[Linejack]

Ooh this is getting lovely. Steven love the work you�ve done so far, I would agree with joachim that it would look a lot better if it was more dramatic. Is the woman actually meant to be made out of foresty bits n bobs? It�s not the sexiest thing to find the bird you�re shagging has an open back full of twigs and tree bark real wood hehe Anyway, joachim�s is nice but I like the way you had her hand resting on his shoulder, just a light touch to guide him into the forest, maybe if the guy had really wide eyes too to insinuate disbelief, as if he was entranced... really great stuff! Can�t wait to see how it turns out...

[ArMaDoN]

Hi Steven,
Hows it going ?

Well let me put my 2 cents on this.

As always good work.

1. Your work is very stiff...
Try to add more feel and flux in it.
Try lowering the bushy tail a bit on the back to add the sexy feel to the pic.
Show more Butt I spose since that attracts eroticism.

2. The knight should have a trembled stance to portray the feeling on doubt and he should look very worried, Since this Siren is trying put him off his path.

3. the overall composition of this piece should be fluent to show the Siren luring us into this picture aswell... Try this. Make all the trees and leaves point to one direction little bit off centre on the portrait and her arm should be the opposite... this will show that she has a very big affect and this drawing will mean alot to someone who can deciphere it.

Use it don't use it.
Overall.. Well done my friend

[Lee Yiankun]

oO' Wow, you guys really amazes me.
This is indeed a facinating pic(& thread).


BTW, I like the 3rd one best.

[-dan-]

hmm... i have to agree with the others that the komposition seems a bit stiff, but you will probably get that....

one other thing, dont huldra and vittra have a tail of some kind? maybe she have it under her skirt, but i would have shown it.

for the coulors i would have done some more like in john baurs paintings with some more dirtier green and brownish coulor sheme, but thats just me.....

looking forward o see the final pic

[spooge demon]

I think we have very similar tastes in what is fun to illustrate.

I hear what your are saying about composition. I have the same trouble too. It helps to not think about the subject for as long as you can, just think about the shapes and the abstract quality of things. Think shapes and gesture and volume, not surfaces and forms and objects. That comes later, all in good time, but the tendency is to be too specific too early, at least with me. I am not sure if mine is any better, but it is different. Joachim, I see you are enjoying PS7 as much as I am

wow, that looks dark on this monitor. sorry

[Steven Stahlberg]

Ooh [shiver] that's mooooody... I gotta try to get more of that into mine... mine looks like it's painted by an anemic sickly little girl scout in comparison...
Excellent job spooge, and thanks!!

[jr]

this is a really amazing thread steve, i love seeing the progression of your work. and spooge, your image looks dark on my computer too, but it still kicks ass.

[Steven Stahlberg]

Ok, phew... after a long intense painting session this fine Saturday morning, I got this... what do you think? Now I'm off to a Texas barbecue by the pool.

[Steven Stahlberg]

You're right Light, Mullin's and Bouguerau's takes are both better images, taken on their own terms. But I've got some things I feel must be in there. This may become a 3d animated short film one day, so I'm also seeing it as a kind of production sketch.

Let me try to describe my vision a bit better. I want to see the hole in her back very clearly. Also I need the landscape to have a certain look, a certain atmosphere. These 2 things I feel are integral to the story. The legend is dependent on the infamous swedish melancholy, which is dependent on the quiet whistful beauty of the summer nights, etc... (the nights that are so long, the summer that is so short)

So the result is: I feel we should see a bit of the sky, and some mist; there can only be one huldra; the two characters can't touch or be moving too fast, the light needs to be sunset type; I need to show the hole in her back; and it must be possible to animate it (that's why the image proportions are like this). Right now I don't like the idea of a furry foxlike tail (which is what the legend says), it would be hard to not make it comical I think, though I may certainly change my mind and add it later.

Thanks guys, this is really helping, if anyone has any more suggestions I'm all ears.

[mythwarden]

I think Craig hit it dead on with his dark painting.

Steven, notice how everything points to the expression on the man's face?

The legs twist up towards him...melding with him.

The hair flow leads you towards his face -- Same with the breasts.

Also notice how her body flows into that of the tree in the background? It's not forcing you to see her as a treelike creature...it only suggests it.

Her pose is perfect and his facial expression is too.

The painting is dark, but it does give the cold sense of being deep within the woods.

----

The main problem you had was that you placed your forms side by side and not as one, where they should be.

The sense of depth and pull between the two figures are lost because of it.

You have a great painting and one you should be proud so bare with my humble critique.

-myth

[Steven Stahlberg]

I agree with all you said, Mythwarden. I did a little update of number 4, where I moved them closer together, made her pose more extreme, lifted her higher, lots of other stuff.

