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D&D Character Thing - goblins!
SeveredHead
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
hello, i am trying to finish this painting, but im really bad with colors and ambient light and merging the character and the background effectively. shit is hard.
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https://www.pinterest.com/pin/488007309605397024/
The toned paper is really helping things stay level. Maybe the page will be toned, but if that's the case would work with the tone as your background. The head being a part of the background in this example also helps, ad when you look at the focal point. you sill feel immersed in the image.
So right now the area of most intense focus is that hand- very dark, defined shape against a pure white ground. But since this is probably not the most important thing you want to drive the viewer to look at first, it would make more sense to have a less dark hand against a more mid-tone background.
Quicky PO to demonstrate:
Here I've desaturated most of the background- yes, you may know a roof is red, but you don't want that big red triangle to be the thing a viewer latches onto. Made the background behind the legs a little lighter, bluer, using moonlight because that intense black before winds up losing the shape of the legs- and while losing edges into shadows is often an effective way to add mystery to a composition, I'm not sure if that's helpful here, with this more action-y pose. And while I've pushed a lot of stuff back in intensity, I also made a point of playing up the hard edges and most intense contrast where I thought it mattered most- the face and the knife, the things that get the story across most obviously. Where I've softened the transition of the background into the white in a lot of places, for the silhouette of the hood I made a point to leave that hard edge on the right to draw contrast, and on the left I played up the light from the lamp on the hood while darkening the background behind it, creating another area of sharp contrast.
Now, I don't have the story prompt for this at hand, and what I've done is just one of an infinity number of ways you could approach this composition- the point it less, 'here is what to do', so much as to get across that deliberately manipulating your contrasts is a tool you can use to get across whatever it is you want to get across more effectively.
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(she supposed to be this D&D race called yaun-ti they like half snake, half human, some more snake, some more human.)
I think his far shoulder is a little too big / squared up to the frame. It shouldn't be higher than is left shoulder unless he's raising the arm or something.
Also, it looks like the jaw is mis-aligned. I get it sticking out, but it looks shifted to his left.
im trying out that greyscale process since its multiple dudes so i guess i can plan the lighting way easier by just going greyscale first? the coloring will be interesting, never seems to look quite right when you wash over color over brush strokes it didnt make, if you get my meaning. but well try it anways.... greyscale part is fun though, way simpler trying to render without also blending tones and all that crap
i actually rendered this first one out normally.. so yay for wasting time