looking cool. id say, if you havnt already, try to plan what exactly the centre ball is going to be. im assuming you'll be adding texture (whether custom brushes or photos) so rather than relying on texture to make up the image, you have a solid understanding and plan of what you're wanting to draw. Then when (and if) you do start adding texture elements, you might make some 'happy' mistakes.
umm... the centre ball is undecided. The idea is the dragons/ axolotl's are coming out of them and swiming around it forming it. I was thinking of either making it into like a glass glowing orb or maybe more of a black hole, well a while and red hole so add swirl marks. I dont think it needs to much texture as its like an underwater sort of scape but i was going to add some slight scales, like fish scales adding some luminance to the skin
I think the grass looks a little overly saturated compared to the rest of the image. I notice you're using some blurring and a lot of blending of your brushes. While I won't say NEVER use these, I don't think they're helping here. If anything they should be used as a last resort--and sparingly--in digital painting. These things tend to come off as gimmicky like lens flare rather than actually helping.
That said, it'd be nice to see you actually finish something. You have like 10 unfinished pieces in this thread and you just keep jumping from piece to piece.
That said, it'd be nice to see you actually finish something. You have like 10 unfinished pieces in this thread and you just keep jumping from piece to piece.
I disagree. Hes learning with every piece. At that point, why work to finish something when after critique you learn the foundation is faulty?
Honestly I think you should focus more on fundamentals (sketching, form, anatomy, light and shadow, etc) than on these ambitious paintings in the first place. Don't get me wrong, I would never tell you to NOT try and paint something, I just think you'd be better served working on improving your foundation skills.
I think the grass looks a little overly saturated compared to the rest of the image. I notice you're using some blurring and a lot of blending of your brushes. While I won't say NEVER use these, I don't think they're helping here. If anything they should be used as a last resort--and sparingly--in digital painting. These things tend to come off as gimmicky like lens flare rather than actually helping.
That said, it'd be nice to see you actually finish something. You have like 10 unfinished pieces in this thread and you just keep jumping from piece to piece.
Hey mate. Thanks for the feedback. The reason the drawing is blurry is I tried something with the axolotl drawing which was drawing with soft airbrushes to get my form and weight before adding sharpness and detail. It worked well the first time I think. Basically using the soft brushes give me a few bases to build of. One is I draw out the image without detail as it forces me to do so and it allows me to see weights and colours better before I go in with a sharp brush and add detail and hard edges. This is only a sketch so far and I was looking for comments mostly on form. I know the grass is really green compared to the rest but I thought I would have more light on the baby and less on the adult dino to imply depth.
I know what you mean about finishing a drawing. I'm finding it hard to finish drawings because as is said after critique I realise they dont work. I think what I'm currently doing is helping me improve as I am learning to plan more from the basics and learning allot from feedback to do with layout and colour choices from people on this forum. There are some parts in that axolotl drawing on the previous page I really like, such as some of the fish skin I havnt added scales to and I will take that onto the next drawing I do and refer back to it definitely.
This above drawing I started out with 2 thumbnails and picked the one I liked the most. For my next drawing after this one I will attempt to receive feedback right from the planning stage so I get a critique early on I think. I realise that the axoltl drawing just doesn't seem to appeal to anyone probably because of dull colours or boring layout.
It' reading kinda flat cause everything has the exact same amount of focus going backwards into the background.
Also as far as coloring, it's pretty basic in terms of what colors you chose. grass- green, dinos- green, egg-white. Take some chances and try some colors that might not necessarily belong.
I think your rendering is looking really good at the moment. If you keep it up, it will improve by kilometers by the end of the year. I'd recommend you spend more time in planning compositions though. It seems like you go with the first idea you jot down in photoshop, and then try to render that the best you can. Try doing loads of thumbnails, really quick, and then pick the most interesting. Also, at the moment, a lot of your work has very square framing. Its not bad, but maybe try mixing it up a little. do some more wide-lens shots. I think your dino work would look more dynamic with a wider composition.
Taking some of the things you guys have said here is the update. Changed some colours and depth and tried to maintain the focal point. Ive spent about another hour or so on it. better?
