[ThE_JacO]

Premise: i'v nearly 0 traditional art education (apart artistical anatomy and lighting study that is more oriented toward photograph then drawing being my work that of 3d character modeler/animator) so if ppl like liquid or fred or spooge and the rest of the guru company diss anything i said go for thir opinion =).

said this.. i think it isn't a bad work for being one of the first attempts, my suggestions are

1) try to picture in ur mind as clearly as possible where the light source is and how it could interact with the volumes of the figure

2) ALWAYS think in terms of volumes not in colors (IE where a color goes in a 2D space)

3) block uniformly with a very dark midtone the pieces of the work and then add some lighter midtones, then create shadows and last add the highlights

4) rough stuff is the best =) start rough and then add detail (possibly on a different layer, it's really easy to overdetail and regret u saved after THAT cool point when the pic seemed so natural =))

5) in my experience using hard edged brushes and continuosly refining renders better then soft brushes or airbrush (this is a matter of tastes though), using the pen with only size sensitivty and a 15/20% fixed opacity often does the trick to start =)

5b) dark lines to outline ur figures are often tempting, but they work only in comics colouring where u start from inks, where u placed the black lines for the arms for example i saw a lot more suitable a lightstorke to space it from the breast. to make it simple: pure black outlines in painting style (unless it's a shadow zone) are bad

6)have a look at what i made of ur pic (i love when ppl like spooge cranks out something totally cool in 5 mins , personally it took me nearly 30 mins to come out with this crap) and see what u like and try to figure out how i proceeded.

7) as soon as someone more skilled posts some advice etc. ask Dib to delete my post and follow what they say



P.S. in this revising i placed the light on the right ~ at the head's height (slightly higher) and more or less at shoulder's depth (on the Zaxis).

also there's some minor anatomy glitches (arms a bit too bulky and she's broadshouldered) that usually don't match the idea of a female figure, for that kind of things though get a book or 2 (medical ones and burne "i need no leg bones" hoggarth are the ones i refer too more often)

i really hope this helped, anyway just following this forum will have u improving at lightspeed =)

EDIT: just corrected some of the too many motherfunking typos :P



[This message has been edited by ThE_JacO (edited September 28, 2000).]

[Baldie]

This is one of my first paintings. Can someone help me out here and tell me what I am doing wrong, and how to improve?

I know some of the shadows are way off and that some parts of the body looks strange, especially around the neck. But I have been looking at this image for so long, that I can't really tell whats wrong anymore.

[pierre]

Her contours are too hard, that gives the impression that she is a 2d cutout infront of the background.

While the cotours are too hard in relation the the shadows and coloring of the body, the overlapping of the arms for instance seem to melt with the rest of the body. That makes the image go further towards the 2d illusion instead of 3d.

The coloring and shadowing of the body is pretty much the same on all of her skin. Now ofcourse that can be the case , depending on how the lighting is organize, however, your hightlights give the impression that she is made out of plastic rather then flesh.

My suggestion would be that you concentrate on the overall lighting to beging with, and then go over to the details when you have that macro lighting working. If you zoom out the image to the extreme and it looks bad, you need to forget the details and work on the macro, if you have that working for you, the details will also work. No details can ever rescue a bad image if the overall look is weak. Try to think big, i think it is as simple as that.

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http://www.crosswinds.net/~pierrehannah

[Baldie]

ThE_JacO: I really like what you did to my pic. It shows how I should work with the lightning. Thanks!!

I have tried to use hard edged brushes but it just doesn't work for me... Sigh.. I guess I have to try harder =)

Thanks for all the things that you pointed out to me. It was really helpful.