character idea first digital painting
hello guys,
kinda awkward, first time with a digital painting, the idea is a blood witch.
this is my first time and it took me a wile to finish her, i would love to hear what u think Are the lines accurate enough, does it look finished, what can I improve, how long should a painting like this take, also i would love to hear if there is a faster way to do the shadowing.
ty,
bunny.
http://oi60.tinypic.com/2zpmb9e.jpg
http://oi61.tinypic.com/2v2cfao.jpg
kinda awkward, first time with a digital painting, the idea is a blood witch.
this is my first time and it took me a wile to finish her, i would love to hear what u think Are the lines accurate enough, does it look finished, what can I improve, how long should a painting like this take, also i would love to hear if there is a faster way to do the shadowing.
ty,
bunny.
http://oi60.tinypic.com/2zpmb9e.jpg
http://oi61.tinypic.com/2v2cfao.jpg
Replies
Then you'll look into working with greyscale values to accentuate volume.
Then color theory and after that color.
If you follow these general guidelines and with a few years of practice, working every day, then you'll be more successful with your ideas.
As for this one, I must admit there are too many things to talk about. I will say that I can see what you had in mind for an idea though. Were you working from reference? Or was it from your imagination?
Your anatomy isn't actually terrible, things like waist/shoulder ratio look way off, the collarbone/neck/face area looks a little weird, etc. Definitely some more studying and figure practices could be of benefit, but that's pretty much a given for most artists.
I will also echo katana's recommendation to start in grayscale for value, and add color later. Grayscale painting is a great way to learn how to portray volume. If you decide to do that, try not to use pure black or pure white, not only because those values won't accept color well when you add it, but also because it's an easy way to get an overblown painting when you're starting out.
It's difficult to tell where exactly your light source is in the painting. Most of your shadows are very soft, which makes everything feel uncertain.
Something else I will mention is that you should consider the tools available to you working digitally, while also realizing that it's not that much different than working with other mediums. Yes, you do have soft brushes, textured brushes, the ability to lock pixels, dodge/burn, etc - but you can do some wonderful paintings using just a basic (hard) round brush. And people do.
...as an aside not directly related to the quality of the painting, can I ask what program you used to do this? Or perhaps more importantly, what program you used to save the image? The color profile you've chosen looks like an unusual sRGB profile with "no BPC", which I've never seen before but I assume stands for "no black point compensation", something I believe is turned on by default in Photoshop. As a result, when you view the image in a browser that accurately supports color profiles (such as Firefox), the image looks washed out (probably more washed out than it does in photoshop) since your darker values are weaker. I'm not sure where you got that profile, but photoshop's standard sRGB IEC61966-2.1 profile should be fine to convert to (or work in, if you don't have a custom profile for your monitor set up) for the web.
Ah, and if you haven't seen it, I've always liked this tutorial/reference: http://androidarts.com/art_tut.htm
On the body, just eyeballing it:
Her right arm looks longer than her left. The proportions of her right arm do not match her left (compare the lengths of what's above the elbow, and what's below). The difference in distance between her left arm (slightly farther away) and right arm (slightly closer) is not significant enough to warrant such differences, though the way you have the shoulders turned right now makes it difficult to determine clearly.
Her waist/shoulder ratio is really, really extreme. It's not stylistic it just looks wrong.
Her right shoulder area is really far away from her ribcage, and the painted version (where the dress covers her actual shoulder, apparently) only makes this look even more extreme. If a person is standing straight (she's standing fairly straight, for the purpose of this explanation), their arm hanging straight down from their shoulder will usually fit quite nicely against their torso/waist, perhaps a little bit of space between the waist/elbow depending on body type. The painted version makes it look like if her right arm were hanging straight down from what looks to be the shoulder, that it would be like...a foot away from her waist.
Her butt is sticking out pretty unnaturally, this might not look so off if the waist were not so extremely tiny. The pelvic region in general looks off but it gets covered up by bagging clothing so basic shape/size is probably ok for the sake of that painting.
The head is large enough to fit the shoulders, but both are probably too big to match the lower parts of the body.
The neck is very thin, and looks fairly weak considering it's holding up a head of that size. It's pretty common to do larger heads/thinner necks from an aesthetic standpoint so that's maybe not such a big deal, but learning to do things properly first is important - messing them up comes later.
The anatomy of her face/head (in the painted version) has several issues. Jawline, proportions of features (eyes/nose/mouth), etc.
The above critiques are mostly focused on more recognizable parts of anatomy, shapes and sizes in relation to others. They're easiest to point out and easiest to see errors in when you compare to references. Really, a lot of this stuff would probably solve itself, you just need to work on getting better with figures and posing. Doing so will help improve your eye, and you'll see easier when things look "off". Don't be afraid to use references in your painting. I'm not talking finding a picture that's the exact image or pose that you're trying to do, but always look for references to compare features and check your work. Other things to try include flipping your painting while you work. Often doing so will make anatomical errors and things that look "off" much more obvious to you.