The underlighting on his face is throwing me off because it's while, but the source of the light is green. His whole muzzle-area I think could be brought forward a bit with more green and blue lighting, its risking falling into the background with the highly detailed kebab thing he's holding. Like, the dark shadow on the right size of his muzzle is almost the same colour as the dark shadow of the doorway behind his head. I think it should be much closer to the blue shadow on his forearm, for example.
Otherwise it's coming along swimmingly. A killer composition!
I'm loving it. The composition is strong and I'm loving the details in it. The story details are really interesting, like the crossbow is how he gets his ingredients right? :P
Over the holidays all I had was my surface, which was 2.5 weeks of travel so it was a really good test drive of the system I had set up. This was the first thing on it where I really tried to get deep into it, and I think it was going alright:
I finally got to the point where the edge control and shapes were a little difficult to get into with the size of the screen, but for sketching to rough painting with no other tablet on hand, I was pretty happy with the result.
When I got back I threw it on my computer:
I can feel a difference in control for sure, but I managed to capture a good 30% of this painting while on the go, which I think is a win. Now I just need to decide how much more to work on it.
It floated around tumblr, so had it on hand. I also got the Scott Robinson book on rendering, which is very meticulous about reflections, but I haven't really dug into that proper. I hope to start doing some more technical studies again in the new year.
I don't know what that eyeball thing is, but I love it. Are you still working on your rabbit comic? All of your monstery concepts are so cool, and work so great stylistically with the way you use color, that it would be amazing to see as a comic that shows off your talent for those things.
Thanks m3nace. I have the rest of the pages roughly laid out. I want to get it done fairly soon for sure, I just have to remember that its okay if the pages stay loose, its equally about the narrative as it is about the drawings themselves.
The only crit that I have for those pages is that in the panel where his boss(?) says "let's get this place cleaned up"...the rabbit's cheek-whiskers look weird wrapped around the form of the arm...it looks almost like his mouth is open really really wide.
I see what your saying, for sure. As I'm sure most people experience, when I'm just banging out a profile its a lot easier to focus on the finesse. When I do any other angle its a mess for a while and so I loose confidence, I'm trying to do faces more often, just so I fuss less when simply approaching drawing a dude thats a little different. I'll probably do some more structure heavy studies too, but im thinking about going all the way down to boxes and working back up.
They are capitals players, but they don't actually look like them at all. Likeness is still difficult for me to achieve without an extraordinary amount of effort.
I was mostly working on measuring, really, So I just didn't really worry about it. I dont usually find colors to be frustrating, and digitally they are pretty trivial to adjust. I went for the overall feel of the pallet but I mentioned it since its noticeably different than the original.
One day down the line i may do some color matching with paint, but I usually really enjoy my time with color and just like to feel it out.
When painting digitally, do you work only with solid colors (100% opacity at all times) but varying brushes?
I've been trying to do that in my own digital studies, and it does help with focusing more on color, but I can't get any nice texturing or a good "feeling" in the painting beyond an extremely rough one by just using a round hard-edged brush in varying sizes.
btw - I really like what you did here. It's why I ask!
I use a mostly hard brush, at a medium flow, and let some of the pressure sensitivity of the tablet regulate it. I have a really big soft brush I like, but if I'm going for polish I really have to work back into the painting to get rid of some of the errant fuzziness it creates. I have Kyles brushes for photoshop (http://www.kyletwebster.com/portfolio/brushes/) but when it comes down to it, You can toggle between any basic hard and soft brush to similar effect.
I suggest downloading free brush sets from around the internet and just playing with your settings. Material studies are great for that particular thing, because you'll really be asking yourself "How do I manipulate Photoshop to make this soft but this hard" and if you start doing that enough you'll unconsciously incorporate it into your workflow while problem solving later.
Slight adjustments. I'm going to put it down tonight and look at it fresh tomorrow.
Iruka, would you mind if I used this for an NPC in my Pathfinder game? I have a race of rat-folk and one in the next arc is going to be a rat-chef.
