Melisandre WIP

[tobbA]

I've been working on this for a little while. Would be great with some crits Thanks.

[axisis]

So far, I can say that the liquid in the glass should be more horizontal. other than that, cant really see much else thats wrong.

[BADOMENS]

This looks great. I agree with axisis, unless she is mid-tipping, the liquid should be flat.

[scrt_AgentMan]

Her left eye doesn't look like its in the right perspective. It looks like it is too "head on".

[Artfix]

I would say the eyes are too high on her head. Do you have ref for this?

[Hexokinase]

The edge of the eyelid just past the tearduct (towards the midline), is too defined, and seems swollen. The crease of the cheek that neets the nose is too low - this should rise above the wing of the nostril. A lot of the form around the lips isn't quite reading right. Try to simply things into cylinders and get the global value gradation correct before getting into the nitty gritty folds and creases in the area. The form of her lower left eyelid also doesn't ready correctly - I should be able to see the spherical shape of the eyeball through the eyelid.

I'm not sure if the irises are supposed to be glowing or not. If not, then there should be a cast shadow from the eyelids. Either way, the outside edges of the irises are much too sharp, and look cut and pasted on.

[tobbA]

Thanks for the comments. Here's a bit of an update... There are a few "temporary solutions" going in the face right now. I sort of have a few refs, but nothing specific. But I'll look into the things you're mentioning. The eyes are supposed to be glowing. But the hard edge part seems to make sense.

As far as the wineglass goes... The idea was that the liquid is in motion because of movement. But I haven't really gotten to that part yet, so maybe it makes more sense for it to be still..

[freiheit]

Do you have a ref for your hand? The general shape of it could use some work to be more elegant.

[tobbA]

Yeah. I have a reference. But I should probably get a better one because the one I have leaves a bit to be desired... Any suggestions on how to make it look more elegant?

[freiheit]

her finguers and nails are a bit chubby, the shape in general is a bit off. You could do a grid on your ref and your current hand to better see what's off.

[MiniGoth]

Is she supposed to be a medusa type character or have dreds?

[LAG]

[Candra H]

Someone already mentioned this but I think it needs repeating. The top of her head is too shallow, which throws out the rest of her features and makes her face read wrong. Maybe moving her hairline up and back might help with that.

Her hand is also not very well thought out anatomically. I'm no expert on anatomy but I know the fleshy parts at the base of the palm don't sit where you've placed them. They angle/fold down into the wrist following the tendons and muscles. You've got them curving round the side of her hand at the moment. The fingers are also a bit chunky and not very elegant, but someone already pointed that out so I wont bore you with repetition.

Anyway, just some thoughts and suggestions. I hope they help a little.

[tobbA]

Thanks for the comments. That hand is giving me quite a bit of trouble... Which is also why I haven't really posted any updates so far. Doesn't seem to be much sense to post the pic up for crits when I know it doesn't look right yet... But maybe it's a good idea to post something that's a bit more up to date anyway. And the hair needs a bit more work too. But maybe it looks too much like dreads (because it's not supposed to). The 'clumps' might be too evenly spaced. And I'm going to add some individual strands later as well.



Here are also my refs for the hand... I took the second picture because the photo was so bad of the first one. But the first is more the pose I'm after...

[Lii-chan]

GAME OF THRONES FTWWWWW 8D

Ahem.

Well, the only thing I'm looking at that I don't has been mentioned is the fact that the hair is separated into parts that are all the same width, which makes them seem like snakes. Maybe varying the width and thickness of the sections would help?

[tobbA]

Game of Thrones is awesome

Here's another update. Gonna try and fix the hair next...

[dierat]

Hey, this is coming along nicely. The reflection in the glass is a really nice touch.

For the hand, I wonder if the problem isn't the execution but the pose. A drawing can be accurate and still awkward, if you know what I mean. I know you probably don't want to redo the whole hand at this point, but you could go for a different pose where the fingers are more relaxed and cradling the glass rather than pinching the stem for a more elegant and confident look. Maybe something like this but from the other side:


Also, I think the dark side of the face and the space behind it is a little too dark. That cheek should get a touch more reflected light which should in turn bounce back onto the hair's shadowed area.

And this is a really minor thing, but I wouldn't use red in that upper-left corner because it makes the red in the image seem less intense, which btw is feeling kinda orange rather than red (on my screen anyway). You might want to add a touch of green to the more intense shadows to add more contrast as well. Right now the color overall feels a tad same-y to me (like all highlights are color A and all shadows are color B); add a little variation by pinpointing which highlights and which shadows are most intense and give them something a little extra to set them apart and get the viewer's attention.

