starting point for oil painting....

[rattsang]

hi everyone,

so here i am back again looking for advice. this is a thumb based on pencil thumbs for a oil painting i will be doing- but first i will be rendering it full in digital to save time.

as usual im looking for advice on the composition, color scheme and any obvious mistakes ive missed- and please be brutally honest.

thanks

rat

[rattsang]

update

[slopii]

Looking up makes him look kind of hopeful, so if he is about to jump because he hates life which the suit and errr roof edge would suggest I think he would be paying attention to the floor which also makes him look more miserable.

[Amir0]

hmm... there is something in the symmetry of the composition that somehow bugs me. your subject is dynamic but you put him in the dead center, and the line of his movement is inconsistant with the horizontal lines of the scenary

[rattsang]

Slopii - indeed i dont want him to look miserable but rather apathetic.

Amir0- cropped the composition as the figure is now more dominante, i think the distance was killing it. and fixed some of the perspective.


thanks for the input guys ... will update as i progress.

[rattsang]

update..... feedback please......

[bestow]

maybe he looks hopeful because he thinks he can fly, i liked him better as happy, i prefer a double take the first time seeing an image, rather than a , "oh, yeah he is displaying the correct emotion 4 gold stars."

[Quigleyer]

OK. A problem I see right now is how easily my eye escapes out of the top left hand corner... I never even look back because my eye looks too quickly with the motion of the birds (which is actually pretty awesome that they have nice motion). That's such an empty space and has the highest value in the composition that SOMETHING needs to be up there... but I don't want to say put another bird up there...

Nice choice with the gargoyles and pigeons. Where do you find gargoyles? Really fucking tall buildings, that's where. The pigeons could be anywhere, but they also assist in the height factor. Without those two things I might just think it's a sidewalk.

[Arshes Nei]

I like where this is going, but it looks like Obama XD

It might be more amusing or interesting if the suitcase flew open and maybe some documents revealed why he may look like he's jumping?

[Quigleyer]

yeah... and if you can get those documents like somewhere flying in the wind above of say... the right (being our left) side of his head up a tad bit... like a little lower than the pigeons, but on the other side...

you the man, arshes.

or just cloud vignette this bitch?

[rattsang]

yeah... and if you can get those documents like somewhere flying in the wind above of say... the right (being our left) side of his head up a tad bit... like a little lower than the pigeons, but on the other side...

you the man, arshes.

or just cloud vignette this bitch?

actually in my original thumbs i had docs flying around but took them out- guess its time to consider them again.

[Arshes Nei]

you the man, arshes.

I hope not! Last I checked I had different plumbing and damn sweater meat

But, I think that's what's lacking in the image, there's a story and as artists we should be telling it.

[rattsang]

update....crits?

values sucked... prolly not any better now

[kev ferrara]

This is nice, but moving the camera closer to guy has washed away a lot of the drama. The earlier version had both a sense of isolation of the character, and a sense of the height of the building he was going to jump from. Without the isolation we don't know why he's jumping. Without the height we don't know if he's jumping at all, at least not from a tall building. Currently he could be jumping off a concrete park bench or the edge of a fountain.

kev

[rattsang]

thanks so much for your input kev- this update was done before your comment - but im gonna pull the camera back again now and compare.

time to go back to small value thumbs and see if i can resolve this... will post them for crit when done.

[rattsang]

changed the amount of background now includes reflective building behind man.

[~KJK~]

Nice progress so far. Maybe you should add more room to the right? And now the birds look like theyre reflections on the windows of the skyscraper behind. Must be damn big birds! Whatch the perspective on the bacground building as well, it looks quite akward as it is

[rattsang]

i think the close right side gives more tension and a sense of falling.... lol dino birds-come to take over the planet

[paragraph5]

I'm worried that it feels too much like he's just radically enjoying the breeze.

What kind of emotion are you trying to convey with his face? I'm thinking "fearless".

[rattsang]

going for more of a blank stare at the moment but i havent gotten into detail yet.

[rattsang]

ok fixed birds and perspective (i think)

[paragraph5]

This feels more like what you're intending. A definite improvement. Now start fleshing the bugger out.

[Sanguine]

He should close his eyes! Would feel more dramatic, I think!

[PsiBug]

Looking good. In my opinion, every revision was an improvement until you added the building behind him . At that point you:

1) lost the sense of vast open space which makes him seem small and insignificant.
2) decreased the sense of altitude because WITHOUT the building in the background, he seems to be atop the highest building in the vicinity. You could consider leaving most of the background as sky with just the tips of skyscrapers and antennas peeking up behind the ledge he's standing on. that way you could convey the fact that he is on a fairly tall building in a business district if that's what you are going for.

I agree that " it feels too much like he's just radically enjoying the breeze."

he is leaning into the wind, but if he is going to be stepping or falling off the ledge you might want to have at least one toe sticking over the ledge of the building.

I love the piggy gargoyles but do you want comic relief?

I like the gray building better than the red which distracts from the figure.

The papers work well, giving a sense of release, abandon and loss of control.

Hope that's helpful.