Essentially I would be dopping it into the token template (like in my avatar) for use in just my campaign on roll20 (only sen by about 8 people total).
working on what may become the back of new business cards
If this is going on a business card, I would suggest looking at how complex it is. When translated to a small size, will those thin lines show? How much detail might be lost? I zoomed out and the hatching for the shadows blurred together and the lines in the circle began blending together. Since you showed the image at this size, it makes me think that the details and seeing the hand in the work, as there are imperfections in the lines which show the artist's hand versus using line tools or shape tools in Photoshop (not bad just a different aesthetic). Also a concern might be how much information you are putting out for the viewer to absorb. If the idea of a business card is memorability, complexity might be a bit difficult to absorb.
Also what kind of job are you presenting yourself as? Illustrator, Fine Artist, Graphic Designer, ect.?
I ask and mention the above only because technically and aesthetically, I think it is an interesting image. I enjoy slowly figuring out there is a venus fly trap and an insect. I think the gold and green work well together. In other words, I'm nitpicking but your work seems far enough along that nitpicking seems like the only way to give you something to consider, or at least those are my intentions.
Its actually a vector, despite the look. I've been getting a lot more handy with illustrator, and this was me just trying to do something different and fun in it. Challenging myself to make a workflow in a program I refused to get used to in school out of frustration and stubbornness. Because its a vector, It actually scales down pretty well, but some of the detail will probably get lost in print. I'm going to print a pretty small run of them at first, and I still have tons of old ones if I don't like these.
Your points are all valid and If I was really looking for a serious art job, what market I was trying to get at would be a heavier factor. These days I end up just giving my card to people I meet who ask if I have a website or tumblr casually. I've been a lot happier as a person with a day job and not trying to push my art into one particular industry.
Very cool concept, Iruka! Your animal faces are always so expressive.
I would maybe darken the right wolf a bit in value so as to place him more in the foreground and create even more depth. Or at least the light blue feathers, to make those values more different from the ground.
But yeah, sweet stuff!
It looks great, but just saying that doesn't seem like what this forum is about. So I'm going to nitpick or throw out some thoughts.
First since it is a WIP this might not be an issue later on, but due to how more rendered the wolves are compared to everything else they feel like cut outs or that the background and figures were considered separately, but it is also a WIP.
Then there is that tall black pole in the background that I'm unsure of the purpose of but it stands out because of it reaching into the clouds and being slanted slightly.
Third is I'm having issues following the flow of the composition, because while it has some subtle paths in the clouds and some stronger directional lines in the street, the overpasses feel like they cut off the two areas in terms of eye movement.
@Brushwood Thanks dude. The pole is a light, it'll get straitened up and rendered, along with some others that'll get rendered out, they just got washed out when I painted in the clouds, happens as I go. It may end up being too stark, I donno. There will probably be something on the left side, in the sky area as well, just not sure what yet. The background was neglected quite a bit, I usually work around more, but when I was super zoomed in on mushy green blobs in the stream I was doing it seemed kinda boring for the people watching haha.
The composition was a lot different when I started, its still needs some re balancing. There used to be a third dog on the , but I took him out because he was just getting kinda squashed. I'm not sure this one will get perfectly balanced out, its already pretty bottom heavy, but there will be some silhouettes of some more dags sitting on the over passes when I get there. I could crop it,but I like the big sky.
@Natri Thanks too, and yeah those tendrils will get darker, I usually do those sorts of adjustments with layer effects. You can kinda see how much I don't give a fuck about some of that until the very end in the master study I posted. A lot of time stuff is just the approximation of value/color until the shapes are right, and then I'll repaint and adjust as needed. Not the most efficient approach, though, and probably the origin of some of my contrast problems.
