Critique for my mermaids

veela

Hey there!

I did some mermay pieces during mermay and I wanne make them finished illustrations
but now I'm at that point where I don't see possible improvements myself anymore, but I feel there is something missing in them. Maybe it's the final 10% to make them "pop"? Insufficient composition to guide the visual interest?
Would appreciate any helpful suggestion!

BoonS

I have a feeling that you've pretty much done everything you've needed to in terms of completing your pieces on a technical aspect. Everything can be read and distinguished easily, and anatomy and shading isn't too distracting. At worst, the still water in the third piece exudes kind of a cheap airbrush effect, but if you really want to look for avenues of exploration and progress, I think you should consider more holistically about the thesis of your pieces; everything else might follow naturally if you really get a grasp of what you want to say in your work.

For example, in your first piece I assume it's meant to present a atmosphere of mystery, intrigue, and elegance; and I can see it already starting with the darker blue tones and haziness of the background, but it kind of ends there. Kind of ends as 'blue-mysterious' without that much visual command or further hints at a deeper narrative. If you have a stronger point/story, you'd have an easy avenue to add "10%".

It's contrived, but for example, if you had a thesis of elegance/mystery + danger, you can add additional conflicting details of smooth skin with hidden claws/teeth. Soft ambient lighting with harsh vivid lights. A soft blurry haze covering skeletons/glowing eyes/other mermaids. More and more details that you can add to an art piece. The darker works of Elena Bespalova has a lot of command because she knows how to use vivid lights in darker scenes; and while it doesn't match the tone of your mermaids,  Olya Bossak's work can be incredibly intense through anatomical details/narratives alone. If you can build an excuse to paint tattoos, trinkets, additional fish anatomy, that'd be cool too.

And I think the same can be applied to the other pieces. In the moray eels, I can feel an exasperated and almost comical tone which is a decent enough thesis as itself, but the straightforward perspective and environmental details doesn't necessarily help to hammer down that point. You don't have contrive underwater alarm clocks and surrounding trash, but it'd be nice if the perspective and lighting emphasized the weight the character feels crawling out of a stupor(?), really focus on that point. An interesting angle could also really sell the momentum and energy the third piece can have, maybe even with a few water/lens effect here and there.

Can't imagine that you'd fully implement my examples, but hopefully it helps clear out tunnel vision. Hope it helps.

PianoPolish

looks beautiful.
try adding more water caustics in their body and add bubbles with some kind of image distortion to achieve that underwater feeling, maybe could be help to improve the atmosphere