EASEL OF Carly Milligan
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Bram on August 3, 2018 at 3:38 amHey Carly, great work you’ve got on here, rest assured that you’re on track, just keep at it, keep honing your fundamentals and things will work out just fine. As for this image, I’ll try and give you a few pointers that will hopefully improve this (or future) images.
For starters, I think you can get a bit more out of your composition. Think of painting like a cinematographer does about shooting film, you’re in control of the camera and you want to put it so that you get the most out of your subject. Currently your camera’s square in the middle, the horizon line is in the middle too and your character’s facing it head on, but if your aim is to make him feel menacing (which I think it is) it helps to lower your camera and shoot upwards instead. Once you’ve established your camera angle also think about how best to put your character in it. Currently he’s not quite in the middle, but he’s also not on the right enough to make it feel like a conscious decision. Same goes for the axe and the decapitated head, those feel like they’re forced into the frame a little, if you give them more breathing room they’ll feel more purposeful.
Secondly, all materials are currently rendered a bit evenly. Everything from fire to cloth has the same brushwork and value-range, which makes everything fight for attention a little bit. What I would do is prioritize one main light source and focus on that. Feels like you could get a nicely backlit figure here, so I would keep his silhouette fairly dark like you have, but darken the fire in his skin and axe so it’s part of the same silhouette. Here’s a good reference of fire that feels super hot but still registers as dark: http://www.pozadzides.com/photos/hawaii/images/Liquid%20Hot%20Magma%206.jpg Then push the fire in the back: hot white core with orange red fall-off. It could help to make your sky and floor darker too, giving you more range to make the fire feel warm and bright.
And then lastly, give a bit more thought to anatomy and construction too. Find (or shoot) reference in the exact pose, angle and lighting scenario you established above, that’s going to take a lot of the pressure off while painting as you’ll have a clear guide to follow, allowing you to focus on painting and not on figuring out 20 things at the same time. It’s going to make your life a lot easier.
Hope that helps!
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CoreyCbrown on August 13, 2018 at 2:49 amwell, its a great pose. Whats not working for me is the background. It looks like its kind of half-hazardly put in there. My thought is that ,even tho its not what the scene is about, I’d like to see a ground plane in the bottom. Alternatively you could change the angle of the pose and have just a dynamic sky. I looked at some riot games splash art because they deal with a lot of compositions similar to this picture https://d1u5p3l4wpay3k.cloudfront.net/lolesports_gamepedia_en/thumb/b/b1/Camille_Splash_0.jpg/800px-Camille_Splash_0.jpg?version=030da5cfda1a2c11b0ca2fdf0355122e You might want to look at some mtg angels and see what they are doing with the background.
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Carly Milligan
Living and working in UT, Carly earned her degree in science. During her senior year however, she realized a career in art was what she really wanted to pursue.
I am open to critique
I WOULD LIKE HELP WITH
I'm trying to focus on realism in my paintings, edge control, value/color relations, all that jazz. I'm also wanting to push my concepts and style. Currently I lean very heavily on narrative in my illustrations. So I think it would be good to explore more conceptual pieces and unique styles. Any and all input is greatly appreciated.
Very promising. Soft edges don’t seem to be a problem for you, but you might try sharpening a few, especially where you want to focus attention. Perhaps on the lips and the tip of the nose. And a bit of sparkle in the eyes will help to bring her alive.
this is good. there is not much wrong with it. The proportions are accurate. The values are working together. you’ve avoided some common mistakes like white in the eyes and black in the eyebrows. I would correct the left eye, her right eye, its pointing in a way that makes her look cross eyed.
If you want to add more complexity to your portraits rather than going in and making small details, which is good practice, but I think working with more colors would be more useful to you. Instead of finding an accurate skintone and laying it down, experiment different colors and layer colors closer and closer to your fleshy color. You can put reds in the shadow and on the nose and build up with flesh colors from there, I’ve seen this done wet on wet. There are so many ways to do color in portraits that there is no real way to tell you what to do, you have to experiment, sometimes with colors you would not expect!
I suggested some red on the ear… if your ever having trouble just be like Sargent: https://i2.wp.com/www.gailsibley.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Screen-Shot-2013-10-31-at-3.28.52-PM.png?resize=646%2C523