes it!
AoB: you're right, but i think that it's a good guideline for beginning artists since black shading often (often!) flattens out the image, resulting in a lot of 'I CAN'T FIGURE OUT WHAT'S WRONG ARGH'
at least, that's my experience from introductory painting class. shading with black works fine, but saying 'don't shade with black' forces the artist to consider alternate forms of shading using colour theory or other methods, which is good practice & ultimately stimulates growth.
AoB: you're right, but i think that it's a good guideline for beginning artists since black shading often (often!) flattens out the image, resulting in a lot of 'I CAN'T FIGURE OUT WHAT'S WRONG ARGH'
at least, that's my experience from introductory painting class. shading with black works fine, but saying 'don't shade with black' forces the artist to consider alternate forms of shading using colour theory or other methods, which is good practice & ultimately stimulates growth.
You are conflating grayscale painting with color painting. The "don't use black" statement in question implies completely different things depending on what you're talking about.
Specifically, saying "don't use black to shade" when talking about a grayscale painting makes no sense at all, since the entire thing is literally defined by how much black there is in a given spot.
While I'm on this subject, people need to stop saying "don't paint on a white background" in regards to grayscale images.
Well to be fair I think the discussion originally arose due to my habit of using pure black for dense shadows and thus making everyone look like I'd punched holes clean through parts of their anatomy...
I bet the statement "don't use pure black if you're only just learning to draw because what the hell do you think you're doing oh god my eyes" would've been less controversial Ori
Posts
I figure the centaur womb has three connections to the baby either for supplying 3 different nutrients, or for redundancy. Or the centaur is parasitic and has two extra umbilical cords which reach out of the mother to attach itself onto something else... *shrug*
he's got plenty of room for organs in the horse/goat part of his body though.
Flickr | Facebook | Classifieds | GigPosters | Twitter | Blog
Flipping the thing to look at the guys head, hair, and side of the face are too flat, along with the neck.
He has no lower eyelid, and they eyesocket in general could be lowered. The chin looks a bit too sharp.
The angle of the cheekbone seems far too sharp, along with the ear which looks elven. The hair is also problematic in that you use long brushstrokes from the points at the top of the head to the base of the skull which read as single long hairs when the cut looks shortcropped.
I don't mean to be harsh, I just love the piece and needed to articulate what was seemed wrong for my own benefit, just cause it looks so great otherwise. Very nice.
Many thanks for this, crits are always welcome!
@Overlord
Something about clouds and the sky that Wakkawa once told me was that always search for reference even if you do something that doesn't nessecearily exist. Look what kind of texture the clouds have in general and try to implement that into the painting.
Flickr | Facebook | Classifieds | GigPosters | Twitter | Blog
Nice piece you have here. My only thoughts on this is that I find the arrows to be distracting. You already achieved the spiral in the quality and direction of line in the background. I think they can speak for themselves without needing the arrows. The simple flat shapes also aren't helping the three-dimensionality the portraits have. The + symbol, though, I don't mind as much as the arrows for some reason.
Was it wrong that my first thought was "batteries" when I saw the +? Haha.
Yeah that was my first reaction to it also.
Tumblr Behance Carbonmade PAAC on FB
BFBC2
My Portfolio Site
my first idea was just some boring generic hero chick:
then i got the idea to have a little kid in super hero jammies on the front with "heroes" written in like crayon, and then his bitchy sister on the back with villains spelled wrong also in crayon:
sorry for the poor quality, my scanner died so i had to use my camera.
totp
Just screwing around.
Tumblr Twitter
those're pretty swank ma'am.
What'ld be kinda cool is to give them alter egos and show them battling it out.
(of course from the boys point of view he'ld be the hero, and she'ld be the villain... and vice versa)
I only say this 'cause the first girl you drew looks a little like his sister
I have no idea what to do for a background. Should I leave it as is?
EDIT: Beav, that little boy's dog is marvelous. just look at those little paw-toes!
Tam, that reminds me of Lore, that ashley wood comic. But dirt bikes and shotguns tend to do that. Cool.
Because now grey-on-grey bald-dude looks a lot less like he's had holes punched through his skull.
Of course I can never admit to this because Ori would never let me hear the end of it.
EDIT: Might as well post this one as well and see if anyone can recommend how I should be doing hair/beards.
I think the beard is shaping up fairly well but the hair is really suffering because I stupidly tried to add it after rather than during the drawing of the head and so the whole thing looks a bit misshapen- proportions are kind of getting to me...
here's my picture of ryu done in oc that will be coloured in photoshop soon... whaddya think?
The Scoundrel & The Bastard
My Comics Thread
@sharky t: If that's gonna be coloured you need to give it some smoother lines, use one long continuous line instead of "petting" the line along like a sketch. There's a few proportion issues as well, the head is way too big for his body. I suggest you work on the human figure by studying from life.
Because it is my nature to be contrary.
The trouble is not whether there is or isn't black. The trouble is the understanding of form and light and shade, in rendering and design, isn't there yet. Without that understanding, yes, the use of black was not well-considered and didn't conform to reality. Not using black may temporarily mitigate that problem, but will not actually solve it in either the short or long term. It's a half-ass solution, like Liefeld cutting off people's feet instead of learning how to draw them.
But, like the solution to that problem wouldn't be to just throw a bunch of feet into every panel, it doesn't make sense to say you should take up using black all the time either. Whether it is appropriate or not- and this goes for everything, black, white, yellow, polka dots, lights, cars, figures, cocks, walruses, etc.- depends entirely on the specific situation- the style, the lighting situation, the desired mood, etc. etc. Saying "use black" or "don't use black" as a general rule would be entirely arbitrary, and has nothing to do with any sort of actual, physical reality.
I realize that you did qualify your statement with "it ain't true all the time", and maybe you did not intend for it to come across as strongly as I took it, but I really fear people latching on to "rules" like this because they start following them (often more because they are easy to remember and apply, regardless of whether they actually make any sense) and then never think to question it, crippling their advancement as artists.
Pet peeve and all that. Gets under my skin, especially considering I use black all the goddamned time and very few people have ever really complained about it.
@Ed: I would recommend taking a step back and doing some lighting studies from life. Throw some simple objects under a desk lamp in a dark room and observe how the light reacts, draw or paint the tones as accurately as possible- take your time with it. Once you get a handle of basic lighting on objects with one light source, you will be in a much better position to make lighting choices on more complex ones.
Try to avoid using small, extra strokes in your paintings, in both versions of the head painting you have a lot of scribbly junk, making it look like the face has been gouged in to. Try not to use 10 scribbly strokes with a tiny brush where 1 stroke with a big brush will do. It'll save you time and keep your eye on the big picture instead of mincing around little patches of it.
Also, some studies of skulls from ref are probably in order, to improve the basic form of the heads you are drawing.
Twitter
Twitter
No I can't draw cars.
All in all though, I likes it!
at least, that's my experience from introductory painting class. shading with black works fine, but saying 'don't shade with black' forces the artist to consider alternate forms of shading using colour theory or other methods, which is good practice & ultimately stimulates growth.
You are conflating grayscale painting with color painting. The "don't use black" statement in question implies completely different things depending on what you're talking about.
Specifically, saying "don't use black to shade" when talking about a grayscale painting makes no sense at all, since the entire thing is literally defined by how much black there is in a given spot.
While I'm on this subject, people need to stop saying "don't paint on a white background" in regards to grayscale images.
I bet the statement "don't use pure black if you're only just learning to draw because what the hell do you think you're doing oh god my eyes" would've been less controversial Ori