Space Marine - Colour Experiment

[Opacus]

Yes, well this is a bit of a colour experiment. I wanted to get the colours in a bit of Helm's style. I still am nowhere near being able to understand his understanding of colours.
Each time I look at his pieces I still often think "Why these colours? What is the theory behind them? How come these odd colours look so incredibly good together?".
So I went with a real experimental pallete here inspired by helm's pieces.



(Yes, if it has potential I will turn this into a bust, maybe full picture. Hence the rather large canvas.)

Newest shizzle:

[Faktablad]

I'm sure Helm would agree with me when I say that if you want to learn about color, don't just study from one person.  That being said, it's still good that you're trying to understand what makes another artist's work look good.

Generally I have some readability issues--it seems to look better at 2x and I think that it's because you're not giving the colors enough room to work properly with all of the dithering and blending you're doing.  Looks pretty sweet otherwise, though.

[Opacus]

Yeah you got a good point bout the readability. I made a total new piece:

(More pleased with this anyway.)

Yes, I will study more then one person. I'm planning to do a couple of colour studies on several artists.

[am_pm]

Looking good! My only gripe is that the helmet looks a bit squashed. I'm looking forward to the end result.

[Opacus]

Thanks. But could you elaborate your critique a bit? How do mean he looks squashed?


Small edit, shading like this takes forever

I use this picture: http://fr.games-workshop.com/40k/fonds_ecrans/eyeofterror8-1280.jpg
And some of my own Warhammer figures for reference.

[ptoing]

Looks nice so far, but I think you should go into dithering and aa at this early stage.

It would deffo be better if you blocked out the whole thing. What Helm did on his unfinished metaldude is good practise and helps fleshing out volume.

http://www.locustleaves.com/lolmetal3.png

[Faktablad]

Wow man, it looks loads better as a bigger version.  Are you trying to go for a metallic or translucent surface on the helmet?  Because if it's translucent I would definitely up the contrast.  It looks really nice, I can't believe how much you're improving.

[Helm]

who's this helm jerk you're all talking about.

Opacus forget the dithering until you've got volume down, as they say. Your newest wip is good, but you're working from reference so you're effectively *stealing* volume knowledge from an artsit that already has it. It's not a bad thing, but you'd learn more and faster in you did volume studies on your own, from life.

[am_pm]

Thanks. But could you elaborate your critique a bit? How do mean he looks squashed?
Small edit, shading like this takes forever

The head looks vertically squished. The forehead is not big enough, the head looks a little blunt 

His helmet skull is also a little large, but I think that's a style choice because of how varied a Chaos Space marine's armor can be.

Here is an edit to show what I mean:

[Souly]

His mouth piece is much too wide.
But as everyone has said, just work on simple volume shading and then start dithering.
Don't go too detailed until you've at least started the body.