Mikey learns to paint 2016 : Critiques Requested

mikezmilenia

Hello I just started joining this forum and I'd like to encourage myself to start posting here and receiving critiques in hope of boosting my ability as an artist and my confidence in my arts. I realize myself that I really am not confident at all in my works, but I really do want to improve to be better in painting digitally.

So this is my first painting I finished in 2016. I really hope I could get feedback and critiques.

A little story about the painting, is a Souldancer, a tribal shamanic male elf who guides the dead and asks their guidance as well occasionally. His choice of weapon as to channel his magics are twin fans.

Well I do hope you enjoy the painting, and any crits and feedback are really appreciated.  

wetojo

Nice work. Your torso anatomy is pretty sweet, color choice is nice too. The main critique I would level at this is about the environment. You have a nice range of highlights, shadows, and midtones in your figure but your environment seems largely made up of shadows and highlights. Few midtones. With such well defined dimensional in your figure, the background ends up being kind of flat and rendered in a noticeable different style. I think trying to make the rendering more consistent amongst all of the elements will help.

I'd also be careful with some of the plants and magic swirls in the right half of the painting. It gets a little chaotic there and the viewers eyes aren't sure where to go. There are a lot of elements in that area pointing and traveling in seemingly random directions. Pick the elements you want your view to focus on (e.g. the character's face, what he is doing with his fans) and then use composition elements to lead the viewer where you want them to look.  I look forward to seeing more.
  

mikezmilenia

Hello, thanks a lot for the critiques and advice. I'll definitely take note all these things and try to improve in my next painting. I do have quite a difficulties and uncertainty of how much rendering of the background needs to be, as I'm afraid of too much render might steal the attention away from the figure.

Thank you very much once again for the critiques, for it really clears some doubts i have in mind.