Finni
LeV Oblivion
REDLINES REQUEST
Username : LeV Oblivion
Reference(s) : "Ruins"
Specifics : i drew this a while back. asked for critiques from the "picture post" forum and got some feedback. redrew it and this is what i have now.
i'm having trouble with the perspective, lighting the whole picture up, and the clouds. ;o;
thank you.
Your painting is already gorgeous so I just want to give a few pointers. o/
I actually didn't realize your piece had clouds until I blasted the levels on my end. Maybe my monitor is too dark but I have it color-calibrated to match print pretty well and rarely have issue seeing contrast on other pieces. For clouds, I don't know what kind of clouds you're looking for, but my suggestion is just to look at lots of different photos of clouds, see what kinds you like, and start from a soft edge (less dense clouds or clouds that are further away) and work your way into more solid, dense cloud formations. I also didn't know if you had a light source in the sky from either a setting sun or something. Sorry I can't be of more help here. ;A;
With the lighting though, one thing you can do next time before you start painting is to establish a gradient on your canvas before drawing anything, which will give the painting some depth. Also keep in mind that your foreground elements will have the darkest darks, the lightest lights, and the most saturated colors, while objects in the midground and the background will be less saturated, less contrasting, and also less visible/detailed/clear. For example, the fighter jets you have flying around in the sky are so crisp that it makes them feel like they've been copy and pasted on top of the image, and not a part of the scene. It's not always about rendering every detail, rather rendering enough detail make the objects recognizable without feeling unnatural, and then go ahead and go nuts on rendering key foreground elements.
I'm assuming you wanted the fallen plane and the soldier to be your foreground, so I went ahead and showed what you can do to a piece just by really going for it with your light source and adding additional highlights to bring focus to the soldier.
http://artbyfinni.com/REDLINE/2012-10_ProjectRedline_LeVOblivion_mentor_Finni.jpg
Another way to go about it is to bring your focus to the foreground by contrasting warm and cool colors. For example, if you decide to add some clouds to frame the image, they could have a much cooler/neutral grey tone and then the orange bits of the sky that remain and the bright fire from the jet will really stand out an draw the viewer's attention.
Let me link you to a super awesome inspirational video on using lighting in painting to draw the viewer's attention to particular parts of your image:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=Sbz1IT_Xizk
Again these are all just suggestions and tips and I'm not a teacher or anything so please take everything with a grain of salt. o/ Sorry I can't spend more time to do more paintover with your piece but to me, your technical skills are pretty strong and you can learn a lot by looking at more reference and instructional videos that are already available!
sorry for not replying for so long >.<
thought i could try and work on this some more.
(why is it so hard to go back and work on WIPs?) anyways,
thank you so much for your guidelines!
--clouds: well, i used a cloud brush i found to try and create sky texture. i think the problem i'm having is trying to figure out what type of clouds would look the best and understanding how to draw clouds. i will go and look for and study photos/sky/other artists' work on clouds.
--lighting: i think the thing that i'm afraid of is lighting everything up TOO MUCH. i lightened the sky in the reference that i posted, but after seeing your redlines i realized how much more lighting i could've done. o.o
--depth: thank you. i drew
this a week ago. adding more details to the foreground and have less saturated and less detailed objects in the background...it does bring focus onto the element.
and yes. that was a really amazing video *o* thanks for sharing it
thanks again. this was very helpful.
100
150
100