I looked in a book I have called "Character Mentor" by Bancroft, and one way to create visual movement is tones which you seem to have down. But if that is a pillar of light, maybe darken the clouds to emphasize it and give the sky a bit more weight. Not necessarily storm cloud dark, but darker. Also what if you shifted the pillar so it lines up with the line where the light and shadow of the overpass's support meets, because it would then line up with the wolf's ears and that might break the visual block. So that the visual line can connect to the circular movement of the wolves and overpass and the converging lines of the highway.
I love it, the surreal, spooky feel is awesome. Really unique concept.
When I look at it, I feel a bit locked into the lower half of the painting. Maybe because the foreground dog is looking inwards and the main dog is looking back out? Perhaps you could point the main dogs ears towards the third dog or something.
I don't know if any of that is remotely correct but you always help me out and I really like this piece so I wanted to give my 2 cents.
Edit: Also, maybe you could play with shadows from the clouds to create more depth/contrast.
I looked in a book I have called "Character Mentor" by Bancroft, and one way to create visual movement is tones which you seem to have down. But if that is a pillar of light, maybe darken the clouds to emphasize it and give the sky a bit more weight. Not necessarily storm cloud dark, but darker. Also what if you shifted the pillar so it lines up with the line where the light and shadow of the overpass's support meets, because it would then line up with the wolf's ears and that might break the visual block. So that the visual line can connect to the circular movement of the wolves and overpass and the converging lines of the highway.
Just a thought.
well it's an electric light pole, not a pillar of light, and it's daytime, so the light wouldn't be on. I agree the starkness of the black is a little distracting right now, and yeah, moving it back towards the viewer/along the road might declutter that area a bit.
EncA Fool with CompassionPronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered Userregular
Re the poles, this is just from the traffic engineering training I got back in college but there should be two on the left as well as the right on this sort of exchange. Not sure how that would muss up the composition though.
Not particularly concerned with the poles in regards to appropriate electrical standards, haha. I'll update this image in a bit, I've done some work but I still have a few choices to make. Thanks for all the feedback. I should consider doing thumbnails before I dive into these things.
Posts
Otherwise it's coming along swimmingly. A killer composition!
Slight adjustments. I'm going to put it down tonight and look at it fresh tomorrow.
I finally got to the point where the edge control and shapes were a little difficult to get into with the size of the screen, but for sketching to rough painting with no other tablet on hand, I was pretty happy with the result.
When I got back I threw it on my computer:
I can feel a difference in control for sure, but I managed to capture a good 30% of this painting while on the go, which I think is a win. Now I just need to decide how much more to work on it.
doodles, I drew the first page a while ago but never posted it. I want to try and do faces more regularly
facebook.com/LauraCatherwoodArt
@lyrium Thanks! I haven't worked on the comic in a while, but I did get further than the last page I posted. Here's everything I have in one place:
Everything else is rad though, duder!
Faces:
Arthur Hacker (Abundance)
The blue guys, specifically the guy in the hat anyone specific? The guy in the backwards hat looks like the drummer Mike Portnoy
One day down the line i may do some color matching with paint, but I usually really enjoy my time with color and just like to feel it out.
I've been trying to do that in my own digital studies, and it does help with focusing more on color, but I can't get any nice texturing or a good "feeling" in the painting beyond an extremely rough one by just using a round hard-edged brush in varying sizes.
btw - I really like what you did here.
I use a mostly hard brush, at a medium flow, and let some of the pressure sensitivity of the tablet regulate it. I have a really big soft brush I like, but if I'm going for polish I really have to work back into the painting to get rid of some of the errant fuzziness it creates. I have Kyles brushes for photoshop (http://www.kyletwebster.com/portfolio/brushes/) but when it comes down to it, You can toggle between any basic hard and soft brush to similar effect.
I suggest downloading free brush sets from around the internet and just playing with your settings. Material studies are great for that particular thing, because you'll really be asking yourself "How do I manipulate Photoshop to make this soft but this hard" and if you start doing that enough you'll unconsciously incorporate it into your workflow while problem solving later.
working on what may become the back of new business cards
Iruka, would you mind if I used this for an NPC in my Pathfinder game? I have a race of rat-folk and one in the next arc is going to be a rat-chef.
