[WIP] My first building

[Roach]

@cyangmou Thank you very much for your post. It was very informative.
1. I have changed my background as suggested. I am thinking of a more of a desert setting on a sunny day. So I changed some ofthe colors to try to match that kind of match that setting.

2. I wasn't quite at this step yet on my last post, but your reference really helped me. I tried to focus on shading the bigger parts. I touched up the shadows of the roof, and parts of the wall.

3.I added a cast shadow of the entire building, I  know its not the best cast shadow, but I am willing to work on it.

4. I actually started out drawing the lantern with curved edges, but I thought it looked weird because I didn't color it at the time, and I got kind of frustrated with how it was looking. I tried to implement your suggestions.

Thank you for your feed back, your advice was very helpful. It looks like its really coming together now.

[Cyangmou]

the thing is you implemented the cast shadows as I did, but not at a part where it's missing and I left them out pretty intentionally to see if you understand what I mean.
Look at your art, and try to think where a cast shadow is missing.

Also I'd suggest you search on google a photograph or painting which captures the exact mood you want to go for and post it here, since with that it'd be a lot easier to criticize colors.

[Roach]

If you are talking about the wooden posts, I was leaving those out on purpose because I wasn't sure if those were the colors I was going to keep. I added cast shadows to them as well now. I tried looking for other spots for cast shadows. I added some to the brick foundation, some to the windows, completely shaded the saloon sign, and added some shadows to the lantern.


Here is an image which captures the mood I'm going for.
Spoiler

[Cyangmou]

was mainly talking about the bricks, but great that you overthought and added it =)

There are 2 things you might want to check in your reference:

a) the color of the cast shadow. In your painting the cast shadow moves just towards a darker value. However light behaves differently and the shadow surely has another color.

b) the reds on the roof.
Your color scheme features mainly blue and orange and both are muted - realistically so to speak.
Your red is extremely highly saturated and I'd say it's "cartoony"
I am sure if you look for references of western towns and find red painted wood it's a lot less saturated and darker.
On the other hand I am not too fond that red fits in the overall color scheme. A bright orange might do a better job. Muted greenblue, a blueish gray or other colors might work better for this particular kind of environment.

[Roach]

I've tried to recolor the roofs, and change the color of the cast shadows to try and better fit the reference. I'm not quite sure if I did it right still. I need work on picking the proper colors for the proper setting obviously, but this is as close to what I think I can get.
Spoiler

Perhaps the orange roof is a bit too saturated still, maybe they are all still too saturated. I think the muted green blue is my favorite out of them. Also perhaps the roof looks so cartoonish is because of the lack of detail, and shading compared to the rest of the building. I see the same thing with the bricks as well.