seeking input on pelican and rock

[Kellawgs]

revisited a pelican i made, trying to fill in the rock:


version 1:



reference:


___

version 1 i made a little while back and i've been struggling to do some decent rock detail since revisiting it, was wondering if anyone had some thoughts

[pistachio]

Digging it so far. I see no 1x1 pixels, could it be one of them cluster exercises?

If it's accuracy you're going for, take a look at the head/beak, shading and proportion, and measure this to the photo.

But the neck shading needs a second look either way. Here it's flat, ref it was round. The edge highlight worsens this IMO, it's inconsistent.

BTW, you making the ocean bg? Suggested or full-out?

[Kellawgs]

Thanks for the post pistachio, glad you noticed the lack of single-pixel detail, it's how I prefer to do things. Not totally committed to matching the exact silhouette of the reference or anything. How do you feel about the neck shading on this one? The reference pelican seems to have a fairly flat-colored neck and I think this way better emulates the subtlety of it. I think I'm a little too out of my element to go ahead with the ocean background at this time, though considering this piece is a little older and I'm just now attempting to give the rock justice I may do the same for the water later on.

As for the rock:


Don't have a lot of experience with it- not sure if a better iteration is within my grasp. I think maybe the colors don't totally meld together. I'm content for now 

[pistachio]

Closer to V1 neck is the way to go IMO, just looks rounder.

The rock is starting to lose the flat chiseled planes, top surface esp. That's in the ref but hard to see, it's ok to amp this edge-highlight up.

One thing that is in the ref, left shadow border kind of leads into the tail. Hard to read at a small rez, so these are two liberties you can take (which you are gonna learn to do a lot of the more you work with reference.)