It would be a lot easier to crit the painting if the image was larger. For your first attempt with oils its a very solid rendering. Watch your use of black/dark dull values, they look unatural and muddy, and in shadow do nothing to define form. Unless youre in a pitch black environment, shadows will always carry some colour and bounce lights. Other than that it looks like youre using the oils too thinly, if you let it thicken up a bit more and build some opacity you can get more depth and do more subtle blending. If youre havin issues with getting soft blending try 'petting' the edges with a clean soft brush, if you do that on an edge of two wet colours itll blend them together softly and smoothly. Compositioanlly youre having some of the same issues as in the other painting you posted. There are a lot of elements youre working with, but the placement of them doesnt help with showing depth. When you dont have perspective to work with depth is best shown with size, colour and overlap. Since youre doing a big monster size doesnt help, so you gotta rely on colour and overlap, that is, atmospheric perspective, contrasts and watching how the different elements interact together. You have some atmospheric perspective going on with the cliffs in the background, but not enough to really show them as far away.You have the same level of contrast of light and dark in the mountains as in the foreground, which makes them look like tiny hills close by, rather than big structures far away. As anything recedes into the distance, the first thing to go are the shadows, which on a nice sunny day like that turn lighter and bluer. The general rule is to reduce contrast in the distance, so the difference between the light and shadow is much narrower than in the foreground. Another thing that help is hiearchy of colour, if you use colours and intensity right, you can make certain elements come out more. So for example, if the foreground character had some colour on him that does not occur anywhere else he would obviously stand out, which gives the illusion of him being closer. The third thing you really gotta consider with composition is how you overlap elements. Right now there is very little overlap, it feels like youre worried about how you lay out the elements. The mountains seem to just stick to the left and avoid the edges of the monster and character, and same goes for the tail-like element on the left. If every single element is separate and does not overlap we have no idea which element is in from of which one, or at least by how much. dang that was wordy...sorry if it doesnt make sense :x
It would be a lot easier to crit the painting if the image was larger.
ReplyDeleteFor your first attempt with oils its a very solid rendering. Watch your use of black/dark dull values, they look unatural and muddy, and in shadow do nothing to define form. Unless youre in a pitch black environment, shadows will always carry some colour and bounce lights. Other than that it looks like youre using the oils too thinly, if you let it thicken up a bit more and build some opacity you can get more depth and do more subtle blending. If youre havin issues with getting soft blending try 'petting' the edges with a clean soft brush, if you do that on an edge of two wet colours itll blend them together softly and smoothly.
Compositioanlly youre having some of the same issues as in the other painting you posted. There are a lot of elements youre working with, but the placement of them doesnt help with showing depth. When you dont have perspective to work with depth is best shown with size, colour and overlap. Since youre doing a big monster size doesnt help, so you gotta rely on colour and overlap, that is, atmospheric perspective, contrasts and watching how the different elements interact together.
You have some atmospheric perspective going on with the cliffs in the background, but not enough to really show them as far away.You have the same level of contrast of light and dark in the mountains as in the foreground, which makes them look like tiny hills close by, rather than big structures far away. As anything recedes into the distance, the first thing to go are the shadows, which on a nice sunny day like that turn lighter and bluer. The general rule is to reduce contrast in the distance, so the difference between the light and shadow is much narrower than in the foreground.
Another thing that help is hiearchy of colour, if you use colours and intensity right, you can make certain elements come out more. So for example, if the foreground character had some colour on him that does not occur anywhere else he would obviously stand out, which gives the illusion of him being closer.
The third thing you really gotta consider with composition is how you overlap elements. Right now there is very little overlap, it feels like youre worried about how you lay out the elements. The mountains seem to just stick to the left and avoid the edges of the monster and character, and same goes for the tail-like element on the left. If every single element is separate and does not overlap we have no idea which element is in from of which one, or at least by how much.
dang that was wordy...sorry if it doesnt make sense :x