[jlr-lica]

I just did my first digital painting. It's nothing fancy, I just stuck with practicing shapes and blending. Would love to build up to do figures, but figured I'd start with the basics.

I would love some constructive feedback though.

find it here

Thanks in advance


ps. if someone can help me post images, that would be great. My BBCode doesn't seem to be working for IMG?

[med]

There you go.

As for a critique;

You've achieved a decent value scale (darks and lights). It seems you've used photo reference, yes? Which is not a bad thing of course, but I would recommend painting from life (doesn't have to be with oils, digital is fine). When you paint from life, you read form and depth more effectively because you're seeing two images (assuming you have two eyes) instead of one flat image interpreted by a camera lens.

Learning to blend is tricky, because it can be done in many ways. All it is really is controlling color contrast and value contrast.

One way to blend is to literally have a smooth gradient between two colors, which can be achieved by using a Wacom tablet's pressure sensitivity with opacity. Simply getting used to merging two colors on your canvas by a few brushstrokes, there are plenty of videos on YouTube that demonstrate this.

Another way to blend is a form of an optical trick, letting your brain blend colors for you. For example, you can do this by setting two solid colors next to each other without a smooth transition (blending), and your eye can read it as two colors blended when zoomed out. This is kind of a painterly style, and sometimes looks blocky.

For your painting, I would recommend using broader brushstrokes to communicate the color and value.

If you're interested in really learning the fundamentals of painting, I would recommend painting a lot from life. Drawing is quite vital as well, especially for figures. I've come to realize that painting IS drawing with a wider stroke. And color.

I would also recommend reading a book titled "Everything I know about Painting" By Richard Schmidt. It has very helpful information on understanding how to see, a lot on color theory, and a good load about how to use values.

As a disclaimer, anything I said is not based on some kind of official rules or anything. It's just what I've gathered from experience etc...you can paint however you find works for you.

I hope that didn't bore you lol

-Med

[jlr-lica]

Thanks for the speedy reply. I'm impressed that you can tell I used a photo. Which I really had to, because I was trying to use my wacom tablet and I haven't used it before.

The candle would have burned down before I would have had a chance to capture it otherwise.

I'm going to be taking a drawing class starting 2009, but I think I'm going to stick to painting digitally as it much less expensive than doing the real thing. I know it's kinda like cheating, but don't want to invest too much money to start.

Thanks for the feedback!!