[Novacaptain]

Well it seems i'm not going to be able to keep up with my original intention of doing a finished artwork per week because frankly, if i don't get out on the weekend i start go get a little edgy. Anyways, this was made based on lineart i did in paintchat one day...i usually don't work from lineart but it turned out nice...different from the usual stuff.

I'd really appreciate whatever critique you have to offer on anything you can think of.
(paint-overs welcome)

[cptoonz]

I can see where "nose picking" could be dangerous. Interesting concept. Paint wise I guess the BG seems very similar in color to the creature...which may be intentional, ie the creature would be likely to have a similar coloring to the environment in which it lives...or something. I guess maybe more depth to depict the canyon/cliffs and BG in general. If you were going for an "ooky monty", then you nailed it Keep it up!

[Hunago]

Very nice, I like how the skin looks. Agree with the comment about separating the bg a bit. Love those sickle blades.

[Ian Jones]

hehe.

Yeah the bg needs separation, Spooge was saying something about that in his newest thread. Quick, get your bible and write it down!

I think it has a lot to do with contrast and edges, general stuff really. But it is also a colour issue, the creature and the background are of the same pallete so of course they are going to look almost one and the same. Although consider the opposite of this, a high colour contrast would make it look really out of place, an interesting issue either way.


If I could make a general comment on your painting style it would be about your technique and approach. Edges are important and you have missed quitea few important areas where hard edges are needed to separate and define the space between forms. I also would like to highlight the number of strokes you have taken, the over-rendered look... or 'noodling' if you know what I mean. I am by no means any good at it myself but I aim to economise and define shapes with the fewest possible strokes, Micke and Joachim are exemplars of this sort of technique I am talking about.

Maybe it would be something you can work at next week, try a painting, no matter how long it takes you approach it systematically with every stroke. Force yourself to consider it a little more than you would usually. I try to do this myself to avoid the 'searching' sort of brushstrokes that immediately stand out of place. Avoid noodling.

Anyways, enuf pep talking from me.

Hope tht helps.

[Novacaptain]

I made a few sketches before arriving at this final result...one following the "object and background must separate" and the other incorporated the "always more firebombs please" statement. Althought the firebombs just looked confusing and pointless so i removed them in the end.



The general opinion was that the Green highlight was too distracting and that the object and background weren�t unified enough. Quite likely due to my strange use of color.



I really liked those highlights so i thought about giving it another shot...but this time red and i also tried keeping the object and background separate through value rather than color. In the end i realized (with some help from ANJ-77) that the highlights weren�t helping the picture very much and i decided to scrap them.

I was trying to get a conceptual design look and not as much an illustration, so i imagined that the more rendering...the more the gods of all thing visual would smile on me.

Thank you very much for the comments!! I really do appreciate them. I might go back on this but i really think that the exercise ian proposed sounds a lot more interesting for next weekend.

[ September 09, 2002: Message edited by: Novacaptain ]