[Groady]

This is my second digital painting and have worked on this far too long (Im talking months
in between school work) :P The soldier is pencil and gouache coloured digitally.
The rest is 100% digital.

I'm fairly happy with it as I feel it portrays my original concept sucessfully.
That is, to depict a sense of loneliness and an anxiety of impending danger. At no point
did I want to glorify war, in fact I wanted to show the bleakness of it, hence the choice
of colour.



comments welcome.

[kanabis]

bricks look a bit thin, and lighting is weird (weird glow around him). other than that i think it gets your point across very well. nice one

[Bilbo]

this looks good, i don't know why no one bothered replying. (edit- didn't see kanabis' reply until posting this)
There are a few things that can improve it- the first thing i notice is the absolute symmetry of the composition- right down to the two explosions on the horizon. i think this makes the image a little boring to look at. try holding a piece of paper up to the screen and using it to conceal different areas of the image- i think that removing about a third from the left (or right) would make it more interesting to look at.

second thing is the lighting- i think the entire foreground should be slightly darker, with darker soft shadows building up in areas such as under his backpack and armpits, etc.

third thing is the wall - it has a nice plaster texture,but the bricks showing through look flat and pasted-on. there's no perspective going on there, it's just a brick texture with a dark fuzzy shadow on top.

one more thing- I may be wrong about this because i'm no anatomy guru, but it seems to me like the helmet is slightly too small to contain a head. it could also use some sharper edges and a harder look, it feels a bit soft right now. (same thing goes for the gun).

apart from these, it's a nice image, and i think it does deliver the atmosphere that you intended it to.

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

[Arc][Pello]

Some nice rendering gone into this piece, my only serious issue with this so far is that it looks like hes watching a cinema screen, the wall seems to leave a drop shadow effect on the outside scenery making it look like a flat surface.
apart from that the image just needs to get beefed up, trying adding rubble, wrecked furniture, etc to the inside of the house.

[Groady]

Thanks for the comments. I definately agree it needs more rubble and it seems a lot of people find the bricks a bit weird. But thats a lesson learned. Still do a bit more too it still me thinks. It's all about the details.

[Drawnblud]

Well, if I hadn't read your description of what was going on, I really wouldn't have known all about that "lonliness and anxiety" thing. The artwork is superb, however, if I may add that I think you should showus the battle that this guy is getting ready to walk in to. I don't mean to be gruesome, but maybe litter the field with bodies and throw some planes in the sky. In a sense, I get the feeling this guy is leavinga battle and walking into a serene field.
Anyway, that is only one guys opinion. It really does look great, though.

[AliasMoze]

Groady,
I love your idea. And the image has some great emotion in it.

Overall it's a little even, don't you think? I don't mind that the soldier is dead center, but the hole, the distant atmosphere and explosions are all really orderly, like the construct of a machine. Is that the intention?

Otherwise, I think you need more contrast in the soldier. The walls in front of him have much darker darks. I think you could put a light on the soldier.

Anyway, great concept.

[InitialT]

I think you could use some work in composition.

They key thing to watch for is the movement of the viewer's eye when looking at an image. That is, a viewer's eye should be allowed to wander freely all over the image, or at least have the illusion of freedom.

As it is, when I look at the image the first thing I look at is the soldier standing in the middle, this is what you want, but the bad thing is that I really have no desire to look anywhere else in the image. It may as well be a picture of just a soldier and crop off the sides.

Take a look at your favourite drawings by other artists, you'll notice that in many of the large compositions the main figure was placed off to the side. One of the effects of this is that the eye must move over other aspects of the image before reaching the main figure, whether those other parts are carefully placed whitespaces, or other details that subtley direct the eyes in to other areas (hence the false notion of freedom of eye movement) is up to the artist.

Er, well I've gone on long enough. I don't mean to tell you what to do, but look into those elements of composition for a bit.

[Groady]

Ok I've made quite a few changes to the pic. Thanks for the comments

[cptoonz]

Howdy,

Gosh, I remember when you posted this drawing, it has been a while. As sporadically as I surf/post in here I am surprised I caught it then, and glad that I caught this. Just keep in mind that a whole in the wall that large is going to leave a lot of rubble. I think you could bring in some perspective to the wall, just a little more edge of the showing brick and would pull the eye to center (him). I really like the gray mist and stuff...you could enhance that by showing shattered trees and broken buildings (just a few) fading out into the distance through the mist. I know you brought the picture on the right in on the revision, but it seems a little distracting to me. It seems to draw attention from the main focus. Great coloring job on the trooper. Overall, nice composition. Anyway, keep it up!

[Arc][Pello]

Still need a lot more rubble! you seem to be getting carried away with really tiny details instead of filling the image with all the important features first. think about it, the entire wall has been blown apart, so where has all the debris gone?
it cant have all fallen outside.

i like the painting on the wall and the actual soldier, although his head seems a little small, you could do with croping it and the resizes it a bit to get the proportion correct.

and its not alway about the details.

keep at it your doing good

[SolarFlux]

This is a nice image. I got the meaning before I read it.

the shadow that the soldier is casting seems to be well defined, where as the shadows that the wall and rubble casts seem to be less sharp and more ambient???

[ September 15, 2002: Message edited by: SolarFlux ]