Inhabited Trees - looking for opinions/improvments

[KAT]

Hello! I would like to present to you my girlfriend's latest work in Gimp. I would be (she would be too!) very grateful if you could dedicate some of your time and give her honest opinion about that painting. How would she be able to improve it? She is just looking for some advice on how to be a better painter. Thanks and greetings.

[tim]

You clearly have a good artistic sense, textures, shapes, lighting and composition are all interesting, but can be much refined.
However :

• There is no way to imagine the scale of the piece. We need something recognizable. Humans, cars, horses, whatever you want, but help us figure out these trees are huge.

• If the moon makes so much light, it should be on the environnement too, not just water.

• I'm not sure about the white front light. It removes a lot of atmosphere in my opinion.

• Put a foreground. It's extremely important. It can helps to convey a story, which makes any piece of art much more interesting.
I don't know, put slaves, or add entire families leaving the place, something that can help us imagine what's going on, and makes us
think world is much bigger than this picture.

• Take a look at Feng Zhu's videos about landscapes :
http://www.youtube.com/user/FZDSCHOOL
You will learn so much.

[Mr. Fahrenheit]

Some of the perspective seems a little weird, by looking how high the horizon is it seems like you should be able to see the tops of more things, or atleast more of the tops on things like the bridge. Secondly the roots that go into the water look sort of translucent with the reflections from the water, anything that could be done to change that, such as using some more contrasting colors would help with maybe some reflection of the brighter lights off the water.

[ketele]

This is a version without dragon. There is some shadow that I can't remove.

Could you set me some tasks that I could improve my drawing skills? For example tell me that you want me to draw a room, an old castle with dragons etc.

[Facet]

Rather than take random requests, I'd try doing studies of some specific quality that you might not think about a lot (be it technical like perspective or presentational like storytelling), and not necessarily finished pieces. Try giving feedback on other people's work too; it can really help your own understanding by forcing you to engage with, and formulate qualities you might be content to leave to a 'feeling' in your own stuff.

Dragon-arch:

The elements you have; the location and flora are all interesting, I think it could do with a little more focus; is the little dragon the main attraction or a mere foretaste of the horrors within?    

The framing is a bit cramped around the corners of the central arch; avoid bringing the edges of objects (top left arch, top right wing) close to the edges of the canvas or of other shapes; that can hurt depth and draw unwanted attention as any overly aligned elements can (the front-most ferns are facing straight forward too)

The background is pretty featureless, maybe you were goin' for subtlety but I'd litter those bones from the corner up in there, or even better introduce a new, lighter feature/focal point of some kind; the arch makes for a great, inviting frame but there's nothing to look at inside yet!

[ketele]

I'm not sure if I understood everything that you wanted to tell me Facet (my english is not the best), but thank you for your reply. I do not ignore the constructive comments of people who written off on this topic. In this thread there were more answers (mine and others), which are likely to have been lost. The above picture of a version of the image without the dragon was a response to the note of one of the forum members. Some of the comments I apply directly to the commented image, the other I remember and I try to use in the new work. I hope no one is offended that approach. I try doing my best.

New image witch

The latest version of Inhabited Trees

Dragon

[tim]

Hello Ketele. I wanted to give it a try and make a few paintovers to make your images more powerful composition-wise, with more immersive camera angles that will help to have a real foreground and a real background. Also, I find you colors to be really desaturated, almost dull. It might help you to think differently, even if that's not your original vision.

Trees
• Darker. Moon lighting isn't that bright.
• Stronger character presence
• Lower, eye level camera





WIP gif




Dragon
• More dramatic back lighting
• Stronger character presence
• Lower, eye level camera
• Horizon line, helps to figure out where the scene happens





WIP gif

[ketele]

Thank you Tim. Your advices are very helpful to me. Feng Zhu from video that you recomend is great. You're right, the colors from my images are dull and for a long time I've been trying to revive them (as you can see with poor results). I like your version of the colors and perspective setting eyes focused on the main character of the scene.

[tim]

You're on your way to become a great artist, don't worry and don't be too harsh on yourself.

One of my favoriste artist, Marek Okon, started by drawing horrible manga style characters (I remember him on deviantart), and years after years he totally improved his understanding of cameras, composition, lighting, to the point he's now creating some of the most immersive paintings I've ever seen.

You clearly have the potential, you just need time & experience. I really advice you to get or borrow someone a DSLR camera as soon as you can, it will help you so much understanding how things work.

[tim]

Another take on your arch paintings.

• larger field of view (your image was like a cropped one, or a zoomed picture)
• lowered the point of view to see the horizon
• dragon was in a corner of the image, not anymore
• foreground is in the shadows, it helps to imagine we're getting out of somewhere (a forest ?)





WIP gif :



Actually your biggest issue in my opinion, is that you go into details too quickly. I understand this, because this is where you shines, this is where you get good results quickly, but trust me, to have a good picture, you have to get a solid base before doing any texture job or any detailing. Work on this. Think about how the shots are framed in the future movies you'll see. Analyze the pictures of your favorites artists. Analyze your own old work. Try to improve someone else's work like I'm doing right now. I'm actually learning so much doing this !

[ketele]

It's true that you can learn a lot by improving other people's work, but still I do not feel good enough to do it. I follow the threads on this forum, but I still do not feel confident enough to write something intelligent in terms of other people's skills.  So far, I have worked a little over a picture of the tree-trunks according to your amendments.

Thank you for your edits.

[tim]

Wow that's a great improvement in my opinion.
I can imagine myself into your scene much better than before.
Last thing I can see : You can maybe light a little more your character, we don't see it immediatly.
Also the wooden lantern is too symmetrical, geometrically perfect, and we don't see the back wood branchs.
Otherwise it's starting to look pretty solid I think.

I should let the others help you at this point.

Oh by the way, It's really funny, I did almost the exact same picture 5 years ago (unfinished) :



HD version :

http://i.imgur.com/0ynLVFi.jpg

[ketele]

You have given me great lessons Tim. I'm still working on the picture with tree-trunks. The lantern in current state looks as follow:

[ketele]

Current state:


Larger size: http://ketele.strefa.pl/pixelation/tapeta.jpg

[||||]

These are all coming along well.
I like what you've done to the perspectives Tim. The most improved compositionally is that Dragon one with the the curved stone henges. It really makes for a better overall feeling.
The last one is looking really great too Ketele, it's much better than the 1st post.