@Braden-Hallett Just seeing this for the first time, this looks great! Your work always seems so effortless, its both intimidating and inspiring. Every time I look at one of your pieces I am reminded I need to loosen up.
Ok so being short on time last month and being that I fell behind, I used one of my earlier exercises for my subjective composition. I am excited about this one because I am going to be experimenting with something kinda cool.
@Erin-Cortese this hits all the marks for me. The shadow is pretty cool!
@Coley Thank you! My husband had a look and said the power lines look like they do not attach to anything, like he could not imagine the placement of the pole outside the frame. Did you get that feeling too? I put them where they looked best in the composition, but if it’s not believable I think I need to move them 
@Erin-Cortese I think I can see what he means now. He may have a point (sorry 
) . If I try to imagine where the pole is then I feel like it should be in the frame. Or if the pole is off frame, then the right hand side of the lines needs to be reaching lower into the space (if that makes sense?) . That being said, if there is a border of some sort on the finished piece it might just seem to connect to the border and not float in space, as right now it just goes off into the white space. Hopefully that is not confusing? Now that I am looking at it more closely, I wonder if varying the size of the two front bushes in relation to each other would be better or have one more back in space? But I think it is really cool and looking forward to where it goes 
@Erin-Cortese Ominous! I think you could safely remove the power cables and it wouldn't hurt.
@Braden-Hallett @Coley Thanks guys, I really appreciate the feedback! When I looked at it again this morning I saw the problem really clearly. I redrew the power lines, hopefully I made an improvement? I have plans for them so I am really hoping to keep them, but if you guys feel like they look terrible and it would be a bad call to keep them, let me know. Here is the piece with and without the lines, which works better?
@Erin-Cortese I find with lines is distracting and even takes my eye strangely away or off of the shadow man.
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@Heather-Boyd Thanks for letting me know. I’m wondering if it will have that effect once coloured. That’s the other reason I am struggling with this - it’s going to be a night scene, and the wires will be black on a dark sky, so I’m hoping the will read in a much more subtle way. But, they could cause the exact same problem once coloured. Hmm. They may have to go.
@Erin-Cortese I think they look better than they did before. they do stand out a little, but they are also currently the thickest looking line on the page. So you may be right that with the the dark sky they may not stand out. If they were a thinner line or I think if their value is not in huge contrast they might work (right now with black on white they are bound to stand out more) if they are a part of the story of the piece.
@Erin-Cortese i actually thought those lines were the movement of he wind. Yeah, they’re not really that clear that they were telephone lines. Great composition though.
@Erin-Cortese If you need to keep those power lines for story purposes that's totally cool. It's not that they look bad, it's that without context they just look like lines. I think you need a way to show people that they ARE power lines.
My solution would be to have them running to a power pole situated behind the building and stretching off into the distance.
Or a bird sitting on the line may give it just enough context to work.
Neat stuff so far 
@Braden-Hallett Thanks! I tried to put a pole in the foreground and it looked like a hot mess, but I did not think of moving it toward the back. I will give that a try!
I developed it a little further tho it is still quite rough. just roughing out ideas. tho I started to get a little detailed on the blanket on the bed. So I didn't know if that's too much for the subjective take?
@Coley I love the horses on the blanket, really nice detail!
@Braden-Hallett @nyrrylcadiz @Coley @Heather-Boyd
I have moved the power lines to the back all together and added more detail so they are recognizable (line work is still rough). Does this work? Thanks in advance everyone, I really seem to be caught up on this detail.
@Erin-Cortese I am no expert being reasonably new to illustration but I think it is a lot better. the lines are not floating like your husband has said (my husband does this to me too lol - it's good and bad lol). They also vary in length , shape, etc from one side of the structure to the other which is good!!! Sometimes it's good to get hung up on details if we figure it out in the end
I think that's better - just watch where the pole comes down -seems to disappear and merge with the tree trunk at the bottom.
Small thing -your foreground leaf is relatively the same size as the one above the lines. But the placement is not great, I will move it inward.
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@Erin-Cortese thanks 
@Heather-Boyd I’m hoping to do a bit of a cheat here - no matter where I draw the bottom of the pole it will be too busy with the trees at the bottom, so I’m no going to draw the bottom of the pole 
. It will be dark and the pole is in the distance, so I’m hoping it will look natural not to see it. The placement of it is not great though, so I will definitely move it inward.
@Braden-Hallett @Coley Thanks guys, I really appreciate the feedback! When I looked at it again this morning I saw the problem really clearly. I redrew the power lines, hopefully I made an improvement? I have plans for them so I am really hoping to keep them, but if you guys feel like they look terrible and it would be a bad call to keep them, let me know. Here is the piece with and without the lines, which works better?
