Need help with Xmas present

Soccerman18

I'm drawing a picture for my sister for Xmas:


I think it needs something, but I'm not sure what. I was thinking maybe a lighter color, like yellow or something, not sure how I'd work it in. All the blues and purples are kinda mid range colors, not much contrast. The flowers are orchids, my sis's fav flower, and purple is her favorite color. Using soft pastels to draw it. Any ideas?

MoP

Personally I think it needs evidence of a main light direction.
There are no shadows or soft highlights to indicate where any light sources are, so all the petals look very flat, with no sense of depth between the different flowers.

http://users.1st.net/comler/Franklin/Images/orchid%2001.jpg

Stuff like that, where the shadows indicate the shape of the petal in 3d space, is good for reference I think. (although I believe I saw the image you are using for reference on Google) they definitely need shadows to indicate depth and light sourcing at the moment though. Subtle yellowish-white highlights in places would probably work well too.

MoP

Michael Knubben

i'd say it needs a blackmetal logo on there, somewhere, like in this example:
http://www.scandinavian-metal.de/schweden/schweden-sammlung/opeth/orchid.jpg

Or, yeah. what MoP said.
The entire thing looks like a 3d model with nothing but a colourmap... you need to push it further, you need to add shadow, highlights, etc...

Seyiji

[ QUOTE ]
i'd say it needs a blackmetal logo on there, somewhere, like in this example:
http://www.redstream.org/images/coverArt/Opeth_Orchid.jpg

[/ QUOTE ]God forbid you middle mouse click on the image in firefox!!!!111

MoP

Yeah Seyiji, I got that too... fixing...

Thermidor

it looks like they need a middle to them, pollen areas...

this is off topic , but is there a way to get firefox to open a new window with middle button like in mozzila 1.7?

Steakhouse

yeah but you specifically need to download that functionality from their extentions area. theres a whole section devoted to Tabbed Browsing.

Soccerman18

Mop: Good point there. It doesn't have much shading. I tried using a darker blue to put in a shadow where the petals overlap, but I don't really have any general shading.

Pea: Interesting analogy, but it does just kinda look like a basic color map.

Thermidor: Yea, someone else mentioned the same thing. All of the examples I found didn't have anything sticking out with pollen on it, most had a little bump thing with a darker spot under it, like in the pic Mop posted. Not sure how to handle this, I don't think a black spot in the middle of each flower would look good, but yet there needs to be something in the middle.

What colors would blend well with the purples and blues to get the highlights and shadows? The purple that I used is the darkest one I had, the only purple I have actually. I could try blending in some black, kinda worried that might make it look blackish instead of just a darker purple.

Thermidor

go toward orange for the highlights and green for the lows... just what i would do , not nesiseraly the right thing to do technicaly

MoP

Yeah I wouldn't use black. Personally I'd lean toward a dark blue/green for the shadows. Nothing TOO much darker than the purple though. A faint orange for the highlights might work pretty well too, although yellow would be better since it's naturally lighter anyway...

Thermidor

yeah , like wot i said , except wot mop said yellow is probly better , but never use black in painting , and only use white to lighten areas of high specularity ... i think ...

Soccerman18

Ok, got an update here. Basically redid the whole thing.

For some reason it looks a little washed out, and a little blurry. I don't like the two little parts that stick up on the bottom middle petal of the middle flower. Wasn't sure what to do with it and I don't like what I did. Supposed to be part of the petal that's sorta curving up.

cep

Each flower looks great, as a whole, they don't show any depth between one another. So, I suggest slightly darkening the flowers further back, and adding a drop shadow. A great improvement, but I think the specular highlights give the impression tha the flower curves with a sharp bend.

FatAssasin

It's a great improvement. And I agree with cep's comments. You need to seperate the flowers more. Plus, it's screaming for some sort of colored background. Even just a blurry color wash would helpl. That dark, flat background doesn't do the flowers justice.

MoP

A great improvement. They look much more 3d and realistic now.
I do agree with cep though, slightly darkening the "background" flowers would improve the depth of the image, but as it stands now it's pretty damn good.
I like the shading actually, it makes the petals look kinda like metal, which is cool!

Soccerman18

Well, I agree that making the two top flowers darker would help to separate the flowers. But is there a way to do it without having to redraw them? It's not quite as easy as making a new layer in photoshop, filling the selection with black and changin the settings. The only way I can think of would be to sorta "shift the scale" to darker colors, but even going one step down with the colors I have I'd still have to redraw both flowers. I've watched the first two LOTR movies twices now while working on this, if that gives you any idea how long this is taking me. So if there's a quicker way I'd love to hear it. On a side note, I tried making them darker in photoshop to see how it'd look, having the two flowers dark makes the third stand out, draws your attention from the other two.

Adding a drop shadow would help, and a little quicker since I wouldn't need to redraw the flowers. The lighting I have going on is from the center, which is good because if it was from the top there would be no visable shadows, but the shadows that would form would be like an outline around the middle and right flowers. Not that this is a bad thing, I just hope that I can get it to look like a shadow and not an outline.

As for the background, at this stage it's going to stay black. Having a more colorful background would sort of put it in an environment instead of floating in space, but I would have to do some very heavy erasing to get rid of the black and I don't think I'd be able to get it all off, resulting in a muddy gray. And when colors are mixed with that, especially any light colors, it wouldn't be too pretty.

MoP

You should probably just leave it as it is then. Or as you say, maybe a faint darker line around the outside of the foreground flower's petals to pick them out from the background flowers would help. It's probably not worth spending all that time re-drawing it just to make a tiny improvement which probably isn't totally necessary anyway.

Something to consider in future is to just do little 3-inch thumbnail sketches in colour, just to pick a scheme that works with all the general blocks of colour (ie. worry about large shading, not small details) - that way when you do the final large image you will already know what colours to use for the general shading, then just build upon those for the finer detail.

MoP