Essentially I would be dopping it into the token template (like in my avatar) for use in just my campaign on roll20 (only sen by about 8 people total).
If this is going on a business card, I would suggest looking at how complex it is. When translated to a small size, will those thin lines show? How much detail might be lost? I zoomed out and the hatching for the shadows blurred together and the lines in the circle began blending together. Since you showed the image at this size, it makes me think that the details and seeing the hand in the work, as there are imperfections in the lines which show the artist's hand versus using line tools or shape tools in Photoshop (not bad just a different aesthetic). Also a concern might be how much information you are putting out for the viewer to absorb. If the idea of a business card is memorability, complexity might be a bit difficult to absorb.
Also what kind of job are you presenting yourself as? Illustrator, Fine Artist, Graphic Designer, ect.?
I ask and mention the above only because technically and aesthetically, I think it is an interesting image. I enjoy slowly figuring out there is a venus fly trap and an insect. I think the gold and green work well together. In other words, I'm nitpicking but your work seems far enough along that nitpicking seems like the only way to give you something to consider, or at least those are my intentions.
Its actually a vector, despite the look. I've been getting a lot more handy with illustrator, and this was me just trying to do something different and fun in it. Challenging myself to make a workflow in a program I refused to get used to in school out of frustration and stubbornness. Because its a vector, It actually scales down pretty well, but some of the detail will probably get lost in print. I'm going to print a pretty small run of them at first, and I still have tons of old ones if I don't like these.
Your points are all valid and If I was really looking for a serious art job, what market I was trying to get at would be a heavier factor. These days I end up just giving my card to people I meet who ask if I have a website or tumblr casually. I've been a lot happier as a person with a day job and not trying to push my art into one particular industry.
I would maybe darken the right wolf a bit in value so as to place him more in the foreground and create even more depth. Or at least the light blue feathers, to make those values more different from the ground.
But yeah, sweet stuff!
First since it is a WIP this might not be an issue later on, but due to how more rendered the wolves are compared to everything else they feel like cut outs or that the background and figures were considered separately, but it is also a WIP.
Then there is that tall black pole in the background that I'm unsure of the purpose of but it stands out because of it reaching into the clouds and being slanted slightly.
Third is I'm having issues following the flow of the composition, because while it has some subtle paths in the clouds and some stronger directional lines in the street, the overpasses feel like they cut off the two areas in terms of eye movement.
The composition was a lot different when I started, its still needs some re balancing. There used to be a third dog on the , but I took him out because he was just getting kinda squashed. I'm not sure this one will get perfectly balanced out, its already pretty bottom heavy, but there will be some silhouettes of some more dags sitting on the over passes when I get there. I could crop it,but I like the big sky.
@Natri Thanks too, and yeah those tendrils will get darker, I usually do those sorts of adjustments with layer effects. You can kinda see how much I don't give a fuck about some of that until the very end in the master study I posted. A lot of time stuff is just the approximation of value/color until the shapes are right, and then I'll repaint and adjust as needed. Not the most efficient approach, though, and probably the origin of some of my contrast problems.
Maybe take some texturing around the shadows and paws of the left dire-wolf. Right now he kinda looks like he's floating there.
Just a thought.
When I look at it, I feel a bit locked into the lower half of the painting. Maybe because the foreground dog is looking inwards and the main dog is looking back out? Perhaps you could point the main dogs ears towards the third dog or something.
I don't know if any of that is remotely correct but you always help me out and I really like this piece so I wanted to give my 2 cents.
Edit: Also, maybe you could play with shadows from the clouds to create more depth/contrast.
well it's an electric light pole, not a pillar of light, and it's daytime, so the light wouldn't be on. I agree the starkness of the black is a little distracting right now, and yeah, moving it back towards the viewer/along the road might declutter that area a bit.