WCK- I dont know if Ive finished that axolotl one yet. I would like to add some sea coral and stuff in the foreground. Ill have a play with it at some point
HAHAHHAHAHAHA. Its funny how with a few alterations you can completely change the mood of the picture. The orgiginal is dark and evil, this one is all happy and full of life.
I dont understand why you dont do thumbnails and color studies. You post an image then get a crit and it changes comepletely by the next post. All that energy wasted coulda just done some thumbnails figured it out quick and dirty. then have fun painting up something where you arent worrying so much about something as basic as the overall composition when you are painting in detail.
I dont understand why you dont do thumbnails and color studies. You post an image then get a crit and it changes comepletely by the next post. All that energy wasted coulda just done some thumbnails figured it out quick and dirty. then have fun painting up something where you arent worrying so much about something as basic as the overall composition when you are painting in detail.
Kendeath I agree with you in that I still need to work out more planning and this time.. I really will do a fullpage of thumbnails and then post them up here to prove it and get feedback before I continue. In terms of waisted energy I dont really think there is much. I mean.... to get to the stage of the first post it took about an 1- 1.5 hours and now ive spent another hour on it or so. I am never happy with what I end up with so I always change and change and keep changing. I am not sure that will differ much from more planning and thumbnails but I will certainly give it ago .
Thanks again for the comments on this one so far. Ill work on it a bit more I think. I like the colours and mood its turned into. I decided having a evil looking mother made it look like the dino was going to eat the egg and that wasnt my intention. Its kind of turned into a kids illustration.
Also I've realised that my axolotl drawing is really 'flat' in contrast so I am fixing that up moving along the lines more like this
Did an acrylic painting thismorning. Spent about 3 hours on it. Its like my first acrylic painting that I finished and maybe my third attempt ever. What do you think? im planning on painting a birthday present for my girlfriends 21st
I think its very good for a first attempt. I like the looseness of the brushes and the vellow/green work well together. Are you using standard colour paints? (green, yellow, black etc). If you dont have a colour palette yet, i'd recommend you pick one up. It really helps you early on start thinking about mixing colours rather than almost straight out of the tubes (like i always did. lol).
Heres a simple palette i use (based on my tutors recommendation)
Burnt Sienna (great for making browns and skin tones)
Burnt Umber (laying in darker values)
Ultra Marine Blue
Naples Yellow (also great for skin)
Cadmium Red (also maybe cadmium yellow too)
plus
Titanium While
Unbleached Titanium white (a nice white with a little orange through it)
umm i mixed the colours on the board as I painted them. I've spent about 3 hours on it. I am not 100% happy with it and I think that I should of made the painting bigger, Its only about 10/15cm and they are cheap paints. If I decide what I am going to paint for her 21st I will go out and buy some better paints I think
The colours I used were titanium white, a light green, a orange, yellow and black
Cheap paints are good for practicing though because they're well...cheap
For acrylic paints I have only ever used craft paint you can get big bottles of for $1.50 each, haha. I've got a bottle of each basic rainbow color and also white and black. You can have a lot of fun and learn quite a bit with cheap stuff before you jump in to the real deal.
Another $$$cheap$$$ trick is to go to Bunnings, and buy some Masonite board. They are pretty big (around 1x3 meters) but if you ask, someone will cut it up for you (its all part of customer service:)). For about 1x3 meters I get something roughly like 8 A3 boards for $17.95. Its much cheaper than paying about $10 for a shitty canvas at an art store. I also find tha paint sits better on it, and doesn’t dry so fast giving you some time to work into it. Also, buy a can of white acrylic house paint to use for your under coats.
painting on wood sucks when you have to move. I ditched like 80 paintings because I just looked at the stack and said fuck it. Too bulky and heavy and they are old. I now paint on unstretched canvas. Simply unroll a bit cut a square and staple it to a piece of board for suppourt.. then pull it off and store it flat. I leave excess canvas if I ever want to stretch it over bars..
umm i used some sort of textured board that I bought from an art shop. It was about 2x2.5m and I paid about 7 bucks for it. Ive just been cutting bits out
about an hour spent on it so far. Sketching out the idea. Worth continuing ??? Im just sick of harry potter so yeah I decided to make a bit of fun out of him. If only people stop playing with him.
