Looking for critiques!

[The Grimace]

Ive been working on this for so long that its hard for me to look at it anymore. There are still things I should do with the hair and little touch ups, but I just don't feel happy enough with it to keep going. I'm stuck and I don't know why. Critiques highly welcomed.



Here's a link to the full detail image: http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f1...esbig/done.jpg

[Flake]

Looks sweet so far but I'm running 1280x1024 and I can't even see half of it at once.

You can't really crit something that you can't see.

It looks really cool, but is this your painting or are you copying someone elses picture in photoshop?

[MephistoLV]

Please re-size your image...its way to big to look at without scrolling around.

[The Grimace]

Looks sweet so far but I'm running 1280x1024 and I can't even see half of it at once.

You can't really crit something that you can't see.

It looks really cool, but is this your painting or are you copying someone elses picture in photoshop?

Sorry about that, didnt realize it was so large.

Yah this is my painting, I havent borrowed a single thing from another source. I did use a photo reference when I sketched it... Here's a WIP screenshot:


Just curious, why do you ask if it's my painting or not?

[Venger]

Can you post up your photo ref please.

[The Grimace]

Here ya go:
Basically Im trying to work on my skin texturing. I think I did okay on that, the problems I have are the lips and the eyes. And the area under the neck is bothering me in shade and color... Ive worked on this almost 30 hours and I either need to take a long break from it or hopefully you guys can help me out by pointing out the things I've missed. This is the first project I've put this much effort into sadly.

Edit:: I should also mention that my ultimate goal is to turn this into something fantasy themed. The background and maybe the lighting are just temporary, any suggestions?

[Venger]

Personally - I'd start again, put this down to a learning exercise.
If you are going to create a fantasy image based on this, then do all of it yourself.
I'm not picking a fight but you didn't sketch this, you overpainted it and moved some of the image around (an eye up etc)
You'd do better using your reference as an inspiration, not as the basis of your drawing.
You'd learn more in creating your own drawing, that way you could learn about planes, angles and shape and how light affects them.

Now don't get me wrong - if this is just an exercise then I suppose fair enough - (it's your choice to overpaint a photo but I don't think you'll learn that much.)
Just don't turn it into something else and claim it was all your own work - that way leads to sooo much trouble.

[FIG]

I think the final is nice but its time to move on. Put it to bed because you've learned from it and now its time to move on to the next piece. If you really want to keep working on it, just use smaller brushes and bring out the highlights even more but do it over a layer so that you leave this untouched and can throw the layer at any point in time.

[The Grimace]

Alright Venger, take the 560x700 photo ref...scale it up to 1900x2160 and then impose it over my image and see if it matches.

Yes this is an exercise in photorealism, but no it is not an overpainting whatsoever.

Wait I didnt sketch it, and moved some of the image around? So Im to assume you mean I purposefully moved things around so that it would APPEAR I didnt overpaint an image in photoshop? You've got to be kidding me. Take the 560x700 photo ref...scale it up to 1900x2160 (while first noting the awesome quality when scaling an image 4 times it's size) and then impose it over my image and see if all those angles and curves match. See if some of them match exactly. See if one of them matches exactly. And then tell me how I spent more time making sure none of them matched than I did actually working on this.

This is my first post here and it's putting a bad taste in my mouth. All I wanted was some advanced critique.

I guess I should start over so I can learn how "planes and angles" work and how light reflects off of objects... Things like adding less saturation where her black hair reflects off of her skin. Or how the light on her cheek bones gives them a red tone because the light shines through the skin and bounces around her blood vessels in shallower areas. I should also learn that this is called sub-surface scattering. I also added the shine in the corner of her eye to show that the skin is moist, completely by accident. I added noise layers for realistic skin texturing as well as several custom spatter brushes to manually control the skin pore size, also by accident. I then, again, completey by accident made sure that the light refraction on her neck created highlights even under a shadowed area. You're right, back to the basics for me, I only know how to copy and paste.

You say you're not picking a fight, but you've degraded my 30 hours of work to "painting over a picture"

[Blue Severin]

Critique- cool, you learned some techniques, now what do you want to do with them? You have a photoreal looking hottie, why not just keep the photograph? Thirty hours of practice well spent if you learned from it. But the only critique you're going to get is "hey, it looks like the photo" or "hey it's a little bit off from the photo" but there's no photo to compare it with. Try putting in the fantasy elements from the beginning block in stage, and then we can critique your design and efforts. Sorry if this is a bit rude, but there's nothing to critique here.

edit: ah ok now I see the photo critique: it looks pretty much like the photo, some slight value differences in the neck.

[Venger]

I'm only commenting on the evidence provided.
This was not a personal attack and nothing in my critique was written as one.

This is your WIP laid over the photo ref at 50% opacity.
The various items provide too close a match (for me), if you claim you didn't draw over the underlying image, well then good luck to you, I'll be quiet. Like I said I'm not looking for a fight about it.

The ref and WIP are there - I haven't altered your WIP to make it fit, anyone can check this.(apart from scaling)

To be honest, if you saw this in another post - what would you think?

[Sidharth Chaturvedi]

Looking really good. The only advice I can offer is that in the photo the area around the eyes is a bit darker, much more makeup and such- her eyes look a little more closed and alluring, whereas they look a bit more open in yours. Also, the eyebrows are a little thicker and longer in the photo.

[Whyatt Thrash]

Like what has already been said, painting an exact copy has its own educational purposes but provides little as to creating an original artwork. So why don't you take a new piece of reference, get inspired by it and create some kickass original art based on it?

it looks like you've got the painting skills, now let's see your creating skills.

[The Grimace]

I did learn a lot from this. All I was concentrating on was skin texturing, this was my first attempt and I wanted to get it critiqued...

But I see what you all mean... I understand there was nothing creative about this, it was just an exercise in photorealism with the hopes that I could work it into something creative afterwards. But yah, it's kind of pointless to turn this into anything else, considering it would pretty much be an exact copy of a photo with some modifications that would make it "fantasy".

I guess the texturing is fine, and I'll start something new from my own imagination and incorporate the things I have learned.

If anyone else wants to critique, please focus on the technical part of the painting and not the subject matter.

On a side note...( and then Im absolutely done defending my methods for creating this...) I took a reference photo, made a quick sketch in an adjacent document, and proceeded to paint by zooming in on areas in the reference and painting on a seperate file. Not on top of, not using layers. If you have a problem with that method, then I don't really care, and you've missed the point of what I was concentrating on.

[FIG]

But you learned from it which is equally rewarding so lets see some original artwork. Good job.

[Izi]

Take a look at her left iris, yours is a bit off compared to the photo. it makes yours look like she has a bit of a hangover compared to the photograph one.

See the lower edge of the eye rim? It's touching the iris in the photo, casuing it to appear oblong. In yours you have it whited out, as if the eyeball flesh itself was showing. In actuality it is not. Eyes are important, so while it is a minor quarrel it just revealed itself all the more...

otherwise it's a lovely piece..very well executed

now let's see that fantasy spice it up a bit!

[grenogs]

very nice so far, the only thing that i have realy noticed so far though are the eyes and teeth, first the teeth need to be seperated, at the moment, they look fused together, almost like a gum shield, 2nd the eyes, their looking dry, they need some more sparkley highlights