Skulduggery Pleasant illustration
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better now isn't it?
@Sarah-LuAnn I'm on the 6th one right now, I love that series. they're great books
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I haven't had much time to work on it lately so here I am now
I will have to work on the perspective but the overall composition is ok I think. what do you think?
I'm going to refine my sketch now
(why oh why do I always make complicated illustrations??? ) -
and now
a far cry from the first sketch already
do you see any mistake in the perspective and values?
because of the value structure, I'm tempted to make the final version black and white. what do you think? -
@audrey-dowling this has really great depth with your tone and lighting. Cool!
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thanks @Tyson-Ranes
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I love the strong values you've got going on here. Really sets the mood well. My only criticism would be that I think Skelly's intent would be more readable if he was looking at her, and not in the direction of the viewer/bust. Imagine if you were pulling a child away from a hot stove- you'd be looking at the kid as you did it.
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that's a good point @Rapteev , thanks
now I have to learn how to draw a skeleton's profile -
This is shaping up to be a nice story! Well thought out for sure.
You asked, in a thread above, if there were any issues with perspective so I thought I would throw something together (I don't have my Cintiq in the office today so the pen tool will have to do).
I increased my canvas size to WAAAYY out there - so i could find your vanishing points. I'd say that, for the most part, you have a pretty consistent piece here! BUT I had to take issue with the furniture in the foreground and the wall behind the skelly and girl. Using the points that I extrapolated from your exiting lines, I fixed the pieces. I think it is much more believable now.
Also, you mentioned that you might leave it black and white... while I LOVE the idea of starting all my paintings with tones of black and white, I feel that adding color typically deepens the perception of quality (and perception is reality to clients). To that end, I put together a triptych of the composition - left (before) - middle (after) - right (two colors).
You can see that just adding two colors to the composition makes it more dramatic. I can feel the moonlit interior of the room because it is contrasted with a warm foreground. This even gives you a neat opportunity to make a light blue highlight on the edges of the figures, thus defining them even more in the composition.
Wordy as it may be, I hope you found this a little helpful - I like your piece a lot or I would not even try.
Good luck! -
thanks for your advice @Bob-Crum ! it's very right and interesting
I'm also considering doing it (almost) monochrome. I will try a few colour themes and see which looks best -
This is where I am so far. Still a lot to do
I'm hanging on to it but I'm going through a rough patch at the moment. I feel a lifetime away from the rendering quality I would like to achieve. It's like I aim too high every time and the end result is far from what I had envisaged...
Also I always get to a point in the coloring where I feel like I don't have a clue what I'm doing
it's so disheartening
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Audrey, it's great! You're being too hard on yourself. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: those horrible feelings of inadequacy, nine times out of ten, reach their climax immediately before a level up. It's a consequence of seeing things you didn't see before, and a huge indicator that your eye for polishing is developing well. I guarantee there will have been a point in your art journey where you'd have looked at that piece and thought "Never in a million years will I be that good." And yet, here you are, being that good!
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thanks for the reminder @Rapteev . you're completely right and I've known that already but we tend to forget about it when we see everything black. thanks for the boost!
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@audrey-dowling I think we all have those days
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@audrey-dowling I took your graphic and warmed up the foreground a little and slightly blurred background. I really like this composition and the only tweaking I saw off the bat was creating more depth with contrasting warmer foreground with cooler background, also points of high contrast in the foreground where you want to draw the viewers eye makes it pop more as well and less contrast in the background. I just selected the foreground and tweaked it in the adjustments on Photoshop.
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you're right in what you say @Tyson-Ranes
the difficulty is that the scene happens in the dark. It's at night, the museum is closed, they're sneaking in and the vampire guards the place, so no light is on. Their clothes are also black. It makes the warm light implausible. That's why I tried to work on a monochrome palette
I wonder what artists go for in cases like this: do they stick to what the book says or do they deviate to make the image look better? I'd be very curious to know what you think and advise, instructors @Will-Terry @Jake-Parker @Lee-White ? -
@audrey-dowling your right! The warm color is out of place for this environment and doesn't look right for this setting. I don't know what year this illustration is supposed to take place in but if it's current allot of buildings up to code have to have exit lighting which has a faint glow or sometimes night lighting.i am stumped as to the solution and I have a couple things I'm working on now one in peticular that has sat unfinished because of it and I really like it so I know how it can be a little frustrating getting down the road with these things! You are awesome God bless you!
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@Tyson-Ranes Hi Audrey - You can still have warm tones that are actually cool. All color relationships are relative to the colors they appear with in an image. It's hard to believe that the grey tone is the top of her hand in the second image but it's true. All the colors are "glazed" cool in cool light. I hope this helps.
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thanks for your answer @Will-Terry
that's what I have been struggling to find for the last few days (the right warm-cool colors), not completely realizing I was, but god, colors are hard for me!
I'll explore some more -
does this work better?
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Just chiming in at the end.... @audrey-dowling your illustration looks great - the changes in lighting you have made are fascinating....don't really have anything helpful to add - i struggle with the lighting and color issues in my own work.
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