[Light]

Spooge(mullins?): I like this gamma corrected at 1.2. Very frazettish.

Steven: I like a lot of your work but not this one.

I think you need to do like mullins(?) suggest and just work on shapes, contrast, and basic visual asthetic quality.

You've went to far into trying to "illustrate" without laynig down something visually impressive.

Not to say its not okay. But I think your too fixated on having to show the hollowed out back.

Suggest loosening up..

BTW.. Check out Bougourea's Nymphs and the Satyr for an excellent take on this theme. One of my favorite paintings.

-- ok done editing.

[ May 18, 2002: Message edited by: Light ]

[spooge demon]

Oh boy, art direction The design appeared in my cornflakes this morning. It is still the vertical serpentine diagonal-thing, but I think it is stronger than the other one I did.

Steven, I think your series makes a lot more sense since they are production images. Maybe you are thinking ahead to what can be accomplished in 3-d and what cannot?


I know this image is very large, but the file is 119K, witin reason, and isn't it better seeing images at this size as opposed to the postage stamps we usually see? If you want is big, you have to keep it a half a meg, or compress it a lot. I would rather have the extra pixels, same file size, just more compression. Any thoughts, anyone? You like this size or the 6-700 pixel range?

edit- well that's dumb- you can't see the composition at that size. I post a smaller version...





[ May 19, 2002: Message edited by: spooge demon ]

[Frost]

Nice work Craig and Steven.

Steven: I really like those fantasy based images. Your last one is really a lot nicer (I see you're getting good comments and crits, that's excellent.) One thing that bothers me a little about it however is that the man seems to be on his knees of has had his legs cut off. But I can see how the girls position on canvas being higher gives a sense of "overpowerment".. maybe something can be done about the position of the man? or maybe clarify his dwarvedness? Good work sir.

Craig: Glad to see you posting again, thought we had lost you. Larger compressed images are probably better, when kept to reasonable sizes, as they can be downscaled to produce a tigher image nontheless basically downsampling those compression artifacts to nothing. If too large however, this may cause problems for some/few people and their browsers, as, even if the download time is fast due to the compression, it still expands on the client computer as being Xres*Yres*3 raw uncompressed bytes when being viewed. (PS - what's with the nipple grabbing?)

[ May 19, 2002: Message edited by: Frost ]

[-HoodZ-]

ooo nice....hehe i dont think he'll feel the nipple twister with that armor on

[ May 19, 2002: Message edited by: -HoodZ- ]

[Steven Stahlberg]

Thanks!
Arg you did it again Craig! Bee-utiful!

I guess I am thinking ahead a bit, but I can't blame my failures on that, the truth is, my weakest point is staging and posing, I mean coming up with the ideas for that, from scratch.
Here's another version, trying to go as much with Craig's composition as possible within a tv format, keeping the light cooler and the knight bald (makes it easier in 3d).

[Light]

Nice works.

I had a sort of "vision" too.

Steven: I think one problem is that you've failed to capture that moment before moment feeling. Why not put the man at a top of a hill and the woman at the bottom..

If this is possible.. I think this would look cool.

[Asurfael]

been a while since I checked this thread... So far I've liked all of the different versions. There are a few mistakes in them, buut... The general feeling of those pics rocks. And man, how do you have the patience to do so many versions of one drawing? If I don't like a drawing I've made I usually just diss it after a few hours and start another one. Maybe I should learn some patience.

[Torstein Nordstrand]

What amazes me the most about this thread (apart from the high quality of the discussion, of course) is Stevens honesty and willingness to share and strive in public. Thanks for sharing

The progression leading to the piece above, and the lecture it represents, is fantastic. I realize that you are working within limits that Spooge (who produced his most excellent vision) was not aware of, and maybe that is the biggest challenge here - making the theme work in that not-so-inherently-dramatic tv format. Besides, when the armored figure is placed on top, he looks to me as if he's the powerful person in charge, which might be distracting.

Thank you for sacrificing her beautiful buttocks on the former page for the sake of design. I am sure I would have a hard time at it. I think your image is truly evolving, and I hope you won't say "I've finally finished it" in a long time...

Note: Suddenly had an idea. Don't know if it fits with the situation, but what if another Huldra was hiding (giggling?) in the shadowy trees to our left? That might take care of those awkward, inactive spaces on the sides.

Thanks,

[ May 19, 2002: Message edited by: Torstein Nordstrand ]

[Anthony]

Looks good Steven, looks amazing Craig(the second one, the first was too dark to see too well!). Steven, I think this last one has the difficulty of making her look like a ghoul, the way she's bent over and a bit wirey. I know you're thinking animation, but for a pic by itself that could be a problem. For animation, I would suggest showing her backing up from the front, to get a good view of the dark forest behind the beautiful girl, to show how focused everything is on her rather than the moving, scary shapes behind her in the shadows. She could back up to a tree, and switch angles, she waits there until the knight gets very close, then she slides to the side of the tree, giving us a glimpse of her back(cue suspenseful music :] ). Anywho, nice work everyone!

