Hi! Mushroom Village WIP

[sweta roy choudhury]

@eli Thanks :D. I will share it.

[sweta roy choudhury]

This is a very rough value study. I thought of making that flowerbud as light source. Is it making the focus too bright? Should I rather put little lights hanging from the big mushroom... I am in a fix.

Here is the rough color blocking.

[TessaW]

@sweta-roy-choudhury I like the value study. I know you are just roughing in your colors, but I would suggest toning down the greens in the background- perhaps making them less saturated and/or cooling them down a bit. It will sell the lighting a bit better and emphasize the preying mantis even more.

[sweta roy choudhury]

@tessaw Thanks for the feedback. Yes you are right I need to make the greens at the background cool.
One query. you wrote, 'preying mantis', is the pose of mantis showing its preying on something? I wanted to show that the mantis is playing a musical instrument. Is posing not clear?

[TessaW]

@sweta-roy-choudhury No, it's clear that it's playing a musical instrument, and not preying on something. I personally call that insect a "praying mantis" for it's name. I made a typo and should have typed "praying mantis" with an A instead of "preying mantis" with an E.

[sweta roy choudhury]

@tessaw oh! It's ok

[sweta roy choudhury]

I would like to get feedback on this one.

[lei]

Heya! It’s coming together really nicely. My first impression is that the following bugs, need slight edits to be less prominent. They are really cute so don’t get rid of them! Just try to edit a bit and see if it helps.

The top one it’s a little hard to read the smiling open mouth - at a glance I thought it was a triangular nose (I think it’s a mouth, right?)

The center one (orange body) perhaps reduce the size of his eye and face? I keep being drawn to look at its cute face when the focus should be the mantis.

The bottom one isn’t as distracting, but just see how the other edits balance out.

That’s my gut reaction on the piece. Other than that I love the atmosphere and the shadow cast behind the mantis is cool. It’s a really charming scene

[sweta roy choudhury]

@lei Thanks for the feedback. You are right. Now that you pointed out I notice it.Those three bugs should have less focus. I will work on it. I have submitted this illustration for the challenge for now. But I will make the edits and see how it works before adding to my portfolio.

[lei]

@sweta-roy-choudhury no worries, it’s really beautiful overall so these tweaks would just help refine the piece. It’s still very strong as is cool, glad I could help .