[tobbA]

Thanks. I see what you mean about the glass. I've been pretty obsessive over this painting as it is so I might actually go back and change the hand as well. I haven't really gotten around to all the reflected light yet. Trying to take one thing at a time. I've been a bit uncertain about the patch in the upper left... The initial idea was for her hair to turn into flames in that corner. But maybe that's a bit too much... I'll have to play around with it a bit.

Ok. After some (or a lot of) fiddling with the hair... Might have gone a bit over board with the detail though.

[tobbA]

I'm getting a bit tired of this now... So I don't think I'll be fixing that hand right now at least. So if noone else has any complaints this is probably the final version...

[w176]

The picture is great but.... The colors just seem really off somehow, or at least the parts in shadow do. It don't look like someone face lit by firelight for some reason. So I checked a lot of photos of fires on google and at dA.

For example: This photographer and fire artist have a couple of hundred pics with people lit by firelight in diffrent kind of lighting conditions. In the darkness, in twilight, on daylight, indoors, ourdoors, close to the fire, far away from the fire, etc. http://mattthesamurai.deviantart.com/gallery/7001673

Yet... I can't seem to find any circumstances where the fir creates lighting conditions like that in the picture. It mostly seem to stay in a color scale of really warm colors + black. Even in the twilight pictures that should have some blue light in them.

http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs39/i/20...TheSamurai.jpg

http://mattthesamurai.deviantart.com...Fire-103533774

I hope this can help you out.

[tobbA]

Thanks. To make the skin that blue in contrast to the bright fire the sky light would probably have to be very bright (and blue) I think... And if you look at the BG the sky is even darker than her skin. (Guess I'm critting myself here )

I don't know. Maybe it looks weird? But at the same time I wanted the cool blues to play off the red tones so that the image didn't get too monochromatic...

[w176]

No problem. Something is off, somehow. I think would just try to playing around with curves and color balance, lighting layers, etc, and see if it can be fixed that way, without making it feel to monochromatic.

[Juho]

I dont know if you made it on purpose and its a possible perspective wise, but her finger looks like its amputated. It could help to show even little of the rest of the finger and some nail

[paulboutros]

You mentionned that the eye are suppose to be glowing, so it is on purpose. But wouldn't it be stronger if they were glowing for a realistic reason. In my paint over the eyes are less glowing, but I am trying to find excuses to have them glowing and this can be pushed further. There is some reflection, light bouncing going on .. and some more photo research would help to make your ideas more believevable. Now let's say you absolutly don't want this to be realistic and you assume her eyes are the light sources , then can you add a hint in your image that suggest the reason why she's got this special ability. If she is not human or something, so it make more sense...

[JeffX99]

Not to be too critical...but the hand is a disaster. Don't know why it has only had one brief mention as a problem. Take a better reference photo, using a female hand, with the proper lighting, and wine in the glass. Whose wine? What wine? (sorry, you may or may not get, or even appreciate that little reference).

Another pretty major problem no one has mentioned is her right shoulder/deltoid is way too close to her neck. In fact her entire shoulder girdle/collarbone is all shifted out of position.

Work on good underlying structure first. Paintings are lost in the beginning, not saved at the end.

[tobbA]

Guess I'll just have to ask one of my friends to pose for me for the hand... And then repaint/adjust the shoulder area. I felt something was awkward about the gesture, but I guess I've been staring at if for too long to notice what. And I'll try to be more careful with the construction next time. Pwomise.

Paul: I don't know... I kinda like the glowing eyes the way they are. I don't know if you're familiar with Game of Thrones. But this character is very fire-centric, sort of. And her unsettling red eyes are mentioned a lot in the books. They're never mentioned as glowing, but I just thought that would be a good way to emphasize the fact that she's got an innate supernatural connection with fire.

In the meantime I played around a bit with the values and colors.

[Eelis Kyttänen]

Try flipping it around on horizontal axis for a second. That should help you gain some fresh views on your picture and notice the mistakes.

[JeffX99]

Guess I'll just have to ask one of my friends to pose for me for the hand... And then repaint/adjust the shoulder area. I felt something was awkward about the gesture, but I guess I've been staring at if for too long to notice what. And I'll try to be more careful with the construction next time. Pwomise.

Good deal - that is definitely the right way to go. My advice would be to light her the same, have the glass with wine/wine substitute, same kind of top, jeweled choker and same kind of hair - even use a cheap wig if necessary. This would be a great excercise and I think you'll notice other areas where lighting or proportion might have gone awry. But only if you set it up pretty much the same.