Creative Block - Making an Image more Interesting

Chip Valecek · 25 May 2016, 14:26

@Di07 thanks for the kind words. I can't wait to see this finished. I once did a piece similar where Little Red Riding hood was riding on the wolfs back like a horse. It was one of my first digital art pieces. Its amazing to look back at some of my first pieces to what I can do now. And I am sure in a few years I will be saying the same about the pieces I am working on now.

Di07 · 29 May 2016, 01:56

@Chip-Valecek @Marsha-Kay-Ottum-Owen @Russ-Van-Dine Ok taking on board all of your advice here we go !

@Chip-Valecek would love to see your take on little Red Riding hood, sometimes I wonder if all the practicing will ever get me an improved stage!

Chip Valecek · 29 May 2016, 04:30

@Di07 its looking good. I hope you don't mind but I did a quick paint over to show some of the things I think would help. I moved Red over to the right so it looks like the wolf is looking at her. I also bumped up the light on the focal point and dimmed down the light from the top. It helps keep your eye in one place.

Di07 · 30 May 2016, 03:38

@Chip-Valecek I don't mind at all!! That looks great, I am going to try that, thank you so much!!!

Lee White · 2 Jun 2016, 07:20

This is a tricky one and I commend you for sticking with it and working it out.

I have a couple of suggestions if you don't mind. The first is that you may want to take a look at your process. Finishing a painting and then trying to figure out how to make it work is the hardest way to go about this. I would like to encourage you to spend more time on the front end playing with many sketches that vary the layout, pose, values, etc. This way you can really get it worked out and make your process simpler. Painting is hard enough as it is and trying to correct composition, pose, and value during the paint stage is very difficult. Even for pros!

In my opinion, I think the real struggle you are having is composition. Your are working in an almost square format which is hard to make dynamic. Then, all your characters are taking up all the space and barely fitting in the composition. You haven't given yourself enough room to play around with the composition.

I did a quick layout sketch here. I included a few foreground trees to give me something to work with, then tried to make a more dynamic pose for the wolf. No need to use it if you don't want to. The point is playing with many drawings like this and working out what you need. Get it where you really like it at the layout stage. These sketches can be fast and you will get much faster even still. This only took about 5 minutes and you can do a bunch of them. Then post to get comments and adjust. Get your value and color studies working and then the actual painting is the easy part. : )

Let me know if you have any questions at all that I can help out with. : )

Good luck!

Chip Valecek · 30 May 2016, 23:46

@Lee-White 5 mintues for Lee = 5 hours for me LOL. I really love how the wolf is peaking around the corner like that. Add some drool with the light bouncing off of it and it would look awesome.

Di07 · 31 May 2016, 02:58

@Lee-White Thank you ! i usually get to a point with an image i think its ok and move on but trying to really learn something from this project and be better than ok . It does get a a bit discouraging at times wondering if I'm ever going to get better and thinking I'm done only to realize there a thousand ways to improve on it ! I think I get to hung up on following the rules with drawing and worried If i don't everything will be horribly out of proportion .

I have never had any formal training and keep trying to learn from books and what not so i do struggle with certain aspects . You have made some very good points about breaking it all down , and as much as it pains me to start from scratch :), that is what I am going to do , with the sketches . I do love what you have done there , i may need more than 5 minutes per sketch though :).

Thank you for your help and advice . I am sure I will be calling on all your expertise soon!

Di07 · 31 May 2016, 02:59

@Chip-Valecek Lol me too, make that 10 hrs in my case, I really wish i had the skill level to put down whats in my head on paper!

Jack B · 2 Jun 2016, 05:36

great image you have there. If I could suggest anything it would be the lighting (which has been covered) and making the wolf's pose more dynamic. Despite that its a wonderful work and really captures my attention.

Di07 · 2 Jun 2016, 07:14

@Jack-B thank you I have started from scratch hoping to get the process right

Di07 · 2 Jun 2016, 07:20

@Lee-White I have started from scratch with some thumbnails sketches. I hope you don't mind me using your idea as one option , i love the dynamic pose of it

A different take , the Big Bad wolf and Red Riding Hood seemingly have a weird bond
Red hides behind a tree as the wolf approaches
Red is backed into a corner
The idea where the wolf comes from behind the tree.

Not sure which one to go with (Would love some opinions from everyone ) I thought once I have the set thumbnail , fill out the details and when I have them right ,tone, then finally colour.

Christine Garner · 3 Jun 2016, 20:31

I like the bottom right thumbnail because it has some movement caused by the strong diagonal of the wolfs back, and a good storytelling composition because he is looking at red riding hood who visually is tiny in comparison which creates a nice menacing feel. A book I can recommend by the way is "Picture This, How pictures work" by Molly Bang.

Di07 · 28 Jun 2016, 21:59

@Christine-Garner sorry for the delay! Thank you for you input and the book, its great i had a quick look through it and need to delve deeper into it