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Snapdragoon — The Guide
Published: 2010-08-21 17:42:18 +0000 UTC; Views: 773; Favourites: 31; Downloads: 9
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*Edit* Made some changes. (Thanks for the crit, ziinyu
) Does it look better?Constructive critique welcomed! ^_^
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Comments: 19
o.o How come I've never seen this? IT"S SO AMAZING! I wish I could draw/paint dragons like you. <3 You are my favorite Dragon Artist.
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I love the layout of this piece and the use of colors. Very pretty atmosphere!
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Okay, we won't mention perspective <_< *moves the skeletons aside and shoves in the closet*.
(Been a while since I was inspired to use that emoticon.)
What you have going nicely for you in this is hue balance and control, so I would suggest really pushing those colors. What concerns me a little though is your perspective value depth and lighting choices. That you are using that warm light is great, but really use it, make it really warm, and play with it on the figure of the dragon as much as possible, get some color gradation (hue, not just value) and some reflection. I don't expect all the places on the dragon's body that the yellow hits to be the same color, we need it to be interacting with those blues and greens. You see that little bit of texture you put in the blue part of the tail? that's excellent, beautiful. It gives the feeling of the scales, some complex lighting effects and all around interest. The rest of the lighting however, besides what is cast by the lamp, is pretty ambiguous. There is a definite direction to a secondary light source, based on the cast shadows of the figures, but this direction is not reflected in anything except the cast shadows. So pick a definite secondary light source and a direction, probably moonlight, so from above to a degree. Also, pay attention to the behavior of your perspective shadows. Anything that is in shadow will receive bounced light from the rest of the environment, but it will also receive bounced light from itself. In skin tones we see this in warm reflected light when we look for it, so in your dragon I expect to see some greenish hues reflecting off of parts of the body onto other parts, particularly in all those complexities of the wing. Can't really reference this from life, but once you get the anatomy how you like it find some images of green fabrics and draperies, some silks and textured ones, anything that's highly reflective, and try to apply some of that nature to your creature.
Now your value depth needs some work too, especially in your background. We are talking the big shapes here, not the little ones. You should have pretty big patches, maybe five at the maximum across your composition clearly indicating shadow, midtones, and highlights. Now these patches don't have to be so dependent on the elements of the image, they can bleed from form to form. For example, right now the shadows on the dragon are one of the darkest elements on your page, the only thing darker being the figure, so together, with their intersections they form a dark shape. The tree is the next darkest shape, with part of the dragon being a light shape. Everything else though is really midtone, and even between those elements there is very little contrast, I had to look hard to find them. Right now I'm looking at your image with a white border (from the download), and the white is just shocking, as nothing in your work comes any where close to it. Now, pure white is unnatural and shouldn't be used unless direct sunlight is being reflected or you are going for a really intense color scheme, but there's nothing stopping you from going to 90% value. Just because this has poor perspective is a night scene doesn't mean that there aren't lights, but it does mean that when you use anything lighter than the base value (right now looks to be about 30%) you do so very intentionally and carefully. That you have light on those background trees and bridge elements is nice, but it distracts from other parts that should be more accented, like anything in the lantern light. Either you need to brighten the important lights, or darken the secondary ones, don't depend on hue differences to fix your value composition.
So take this image and convert it to grayscale, direct conversion, nothing that alters the values of different hues. If it doesn't read well in grayscale, it won't read well in color, no matter how different the colors.
Some artists I'd look at for value compositions are Rembrandt and Caravaggio.
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Wow, that has to be one of the best critiques I've had. You're amazing; thanks so much! I'll definitely take these into consideration and see if I can fix this picture. ^_^
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Sure thing, if you do end up changing the image around or applying the critique to another work, please share it as a thumb in a reply to this comment. I'm going to start some followups with the artists that responded well to critiques, see if we can't get some reply chains going, and see some progress.
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Cool! I didn't make a whole bunch of changes to it, but I did make a few just now: [link]
Does it look a little bit better?
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I do like where you have taken the saturation, and the lighting on the bridge seems a bit stronger now, also the variation in lighting in water looks better. Still on a value scale it reads a little flat, though pushing the whites where you did made me realize the horns on the dragon (didn't see that the first time) which are a really nice touch. It seems like you lightened much of it, which helped a lot, but now its time to push the darks back in. The feeling I get from this is that that lantern is a single source of light in an atmosphere that is otherwise completely moonlit. The only reason that we see the moon is that they are in a clearing around this stream, so I want the image to gradient to darker tones deeper along the path and back from whence we came.
Changing the strong cat shadows into softer ambient ones is a start, but now you have a problem with your human figure not being grounded too well. Their lighting is better, but give them just as much structural love as you gave the dragon, maybe pull a quick reference just to get the forms right.
(Also if you want help fixing that perspective 
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I'll definitely make those changes some time, but I can't right now because I'm packing up for college. Thanks for all the input!
And I would like to hear what you have to say about perspective, but it would probably be difficult to fix, considering that this picture is all on one layer.
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Off to College, that's quite the move then. What will you be studying?
The only thing that will make it difficult is the emotional attachment to what's already there
Let me know when you get up and running again.
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I'm going for an illustration major at CCAD. I'm pretty much moved in. And I guess you're right about that. XD I guess I just don't want to change it, then. But I do really want to hear what you have to say about it. c:
And I will. ^_^
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Well the beauty of digital is that we can always just duplicate the layer so that we can have the original to keep balance. I'm all set up to do a quick paintover, find some references (or make some) so just let me know what you are going for.
Congratulations on going pro
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Yeah. I even do that all the time. XD I'd be all right with a paintover. Show me what you think would look best.
I'm also thinking about minoring in fine arts if I can. There are a ton of fine arts classes I want to take anyways, like glassblowing and watercolor,and definitely landscape painting.
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My first thought when I saw this: Amazing!
Awrsome work there ^.=.^
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