I Need Art Advice

[Brand]

@Sherlock Holmes if you have time I could use you. I didn't want to PM you with this because I'm not sure how busy you are.

Does pinging even work here? EDIT: Nevermind, I figured it out.

To everyone: What can I do to improve this beyond refining the severed head and the banner dude behind the woman, I already know those areas need attention. The right side may be a tad empty as originally I was considering adding a corpse there, but i've been bouncing back and forth whether it needs it or not. This image still screams 'amateur' to me. The woman especially looks flat and I can't tell why. Maybe she needs more contrast? I don't know. I'm also wondering if I should refine the army a bit more. I'm hesitant to over-detail things, because I think If I flesh things out too much the piece will become too busy. I'm also not sure how well the distance between her and the army is conveyed, and I'm not exactly sure how to fix that. Maybe I should pull for of the sky color down into an atmospheric effect? They'll push the army back further, but I think the problem is the actual grass between her and the army. Maybe I just need a wider gradient of values from the foreground to background? Her pose also does feel a bit stiff. Dynamic poses are my Achilles heel.

[KaiserAuto]

oooh...

This was maybe not the best place to post your things and ask for honest and capable critic.

I know I won't give you any.

It's good though.

[Brand]

oooh...

This was maybe not the best place to post your things and ask for honest and capable critic.

I know I won't give you any.

It's good though.

@KaiserAuto

Honestly I kinda came here for Holmes, haha. Her Irregulars thread isn't around and I wasn't sure if I should just PM this. Plus I know there used to be a few other artists on here as well. Not sure how it is anymore though.

and thanks.

[KaiserAuto]

Certainly there's artists, but still.

[Awson]

For one, I think her torso might be too long.

[Brand]

Certainly there's artists, but still.

@KaiserAuto

The worst that could happen is everyone trashes it and I get no useful feedback.

[KaiserAuto]

Best of luck then.

[Marik]

you should give them dicks

and tits

dicks and tits everywhere

and maybe have two up front having a sword fight

you know what I mean

[Vordak]

I agree with Awson - but i'd rather say that the torso only seems to long, while the real problem are the stiff shoulders, raised too high and aligned on a strictly horizontal line, despite one arm being raised and the other - lowered. I'd give them at least a bit of a slant, if not try to loosen them up somehow. Though i guess it's mostly the fault of the shoulder pads - they add additional volume, making the body look slightly disproportionate.

As for making the pose more dynamic, you could twist the torso a little bit more, in either way. Turn her so that her chest faces the viewer, and you can juxtapose the 3/4 view of the leg with the en face of the torso; turn her left side close, and she'll be shoving the severed head in your face, which makes it a bit more aggressive.

Don't listen too me too much though, as i am a complete amateur. I've just had my share of drawing people, so i thought i'd throw my two cents in. :P

[andromedene]

I really do like it but I think there's something funky going on with her left arm.

EDIT: her RIGHT arm on my left. The one holding the weapon.

[scribz]

Guhh I wish I had my tablet on me. Hang on sucka lemme see if I can help out.

[scribz]

Okay so my thing isn't the best because lacking an actual pen and tablet atm. Also gonna be short and sweet buddy so ilu smooch smooch.

Right, first of all I love how you've done your crowd, it's a bit messy for me but it's very concept arty with all yo FDZ school style coming in. It's super fetch. I think it's overall pretty darn gewd as a concept.



Onto things I had issues with.
Value, I changed it to grayscale because the value is wrong on her for lots of reasons. One, where is the light source? I'm pretty stuck to whether it's infront of her, but then the crowd behind her is saying it's behind her. So I chose behind, and I then made sure to add a light source and use those beautiful fucking banners of yours as a means to add atmosphere and so therefore that depth you're lacking in. I then started fucking around with her values.

What I found was that 1) she has no range in values. Like, colour check it yourself, she's basically entirely on the top 20% for the top part of her face, which is then against a fairly lower value a background, making her look like a peice of paper. I see you noticed that because at some point you were all "dang man that armour just aint popping" and so you went full white on the highlights of her shoulder pad, and that then makes it more flat by removing any surrounding highlights pop. So I darkened her down a bit and I added contrast.

I basically did that with the background too to add depth but I mentioned that, (contrast is gr8 for focus yo, and so I made sure to pick a point in the page that brings you a focus to as opposed to just her and the head, and if you notice beside her, I tried to add a little focus or contrast to suggest some shitty little bunch of flowers, or even just more focused on grass, to then create triangulation within the composition which is the shit baby jesus is made of).

I just generally tried to add value and that's super hard on a laptop.

Also her anatomy if fucked up. She's a girl in full armour man, her torso is not that big and that armour should bulkier, try and think about how she would look naked and then contemplate how the armour would look on her.

Also I changed her arm a bit to suggest more foreshortening and also to try and give the head she's holding some pop too. Though i'm not going to lie I did fuck all to help on making htat the focal point because it's hard to do brush strokes on a laptop and you already put so much pop around her face that it's easier to just say that's the area of focus.

If I was you i'd make sure some sunly glare hits on the decapitated head and to add just generally a fuck tonne more detail to her and his face as well as the contrast because otherwise it's like having focal points within soup.

I really really love your work though more because you improve a fuck tonne everytime and hey you have the guts to show your work *kiss on cheek* xoxoxoxoxoxox

[scribz]

EDIT: Also it looks amateurish because you have not refined it yet so it's super choppy.

[scribz]

EDIT EDIT: And things like stance man. She was super stiff so I changed her legs to make her more imposing. Sorry if my language is coming off vitriolic or condescending too man. I forget how personally we can take feedback on art.

[scribz]

Edit edit edit: also the perspective line horizontally (like the crowd), seems curved, when I added the background light it gave a sense of maybe a slightly curved bottom up perspective which kinda helps but it still needs more working out.

[Brand]

@scribz

Great critique. Thanks.

[scribz]

You're very welcome