I'm not sure what I did with this. The light source is all over the place and the foreground thingie with the textures look really bad because I went lazy at that point and I kind of forgot what the hell I was doing. But I did get happy with the fact that I got the chance to experiment the hell out of it with lighting and colours. So even if it's not as great as I hoped fore I still learned a lot from it. And for that I am thankful... I guess it doesn't look as bad as I described but it's still kinda off.
And since I'm feeling like I'm slowly getting back to my optimistic self again I shall end this with a quote again.
"What poison is to food, self-pity is to life." - Oliver C. Wilson
http://img829.imageshack.us/img829/9875/weelowpaintover.jpg
ReplyDeleteThe idea of the image is pretty cool, the design elements are nice too. The shapes of the hair is interesting.
But there's a lot that's off in this. Which you're probably aware of, judging from your own comment.
I made a paint over, I tried to make sense out of the light, it was kinda hard to get it to work so the paint over isn't really perfect or anything, I should have spent a lot more time on it but I don't have all the time in the world to spend on paintovers :P
Anyway. I tried to fix the light, like I mentioned. The hair had some odd orange highlights which didn't work for me. It made the hair look slightly plastic because of the highlights and the hard shapes. You got to be very gentle with hair. Rather than putting in a lot of hard highlights, work the shadows more. Try to stay in the midtone in the hair's light. Depending on how wet the hair is, it will get harder highlights. There are however a slight highlights in hair, but it has to be put down softly as well. I need practice on this myself but hopefully you got something out of the paintover on that part.
Don't use the dodge/burn tool too much. It's apparent that you did use these two a lot in the piece. Usually these tools are more a crutch than anything, but if they are used right and softly here and there, it can be a great tool. Paint with the paint brush as much as you can though. If any effects, use the layer mods (again, use them slightly).
Be consistent with the light. Like I stated in the paint over, on the "frame", put the highlights on the metal from the top (if the lights comes from above..).
Hope this helps man. I think the paintover explains a lot more than my words do.
Nordlund, hit it on the head. Adding a deeper contrast and keeping the light source consistent can make all the difference. The problem with digital painting is that things can often look too airbrushed or soft because of the lack of natural textures. Referencing classic portraits while working can help greatly.
ReplyDeleteThank you Conny, your critique is as helpful as always. If not more this time. But one thing I got to point out is... I didn't really use the doge nor the burn tool in this piece :U
ReplyDeleteBut I got an idea how to deal with light now and I learned a lesson in choosing a proper light source. Because in this case I pretty much winged it after a point.
And thank you too Sinstar. Love the critique you gave me as well. I've just recently started doing more portraits so hopefully I'll learn more now.