[Diggity]

Hello everybody.. I've been lurking this forum for a couple weeks and I'm a long time fan of Dhab's art work. I must say there's some incredibly talented people who post here. Now you can add another one to the list! Nah, not really, but I can pretend. Take a look:



This took me an unreal amount of time to do, so try not to rip on it too hard. I see some people who come on here and say "This is a 5 second sketch, so try not to be too harsh". And then I look at it and its an absolute masterpiece. That's kind of obnoxious.. but the conclusion I've drawn is that I'm taking a long time to get results that aren't necessarily as good as people who are spending fractions of the time, so I need to do something to loosen up/speed up/whatever. This picture took 20+ hours. Any ideas? Thanks.. -Dave

[Visigoth]

Whee...That's kinda cool...in a hallucinogenic type of way... Good work.

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Your car is a fiberglass penis extension.

[shahar2k]

is that the saturn logo in the background?

[A.Buttle]

Interesting picture, but it seems to lack any sort of depth. It just looks really flat.

How to get faster? Practice. A lot. And don't expect high quality work every single time. Just sketch.

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[Jaymo]

Nice! To decrease the flat appearance you should try not to shade only details but objects as a whole. Like shade the tree and the small hill it grows on on a larger scale. Also dare to use more than one color on an object, right now it's very much like magenta sky, green tree, brown ground. Funnily your moon is not looking that flat, though in reality it probably would...
And I guess the magic sphere mistaken as saturn is conjured by the girl. It would be easier to understand if it's glow would reflect on the girl or the perspective would bring it in front of her hand.

Hope you don't feel bad about my advice and it's of some use for you. Cause this really is a nice drawing with it's own style and mood and I know how much some quick words can hurt a long time effort. Just don't want to tell you everything you did fine, would take too long and you'd already know...

[Diggity]

Thanks guys.. It's a shame that more depth didn't show through. I see what you mean though. Should I put a stronger shading contrast in the foreground? Yep, the "mystical egg thing" is being conjured by the girl. Good suggestions on making it look better Jaymo. It looks like it's in the background? Hmm. Well, back to the drawing board I suppose . I think I'm done with this picture for now just because it's taken me an inordinate amount of time. I think the next thing to do is go crazy with sketches and try to strengthen some of my weaknesses.

[This message has been edited by Diggity (edited October 11, 2000).]

[Rinaldo]

The one thing that struck me about it was the lighting. you seem to have a night scene as the moon indicates but the lighting of the foreground objects is very light, more to the tune of a day scene.
If I were doing this I'd use the ligthing to full extent. I mean you could have some really cool things happening with the "mystical egg thing" if it was a light source and then use the moon lighting to give a very strong mood.
Remember that everything has form. everyting in your pic will cast shaddows and interact with the light source etc. If you don't get what I'm rambling on about I could maybe paint over your pic a bit.

I really like the idea and the drawing but I think it has a lot more potential than you've shown.

think of everything without light and then add it.

[Diggity]

Yeah, I see what you mean. I think that's largely due to the fact that I was planning a lighter sky when I started. But yeah, by all means Rinaldo.. You're more than welcome to have a go at it. I'd be interested to see what you have in mind.

- Dave

[StrangeFate]

hmmm cute pic, for some reason i have to think of 'playmobil' when i look at the girl.

[elam]

This picture is cool. I like the tree and the contour lines you have going around the roots. The colors are nice as well. I personally would work the shadows a bit more. Make 'em darker. As for looseness, you might want to invest in a life drawing class. Gestures are wonderful for quick, dynamic drawings.
elam

[Rinaldo]

Diggity-
ok this is roughly what I was talking about.
I've fudged a few things with the light source but I think you ge tthe idea.
It might be my personal like of more dynamic lighting but anyway. just a suggestion, I haven't gone into detail just loosly blocked it in. I wasn't sure what to do with the moon. I'm not sure if the pic needed it with this composition so I left it out. too many different objects in a pic can compete for attnetion.

Hope this helps on some level

[AliasMoze]

Nice colors and values, Rinaldo. Sky too complicated, though

My humble advice: Think of big to little. Get the big shapes correct, then move on to finer detail. I see lots of detail that is unimportant and probably took you a while to put in. On the same note, you are obviously concerned with the fine details and all the shapes as equal beings. When I started painting in PS, I used to toil over creating paths for every shape, no matter how small. You should forget it when you start sketching out your image. The things you need to sharpen will become apparent if you start bigger.

If you take a look at Rinaldo's redo, you'll notice that the value, or brightness, range is different in the background elements than in the foreground. The figure and adjacent elements have a wider bright/dark ratio (so to speak), because they are close and they are your focus. Notice also the variance of the saturation levels throughout Rinaldo's.

Anyway, that's my two cents. Good luck

[Anthony J]

If you got rid of the 'saturn logo' looking moon thing, and detailed the girl alot more...it'd be pretty cool!

why not keep detailing and shading this work, see what you can come up with?


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[Diggity]

Thanks for the advice guys. This picture has taken me a really long time to do though, so I think I'm going to cool it and work on some other stuff for awhile. Your lighting ideas are good Rinaldo, but I think when/if I get around to it, I'll probably stick to somewhat lighter values in the foreground. Don't get me wrong.. the dynamism is great, but I think I'm looking for a lighter mood with this one. I'll definitely take your ideas into consideration though and probably add some colored lighting reflecting onto the girl and maybe the tree from the egg. Another thing I'm seeing is that when I do detail my compositions, it's most important to keep the foreground the most refined and not necessarily fuss so much over the background. I think I really put too much into the moon. Hmm.. also, AliasMoze - Great suggestions that I will keep in mind for future work. Anyway, thanks for commenting everyone. Should see some new stuff from me in the coming weeks.

- Dave