Hello everyone. I am very excited to be apart of this group.
I have been devoting myself to a lot of art study in the past few years. I have been taking figure drawing courses, figure sculpture courses, and painting courses at the community college that I'm going to. I have learned a lot, but my ambitions require me to learn even more, so I have decided to take part in the community and post my sketchbook art. My hope is that the other artists and designers will help broaden my understanding of art in general, and help perfect my art making in specific. So please, I welcome everyone to critique my work. I will take it as a great honor.
But before I post my work, I would like to let everyone know what my I am wanting to achieve in art. My number one goal is to make a career with it, specifically in the realm of concept art. I hope to create worlds, and populate those words with creatures, characters, environments and the like. So my main aim in my art is to have it communicate a message well, to entertain visually, provoke thought, and to work compositionally. I know that the nature of some sketches will be studies in which they will not fill all of those characteristics, but I will try to do my best.
~Ryan Cordin
Replies
Shifting your pictures highlight can be solved with a few simple things:
-changing the areas of the highest light and dark contrast
-adding a more dynamic line of motion to the composition to lead the eye
-using the rule of thirds more toward your advantage
Right now your picture has nice singular elements that have their own qualities and details, but they don't really help the image as a whole package. Adding subliminal lines leading into the intended focal point, in this case maybe her head, like rock grooves, sharp weapons or claws or something, or even lighting changes.
Her details right now are really nice, but try illuminating the side closer to the viewer more. It might help make her pop more than just having the rim light from explosion in the background lol.
Another quick thing: I'd suggest moving her back leg into a more extended position. It might really amplify the feeling of motion. Right now it doesn't read as well as a run rather than just a weird pose haha.
Lol, I get what you mean. I actually did tweak the things that you suggested. After doing them, I really was not feeling the picture. My theme changed somewhere while I was actually doing the painting from the sketch, and I think that was when it started to fail compositionally. I really do need to work on doing finished pictures more. I want to be able to execute a terrific painting when I try. Also i think another thing I need to work on is get over my want to not use references whatsoever. I have this thing where I try to picture in my mind exactly what I want and absolutely refuse to use references. I think this hinders me in that my memory is not 100%. things tend to be more simplified than what is in real life. Then again, I have always been doing this, and my ability in art has improved since when I started...so Idk
I know for me I sometimes hate looking at reffs cuz they make it blatently obvious what needs improving, and I sometimes want to keep living in my fantasy and convince myself It looks okay.
But once you really break down your ego and observe you can do some amazing work.
Your work looks good, but it looks really 'fun' and not as disciplined as it could be
What do you mean by fun? Would you say my work here looks "fun" : ryanwc.deviantart.com