[-HoodZ-]

that dead skin color works....though not very alluring if she's trying to lure him deep into the woods...well im going for mythos wise....

[glody]

you should post this over at EATPOO.COMto see what they have to say about it...i definitely like the concept behind the image....very earthly feel to it...which im a fan of

[spooge demon]

Steven, I have found 3-d to be a real help in thinking about layout and staging. Make some very simple models, with the correct gesture and play with them and positions and lenses and such. Sometimes it really helps getting over a hump like this.

I thought she was taunting him "I bet it's thissss big!"

[mythwarden]

lol...spooge.

Yeah, I prefer the larger images too. Easier to see what's going on.

Steven-

You did great, Steven. I like this version far better then others.

I think giving her a little more warms will take the dead look from her.

*whips out light saber*
Then...finished...you will be.

-myth

[Novacaptain]

This looks very good, The long hair is a really nice addition to her character (wilder. The poses don't, IMHO, follow the logic of the myth. If he could see the hole in her back, which he probably would from that angle, he would probably not go after her into the woods, he might even run away or draw his sword to attack her. The most peculiar thing i remember from the story was that she'd walk backwards to hide her hollowed back and tail. Speaking of which, I think that you should try adding the tail. Her back is, in my view, really supposed to be her "ugly" side. Maybe polish up the guys armour enough for us to see her cute and playfully seductive face as a contrast

In a way she's both beauty and beast...

It was initially an awesome piece, and the updates were all really splendid too.

[ May 20, 2002: Message edited by: Novacaptain ]

[Steven Stahlberg]

Thanks all very much for commenting, and encouraging. Here's a new version, sorry for posting versions that are very similar to each other, but at least I'm not posting all the other intermediate versions...

I tried to get her back to being more desirable, less difference in height, while trying to keep some of the diagonal composition suggested by Craig, and added a thin tail (not a furry one, I just can't see how that could look like it's supposed to be there). I also added some more branches and stuff in the empty part on the left.

[Anthony]

Just playing with it a bit, explorer some ideas.

Basically I thought it should feel more mystical, and more trapping, give even more of a feeling of hidden menace. As such, I put him in the edge of the forest, just threw some darkness behind him, blocking his path back. Some minor fixes on her arm's anatomy(still needs work, take yer time with that!), added in shadows of trees, since they're not in a studio( ), and added a tail, although its silly, I wanted to see how that'd look. You're right, looks funny hehe
PS: Oh yeah, I also make her ass nicer

[ May 20, 2002: Message edited by: Anthony ]

[starglider2]

Who is Craig Mullins here ?? Wich Nickname is that ? Spooge Demon ?? I know Stahlberg here (he popped my eyes out with a painting of an angel in CGTALK forum)...I visit the Mullins site everyday to check any updates...Stahlberg and Mullins : I stopped listening to my teacher his blah blah blah, i told him I don't learn anything from him, instead i'm teaching myself now by reading these forums and looking endlessly at the drawings u make here. You works are amazing really. It became a standard for me. To Craig : how do you achieve that very acrylic/waterish delicate textural look in your paintings, that very intense spontaneous light/volume layered feel ? It looks like you paint with patterns or what ?

[Steven Stahlberg]

Anthony, I like all your changes, especially the tree-branch-shadows on her, excellent! I've used some of that in my new version, I also put some more foliage on the right side. Thanks!

[HellSpawn]

Greetings Steven,

I have to say this is turning out to be an amazing thread. It's always a good week when someone get's "Spooged"

I have no crits on you painting style. It's simply amazing. I was just reading all the replies in the thread and thought I would give my 2 cents worth.

You seem to be playing alot with the Huldra. From what you were saying about the elements that you need to keep in this painting maybe you would get a better result with leaving her alone and playing with the pose of the warrior.

The warrior in you piece just looks to flat. Maybe if you put him more in a 3/4 pose.

I sketched out a differnt approch.

Maybe the warrior is so over come with her song and beuaty that he just claspes to his knees?

Maybe after a hard battle which he barely escapes alive he wanders the forest a defeated beaten person and suffering from his wounds that he falls to the ground. The warrior hears this beautiful song and looks up and see's what 'he thinks' is an angel. But it's a Huldra casting her evil spell on him to trick him to continue on further into the forest?


This is just a 2 minute sketch just to play with the poses....

Keep up the awesome work Steven your work is inspiring!

cheers,

- Shawn