Critics and advices please

[StefRob]

Here is my last digital painting attempt. Some stuffs are bothering me but without being able to put my finger on them. So, I'd like your honnest evaluation.

[tobbA]

Ok... Paintover time.

You're basically trying to paint all the shadows with a darker color of the one you allready have, which is not how light works. You have this very blue background, and it's going to be affecting the color of your shadows. Also most of your colors are really saturated, so tone them down a bit. Especially the background, because we don't want it to be competing with the main subject. (Though looking at my paintover now the hair probably looks a bit too washed out...)

The hand is in a very awkward position. Try holding your hand like that and you'll see it's pretty uncomfortable. You'd also want the gesture of the arm to show what she's doing with her hand.

I also played a bit with the design of the dress. Don't know if this is what you were going for or not.

But more importantly. You should get a reference for this. Finding something for a pose like this should be fairly easy.

[StefRob]

Thank you for the response and the timle you've spent on the paint-over. I see what you mean and you're very right of course. I guess it comes from my lack of color palette at the very begining of the painting process. In one word, it lacks of unity. I'm not confortable with colors yet.
That being said, do you really think that the background have to decide for the rest of the color scheme? I mean, theorically, the light going to the subject could be warm and the background would still be blue, right?
I changed the background (plus minor tweaking with the shadows), what do you think of the result?

[tobbA]

I guess I explained that badly. The background doesn't determine the lighting scheme. But the ambient light will determine the color of the shadows. Since your background is so blue, it feels logical to assume that the ambient light in the scene is also blue. The light source in itself is still warm. Either way blue reflected light from the background would reach the subject. You'll have a much easier time creating a sence of space and form if you have contrasting warm and cool light sources, otherwise you're almost exclusively limited to describing form with value, which is very difficult to pull off well.

To be honest I feel that your new update feels more like band-aid than a fix. There was nothing wrong with the blue background per se. And you can (and perhaps should) still make the shadows cool.

[StefRob]

To sum up, you think I should re-do everything or should I keep the same values but in a blue range for the shadows and that would "be enough" to fix it?
By the way, I like what you made for the dress. Nice idea.

[tobbA]

Well, my main advice would be to simply draw as well as paint more from life. It'll teach you to look at things like color relationships and lighting situations and give you a feel for how they work. If you start a sketchbook in the sketchbook section of this site people will be able to help guide you as you progress.

But no. I don't think that you need to redo everything. It's digital after all so you can just adjust the colors by painting on top of it.

[Black Spot]

You show the light coming from the right nearer the bottom, so why is there so much under her chin? Also I think you're making all the colours in the picture what you think they should be, including muddy brown, when skin and shadows has loads more colours. The hair is like string, give it some form before trying to paint the details. Also the shoulder might be a bit on the narrow side, and the two sides of the neck are not the same size. Have a good look at what the shadows are doing to that chin and the form of the face about the mouth.

Don't be too disheartened, the hand is drawn nicely.

[StefRob]

Black spot: you dig up ohers flaws I missed, thanks for that and for your encouragements. I've made some modifications according to your advices and those from tobbA.
tobbA: I think you're right about "painting from life". I think I'll mainly stick to reproducing photos in order to improve myself in this area.
Here is the final version. What do you think? Is this any better?

[Elwell]

Her mouth is still floating, unrelated to her face.
Everything about that that hand (size, lighting, position, etc.) looks like it belongs to somebody else.
Adding a photo texture background was a mistake, it just emphasizes the crudity of the painting.
Lines≠hair.

[StefRob]

How would you relate it to the face?
I'll re-think about background.

[Falchion]

Shadows. You need more shadows. They set up your contours, they follow the curves, etc. The lips have neither shadows to define their depth, nor do they have anything to indicate that they are actually attached to the face.

[arenhaus]

Before you play with shadows, you need to tighten the structure. If you don't get the three-dimensional structure of the subject right, shadows won't help you.

[vineris]

tobbA: I think you're right about "painting from life". I think I'll mainly stick to reproducing photos in order to improve myself in this area.

The camera is not the same as your eye. I often take photographs when I am out painting from real life and the photographs are always different from what I saw when I was really on location. Don't rely only on photographs.

The light on the hand is coming from the right but the light on the lips is coming from above. You have a very definite edge around the lips, which flattens them and makes them look more like a sticker pasted onto her face than a natural change in the colour of her face. Get reference for the lips.

Do not cut limbs off at the joints at the edges of the picture. It makes them look disconnected and is generally bad composition. She looks a bit out of proportion -- if nothing else her hand looks much too large. Did you draw a thumbnail of the entire figure (or at least the entire torso, head and arms) in the position you wanted and then crop out the best composition or did you start by drawing this exact picture? When drawing an extreme closeup like this it's easy to make mistakes in proportion and placement.

[StefRob]

Ok, I'm not giving up and I keep working on it. Thank to all your advices guys (and ladies) I hope it gets better.

The camera is not the same as your eye. I often take photographs when I am out painting from real life and the photographs are always different from what I saw when I was really on location. Don't rely only on photographs.

Sure, photography is an art by itself, you have to master it. I exchange my knowledge in photography against yours in painting ;-). I have to rely on photography if I want to make real life as I only paint digitally.

Do not cut limbs off at the joints at the edges of the picture. It makes them look disconnected and is generally bad composition. She looks a bit out of proportion -- if nothing else her hand looks much too large. Did you draw a thumbnail of the entire figure (or at least the entire torso, head and arms) in the position you wanted and then crop out the best composition or did you start by drawing this exact picture? When drawing an extreme closeup like this it's easy to make mistakes in proportion and placement.

As you others stated, hand was too big so made it tinier. You were right in your guess, I just drew it right away without thumbnail.