[creatorstudios]

Hey, folks
Here's my first serious work with a wacom: Feel welcome to rip it apart. You may look at it some more than 2 secs since then some of the errors seem to fade away




Some Self Crit:

Oh boy .. errors are piling up on this one. And y'a know what the worst part is ? Even I can see them so I can't even beginn to imagine what you folks are going to see.

Perspective:
Well, at the first look the perspective seems to be a little off. First I couldn't lay my fingers on the reason why since the pure color masses seemed pretty ok to me. I now come to the conclusion that it must be the wing that's distracting. Especially the shading behaviour which brings me to the next problem area:

Light & Shading:
There's something wrong with the light sources. Considering the light that's casted on the torso (orange part) I guess in reality the wing would look really washed out without a whole lot of harsh shadings. I tried that but it just looks flat and uninteretsting.

Volume:
The whole thing does not seem to have a whole lot of volume. The wing itself is ok despite of some flaws but the torso looks just flat even if it's shadings seem ok to me. The reason for that I think is the translucent edge of the feathers. It just looks outlined and stylized. I guess I should work on that one a little more since this could also help marrying the parrot with the background a little more.

Style:
There's big inconsistence in the overall style. The torso has almost no visible brush strokes while the wing has lots of them.

Misc:
Don't like the wing. You would expect it to be smoother - here it's just a big blurry mess. Also the "connection" between the wing and the torso is not very well crafted. Dark parts are a little out of hand + I had the impression at the end that the head is a little oversized. But let's just say it's a young parrot => baby proportions.


I think it's not to bad for the second work with digital painting and the first really serious one. Still - looking forward for any suggestions you make.
Especially if anyone gives any great tips on how to get a more 3dimensional feeling to it while giving credit to the light situation, I'm ready to invest a couple of more hours.


CYA
Jens

[creatorstudios]

Ok, folks
link works now .. I hope
Jens

[Bishop_Six]

Well, I didn't read all your self-crits but here goes:

I really have no idea where the light source is supposed to be. It seems to be lit from all angles. Choose a light source and then add your highlights on the side of the bird being hit by the light, and add shadows on the opposite side. I'm sure you already know that, but it seems you didn't really think it out before painting it.

It also looks very 2-dimensional. This probably because of the lighting, but if you add more contrast between the highlights and shadows that should take care of that.

For a second try though, this is very good. Keep at it and you'll be fine.

[creatorstudios]

Almost sorry to post this since there's so little change to the original. But maybe this is more the way the picture should go light wise. Kinda elminates this feeling of a second light source now giving more credit to diffuse light. Still there's a rim light to keep the parrot seperated from the background.

jens