I don't really get the message of this image, but aside from that, you need to start thinking of silhouettes.
I made a silhouette from your image and then made one of my own for comparison beside it:
the first thing to notice about yours is that there is not enough negative space, which makes the figure look static and undynamic. It just looks like a blob. If you were to turn this into a character, you would never be able to determine who it is based on it's shadow or silhouette. Thinking of the silhouette that a figure will make is very important when trying to do dynamic, visually interesting pieces. This is true for all work, but ESPECIALLY in a piece like this where the single only visual element is the figure.
The other thing is, you can't tell from the silhouette that it's a marionette.
if you look at a marionette, it's very blocky, very rigid, made up of simple shapes... really, a very good thing to learn to draw from, you learn to draw basic shapes, which translate to drawing anything, even more fluid shapes like the human figure.
When sitting down like that, the head would slump forward or back quite a bit, the arms would buckle in or out, it'd be very "slumpy" looking.
you could push it even more than i did, but it was a quick demonstration so i didn't put tons of thought or time into it.
Your subject is an important thing to think about.
is it a fat person? how would the fat hang
really skinny? what parts should you really emphasize to draw attention to that?
if you start your drawings like this by doing quick thumbnail silhouettes, you'll probably find the end result to be a lot more aesthetically pleasing than just starting anywhere and cutting in details.
they're also really easy to tweak and edit and get a good shape
once you get a good shape with good construction, negative space and form, the details all just sort of fall into place.
well when i do them, i construct them first out of basic shapes and stuff
basically... i do a super rough sketch of the character
no details, just rough shapes
fill it all in with black
start chipping away at it with the erase tool, adding things with the brush, trying to get something i like
once i get it to the way i like it, i set that layer to a lowered opacity, go back and redraw my basic shapes, and start adding in the details and stuff, using my silhouette as my outline guide.
hahaah japang! tokyo is so awesome
also i wanted to make it clear that this is something that applies to all styles since i know my work is pretty stylized:
I don't have to tell you what any of these things are
you know immediately from the silhouettes
without strong silhouettes these famous characters would never be as easily recognizable as they are.
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
edited August 2009
That's a fantastic crit beavo. Please eat a brownie.
I hope I'm not the only one who read the mouth as being a nose, the underplane of the head being the mouth, and the neck being a tongue, and as a result cannot look at it without imagining it saying "BLEG" out the side of its mouth.
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That said, it'd be nice to see you actually finish something. You have like 10 unfinished pieces in this thread and you just keep jumping from piece to piece.
PSN: MaximasXXZ XBOX Live: SneakyMcSnipe
I disagree. Hes learning with every piece. At that point, why work to finish something when after critique you learn the foundation is faulty?
Honestly I think you should focus more on fundamentals (sketching, form, anatomy, light and shadow, etc) than on these ambitious paintings in the first place. Don't get me wrong, I would never tell you to NOT try and paint something, I just think you'd be better served working on improving your foundation skills.
PSN: MaximasXXZ XBOX Live: SneakyMcSnipe
Hey mate. Thanks for the feedback. The reason the drawing is blurry is I tried something with the axolotl drawing which was drawing with soft airbrushes to get my form and weight before adding sharpness and detail. It worked well the first time I think. Basically using the soft brushes give me a few bases to build of. One is I draw out the image without detail as it forces me to do so and it allows me to see weights and colours better before I go in with a sharp brush and add detail and hard edges. This is only a sketch so far and I was looking for comments mostly on form. I know the grass is really green compared to the rest but I thought I would have more light on the baby and less on the adult dino to imply depth.
I know what you mean about finishing a drawing. I'm finding it hard to finish drawings because as is said after critique I realise they dont work. I think what I'm currently doing is helping me improve as I am learning to plan more from the basics and learning allot from feedback to do with layout and colour choices from people on this forum. There are some parts in that axolotl drawing on the previous page I really like, such as some of the fish skin I havnt added scales to and I will take that onto the next drawing I do and refer back to it definitely.
This above drawing I started out with 2 thumbnails and picked the one I liked the most. For my next drawing after this one I will attempt to receive feedback right from the planning stage so I get a critique early on I think. I realise that the axoltl drawing just doesn't seem to appeal to anyone probably because of dull colours or boring layout.
