Pain revisited

[Zweckform]

Hello,

i stumbled into one of my pics and felt the urge to rework it. Anyway at this point i am a bit snowblind, so if you see anything troublesome or have a good idea for improving it let me know.

Old Version (21 colors) :



Reworked (20 colors) :

[Zweckform]

Hello,

i reworked the "Pain". I feel now it fits in much better.

[Mathias]

Before, the "PAIN" appeared to label the scene's contents, now it's more as if the flower is screaming the word pain, or at least making some kind of painful outburst.

[Zweckform]

Hello,

Before, the "PAIN" appeared to label the scene's contents, now it's more as if the flower is screaming the word pain, or at least making some kind of painful outburst.

Thats true. BUt is this something you find disturbing ?

[Mathias]

Oh, no not really. The idea of a cartoon flower crying out in pain is rather funny actually. It's just an observation for your own info. It changes the piece's expression I thought

Furthermore:

-I find the purple solid bg an odd choice. You could use the bg to emphasize "PAIN" with red instead, maybe even a reddish gradient, maybe some sharp violent explosive orange/yellow shapes in the red, etc. But, solid purple?
-The daisy flower is tiny compared to the crow/raven. Seems too small/outa proportion.
-The crow and flower contrast each other uncomfortably - crow is more realistically shaded. Perhaps if you muted the flower's palette like you did the crow.
-"PAIN" lettering looks like you drew it too quickly. Since it's so important, how about refining it. Start with, or at least reference, a good sharp/spiky font.
-I just NOW realized the beak has a green drip on it. Before, I was confused thinking it was a stem sticking out. Could be a readability problem.

[crab2selout.png]

Is it necessary to even include the word pain? I just wonder if this theme has to be so explicitly stated. I find it even takes away from the impact of the image because I keep looking at the text rather than the bird and flower.

[Zweckform]

Oh, no not really. The idea of a cartoon flower crying out in pain is rather funny actually. It's just an observation for your own info. It changes the piece's expression I thought

Furthermore:

-I find the purple solid bg an odd choice. You could use the bg to emphasize "PAIN" with red instead, maybe even a reddish gradient, maybe some sharp violent explosive orange/yellow shapes in the red, etc. But, solid purple?
-The daisy flower is tiny compared to the crow/raven. Seems too small/outa proportion.
-The crow and flower contrast each other uncomfortably - crow is more realistically shaded. Perhaps if you muted the flower's palette like you did the crow.
-"PAIN" lettering looks like you drew it too quickly. Since it's so important, how about refining it. Start with, or at least reference, a good sharp/spiky font.
-I just NOW realized the beak has a green drip on it. Before, I was confused thinking it was a stem sticking out. Could be a readability problem.

- the background colour is planned to belong to the raven, not the daisy so i wanted it to be a cold color to represent the cold bloodness going on. Maybe i should emphasise this a bit more.

- you are right - the proportions are wrong, but as the daisy got a face i thought reality was not that important 

- right, i am not 100% satisfied with the palette either - i will toy around with it a bit.

- the lettering needs more attention, agreed. Will work on it.

- also agreed on the drip - have (hopefully) a solution on mind. Will be in the next update.

Is it necessary to even include the word pain? I just wonder if this theme has to be so explicitly stated. I find it even takes away from the impact of the image because I keep looking at the text rather than the bird and flower.

I agree it gets more attention than it should. But i want it being included and quite like the comic-like feel the piece gets with it.
Will keep looking for different solutions though.

Thanks to all for the input so far.

[Jorund]

Maybe the problem with the attention is because of the overall contrast, but not of the image but of the colors.
I mean, black against light purple contrast a lot. Same with white against black and purple. But is not the same with green against black.

Sorry for the quality of the edits, is just to make a point :
Here I change the color of the flowers "background", to a redish/lotofpain color:

Green vs Red, great complementary colors. Also raise the lightness of the crow.

Remove some of the contrast from the word Pain, putting the same colour as the background.


I'm not trying to say: use these, as they look terrible, what I mean is, I think you should highlight the flower more, since it's getting kind of lost in the piece. Green against black do contrast, but not as much as the other colours do, so the attention is driven away from the flower.

Just a tought 
Hope something helps.