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I guess I draw sometimes [sketch dump] (NSFW, 56K)
Tam
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Crits welcome
ballpoint:
some recent stuff you might've already seen:
I personally like the emptier one better of the following two. Let me know what you think.
ballpoint:
some recent stuff you might've already seen:
I personally like the emptier one better of the following two. Let me know what you think.
Tam on
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The digital landscape is nice but it is dire need of some contrast action.
Seriously though, they all look like solid starts. If you took this one and took it to finish and combine it with the whimsical colors of your landscapes and that would be a sweet little picture.
i love seeing that stuff from you
honestly i don't have much for crits
maybe try to tighten your color palettes a little on the painted ones
right now (on my screen anyways) your color choices are a tad blinding
maybe tone down the blue of the sky a bit?
also i find an easy way to pull all the colors together is to do a color overlay layer set to a lowered opacity
it ties everything together like ambient lighting.
that's my photronshop trick of the day.
thanks beavo
that means a lot coming from a professional book illustrator
actually, that's two pros that have told me things in my thread. woop woop!
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just assume I'm a moron. I'd rather you covered all the bases you can.
the plants around the light geysers are like a fine-leafed moss type thing.
I'm going with Wakka here: Your Mustachioed Giant is one of my favorite doodles you've posted recently, and with those colours and your style combined it would look superawesome.
Draw more boobies.
Sincerely,
ChicoBlue
P.S.
In regards to your environments, I think you should work on your values. I'd recommend just grabbing a photo of a landscape and changing the mode to grayscale in Photoshop. Then just stare at it.
Hiking Essentials
Obilex: Thanks!
DeathChalupa: Which guy with muscles? There's at least three.
Loomdun: uh, why would I be opposed to that?
Rubber: They never look right. Look very closely at the first nude sketch at the top, though.
A tip from my slightly psychotic/wise teacher, which taught me in human anatomy in memorizing how the muscle structure of a leg aligns is basically a V.
I'll draw a example since my words are equivalent to the value of poopoo
See, it's very easy to remember, The calf is not even and the outside is higher then the inside, While the inside part of the ankle is higher then the outside part. Therefore you can easily remember how to make a leg by simply placing a V with the point facing inward.
Edit: There new picture this one is a bit more clearer on what I meant.
Good god, her legs below the knee are way too short.
I'll have to find some way to correct it...
edit: but what are you talking about specifically?
Yes this is why I edited it and said obvious, I felt stupid.
P.S. Do a page of nipple studies, post it
I do this all the time, it's a really bad habit.
Hiking Essentials
Also at the moment his Eye-Patch-Strap is bisecting his ear.
Painting over this if it's not obvious, probably painted in a lot of shit that you weren't going for and might of made it into something totally different, so I'm sorry if I did but hey I'm not a mind-reader here.
http://i43.tinypic.com/103imfb.jpg
Composition-
First order of business, I'm a move some stuff around- mainly what I want to do here is get the two foreground glowing bits away from them lining up vertically on the picture plane. I realize that they're not aligned perfectly or anything, but it does look a bit conspicuous and the alignment of these elements is a good opportunity to show some perspective by knocking one over so they're at an angle.
Second, the foreground ground lacks a bit of variety- there's some bumpiness in there sure, but when you knock it back to simple elements, it forms a pretty straightish line from one side of the picture to the other for the most part. Again, this is a good opportunity to break up the space- I decided to knock out a bit to show off a little bit more of the background- get a little more sense of depth working in there- which also serves to give greater importance to the central glowbeam thingy, making it appear raised up higher. I also added an element on the side hinting at continuing the foreground land beyond what's shown. Which brings me to
Space-
Except for the tree one which shows space by, well, literally showing space, these paintings lack a sense of three-dimensional depth to them. Leaving the sky as an empty flat blue background just makes it look like everything in the foreground is just being shot in front of a bluescreen or something. A clear sky isn't just a flat color, it generally in the daytime gradients down from darker and more saturated directly above you, to less saturated, paler blue/white near the horizon. Establishing this gradation will not only help the sky appear less artificial and increase the sense of space in the piece. Also, the lack of clouds or further background- while yes, they aren't totally necessary- don't help matters as far as space is concerned; if you are to create the illusion of space by the overlap of elements (same principle here applied to landscape as you would to foreshortening on a figure), there should at least be some elements to overlap.