Also as far as coloring, it's pretty basic in terms of what colors you chose. grass- green, dinos- green, egg-white. Take some chances and try some colors that might not necessarily belong.
INSTAGRAM
Also, as an illustration, i do like this
WCK- I dont know if Ive finished that axolotl one yet. I would like to add some sea coral and stuff in the foreground. Ill have a play with it at some point
Kendeath I agree with you in that I still need to work out more planning and this time.. I really will do a fullpage of thumbnails and then post them up here to prove it and get feedback before I continue. In terms of waisted energy I dont really think there is much. I mean.... to get to the stage of the first post it took about an 1- 1.5 hours and now ive spent another hour on it or so. I am never happy with what I end up with so I always change and change and keep changing. I am not sure that will differ much from more planning and thumbnails but I will certainly give it ago
Thanks again for the comments on this one so far. Ill work on it a bit more I think. I like the colours and mood its turned into. I decided having a evil looking mother made it look like the dino was going to eat the egg and that wasnt my intention. Its kind of turned into a kids illustration.
Also I've realised that my axolotl drawing is really 'flat' in contrast so I am fixing that up moving along the lines more like this
Heres a simple palette i use (based on my tutors recommendation)
Burnt Sienna (great for making browns and skin tones)
Burnt Umber (laying in darker values)
Ultra Marine Blue
Naples Yellow (also great for skin)
Cadmium Red (also maybe cadmium yellow too)
plus
Titanium While
Unbleached Titanium white (a nice white with a little orange through it)
The colours I used were titanium white, a light green, a orange, yellow and black
For acrylic paints I have only ever used craft paint you can get big bottles of for $1.50 each, haha. I've got a bottle of each basic rainbow color and also white and black. You can have a lot of fun and learn quite a bit with cheap stuff before you jump in to the real deal.
facebook.com/LauraCatherwoodArt
BTW stuff is improving loads! Keep it up!
Just something to think about
I like the top left one
and messing with some proportions
Also. Ill post the progress on that hip girl soon
I made a silhouette from your image and then made one of my own for comparison beside it:
the first thing to notice about yours is that there is not enough negative space, which makes the figure look static and undynamic. It just looks like a blob. If you were to turn this into a character, you would never be able to determine who it is based on it's shadow or silhouette. Thinking of the silhouette that a figure will make is very important when trying to do dynamic, visually interesting pieces. This is true for all work, but ESPECIALLY in a piece like this where the single only visual element is the figure.
The other thing is, you can't tell from the silhouette that it's a marionette.
if you look at a marionette, it's very blocky, very rigid, made up of simple shapes... really, a very good thing to learn to draw from, you learn to draw basic shapes, which translate to drawing anything, even more fluid shapes like the human figure.
When sitting down like that, the head would slump forward or back quite a bit, the arms would buckle in or out, it'd be very "slumpy" looking.
you could push it even more than i did, but it was a quick demonstration so i didn't put tons of thought or time into it.
Your subject is an important thing to think about.
is it a fat person? how would the fat hang
really skinny? what parts should you really emphasize to draw attention to that?
if you start your drawings like this by doing quick thumbnail silhouettes, you'll probably find the end result to be a lot more aesthetically pleasing than just starting anywhere and cutting in details.
they're also really easy to tweak and edit and get a good shape
once you get a good shape with good construction, negative space and form, the details all just sort of fall into place.
basically... i do a super rough sketch of the character
no details, just rough shapes
fill it all in with black
start chipping away at it with the erase tool, adding things with the brush, trying to get something i like
once i get it to the way i like it, i set that layer to a lowered opacity, go back and redraw my basic shapes, and start adding in the details and stuff, using my silhouette as my outline guide.
also i wanted to make it clear that this is something that applies to all styles since i know my work is pretty stylized:
I don't have to tell you what any of these things are
you know immediately from the silhouettes
without strong silhouettes these famous characters would never be as easily recognizable as they are.
http://kungfool.transpect.net/webpages/stuff/hk01.html
I hope I'm not the only one who read the mouth as being a nose, the underplane of the head being the mouth, and the neck being a tongue, and as a result cannot look at it without imagining it saying "BLEG" out the side of its mouth.
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