[Feefie04]

Hi, I am working on a picture and I am spending a lot of time on it, and I am at the point where I feel I need some advice. I would be extremely grateful as to any suggestions I could get.

Here is the image:



Detail of the face:



It is not done, so here are a few questions I have to guide your critiques:

Is the lighting and proportions on the girl alright?
Are highlights and backlights too light or too dim?
The contrast is bothering me a bit, how does it look to you?
Should I spend the time to define the scales on the dragon more? (important question)
How is the overall composition?
Should I change the focal point of the background? (the castle)
Does anything look "off"?
Is there anything I could add to make it more interesting?
On the blade of the sword the word "VENGANCE" is engraved... is that tacky? How can I fix it?
How are the textures?


Please ignore these things because they are not done yet:
The sword handle
The blood and color tinting
The ground


Sorry to seem picky, but since it is not done I figured I could tell you all what to look at.

Paintovers are very welcome.

Original is 3900x3000 px.

Thank you SO much. I've been looking at it so long I can't see it fresh anymore... .

[Mega Muffin]

I like this pic alot. I really cannot tell what kind of a creature has been slain there. I see some talon-type things, and what appeares to be a twisting horn of some kind, and the head (if it is the head) looks like a mix between an ostrach and a snake. I kind of expected it to be the girl's father... And it might not matter that I can't tell whta it is, but I would like to know .

The main thing that seems off to me is the castle. It seems really thrown in there and doesn't match the style of the rest of the painting. It almost looks cartoonish. You can probably define it a bit more without sacraficing the distance, because right now it looks like it's behind a fog.

The next thing would be the clouds. They look huge and very close to the girl, and also too low to the ground. The tops ones are really okay, but they extend downward until they are cut off by the ground, which seems odd. I guess they might be on a hill or something, but I'm not getting that from the pic. The clouds almost look like vapor where they are touching the ground and being around the girl. I do like the contrast of that though.

I can't tell where the girl's left leg is going...is she sitting on it? If it extends outward I would think that there would be at least some color to it--not a black shadow. They are outside afterall, and there's got to be at least a little light coming from around them to make things not be completely black.

I like the composition, textures, contrast...OH lol I see you wrote it is a dragon. Hmm, I still can't see it. Oh I see the things that I mistook for eyes are actually nostrils, lol. Well if it is a dragon then maybe you should make it look more scaley. Right now it looks kind of like thick wool cloth, something fuzzy. You could make it more shiney. So yes I would definately define the scales more, because right now I can only see them on the hands.

Actually one thing for the composition. I think this would look really cool if you cropped some off the top. Cut into the sword hilt some. Looks cool to me.

As for the Vengence thing, yeah I'd say it's kind of tacky . The girl kind of reminds me of the Bride of Chucky, haha, and there's so much blood and stuff, and the Vengence doesn't seem to fit for me. But that's just my opinion, remember.

Hope I helped a bit... Good luck, looking forward to seeing more of this!

[GardenGnome]

Really nice. Looks like it might help some if you extended the canvas out some on the bottom. Just a suggestion.

[Feefie04]

[J.F.Ross]

Hey, i really like this painting. I do agree with a few points that Mega Muffin made, mostly the cropping of the top down to the level of the sword hilt. I think it would make it a tighter comp. Also, my only suggestion is to detail the ground in the foreground a little more (i.e in front of the dragon and girl.) just to bring the ground up to par with the subjects. For the record... i knew it was a dragon right away I think you can leave it other than that, i think its a powerful image and I do like the proposed title... Vengance makes you think since the subject matter is slightly contrary to what you would imagine to be vengance.
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"I fall softly from this grace, like a wind across the drowning downs."

-J.F.Ross