I also threw in some more craggy areas in the foreground not just to be HEY MORE CRAGS but the break up the space on a small-scale level in addition to that of the overall piece- things are overlapping, demonstrating perspective, and creating the illusion of space the same way in a 5'x5' area as a 5x5 mile area. If you have large areas of just flat color, or areas where the areas of overlap aren't really established clearly (ie: concentric circle indentations), it becomes more difficult to establish the idea of space in those areas.
Also, on the painting with the glowy thing and the trees, the fact that all the tree trunks are lit the same and don't indicate them receding in space, make them all seem to be growing in a line parallel to the picture plane, which is pretty unnatural looking and again flattens the picture out. A big part of showing space there is going to be making sure to establish shadow planes, obviously and coherently laying out where the bottom of the canopy recedes into space with perspective versus the front plane, and also establishing how those tree canopies will cast more shadow onto the trunks deep in the forest as opposed to those on the edges, where the sun can fall freely upon them.
Contrast- Value
Speaking of shadow (and getting back to the original painting I was talking about), there's not a whole lot of value variation going on in these pieces; if you desaturate them in PS, they more or less come out mostly as an even grey tone. Beyond the problem of this just kind of being unrealistic in general, because a picture with no value variation pretty much means a picture with no shadows whatsoever (excepting severe stylization), this is also a missed opportunity to emphasize composition.
While you've got some increased value contrast around the foreground glowing things with the moss and the glow, that idea can be pushed much much further with shadow. Hence, I put a deep dark shadow right under that glowy thing, the draw the eye there first. Then, in terms of contrast variation, the order of importance goes to the rest of the foreground, the first BG island, the most distant island, then the sky. Again, this is an idea you've gotten started on, but you need to hammer it down in stronger terms to make it function.
And of course, like with the tree picture, you're losing out on the sense of space by not having shadow contrasts in your islands here- establish what's being lit directly by the sun and what is turning away from it- right now it's difficult to tell which direction the light is supposed to be coming from without putting a magnifying glass to the concentric circles around the glowing thing- no need for it to be ambiguous, you've got huge mountains of juicy form to establish some shadow planes on, use 'em!
Contrast- Color
Everything is really bright for the most part- nothing wrong with a bright picture of course, but when everything is bright it gets a little monotonous. Same thing with the value contrast with color; highly saturated colors draw the eye, less saturated ones not so much. Use color saturation in the same way to establish a hierarchy, saturated colors for the elements you want to draw the eye first, less saturated for those lower on the visual hierarchy totem pole. Without varying the saturation, the whole picture screams LOOK AT ME ARGHARAGHRHARHG. It's like, those sneakers for little kids with the lights that light up when they walk are ok because it's like "hey look at my shoes", but a kid wearing a glowing disco floor body suit is the kind of snot-nosed brat you just want to throw in a dumpster.
I have to admit though, the establishment of the glowy thing as glowy is more obvious in your picture than in mine, because of a greater value/color contrast because I lightened up the sky a bit to show midday conditions. In reality it's hard to show many really glowy things that still look glowy in hard midday sun other than the sun, so some fudging is going to be necessary there- that or changing the time of day to dusk/night/dawn so there's a greater contrast between the color/value of the sky and the glowy bits.
Custom Brushes-
Custom brushes are great for speeding up painting things you already know how to paint, but if you're trying to learn how to paint well, they're probably not so great, if just for the fact you'll be spending more time trying to figure out "ok how do I paint X faster?" than actually looking at X to figure out what it looks like and why it looks that way. Until you have a more solid handle on painting (may I recommend some still life practice?), you might want to just stick with your basic round and/or flat brush (all of what I did was done with those two brushes), and force yourself to describe what you're seeing tangibly.
Here's the part where I'd usually put in the 'hey I'm not always right/grain of salt/etc. etc.' to avoid feeling like/coming across as an arrogant jerk-ass son of a bitch, but after being such a baby getting me to do this I'm not going to bother. Nor am I going to proof read it because the hell with it.
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EDIT: All further requests for help should be addressed to:
Ryan Cakemikz
123 Dude Ave.
Towncity, CA
c/o Big Bitey Brown Dog
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or her legs are short I don't know