a lady and her dragon

[bluemonika]

Hi everyone I have been gone for a long time so this is my first post since a long long while...

Anyways, I have here this drawing that I am workign on for quite some while now and I just want to try to take my time ( i am usually quite hasty) and give it all i got. It is nearly...done?? but I figured some extra critique couldn't hurt. I am still able to change nearly everything.

What I actually want the most advice with now is...I tried to paint steam coming out of the dragon's nose but I couldn't find a proper example of it so if anyone has suggestions...(unless it is fine the way it is )

Thanks in advance.

[arenhaus]

You are isolating the colors too much, so much that different parts of the picture don't "talk" to each other. The presence of the red dress, for instance, is not reflected in the dragon, nor in the skin. The colors don't form a real harmony of any kind; they are partly what you think is "natural color" of the object, partly random.

Color overall is overly "slick", artificially digital, and does not follow either the lighting or the form. To get a more successful picture, you should either plan the color harmony and use it for emotional effect, or plan the lighting and use it for a realistic effect. This attempt is neither way, yet.

Keep working. I recommend "Color and light" by Gurney, and doing some pure-value paintings. If you learn to make a picture work in black and white, color will come much easier to you.

[bluemonika]

thanks arenhaus. I had another look at the colours. i think it now fit's together better colourwise like this. ( I also fixed a few other things. i also discovered more things i need to fix but that will be for another day)

[arenhaus]

Not really an improvement, you just manipulated it to make all colors more cool. At least the previous version had some hint of warm/cool contrast; this one doesn't.

I really recommend the same things as above.

[Avvatar]

The colors were better in the first version. The main problem lies in that there is no believable light source and the edge work is making everything extremely flat to the point that the characters look like paper cut outs.

[herionz]

Sorry for bothering, maybe it's my own fault but I see the jaw design in a way that I'm not sure if it's how you actually want to show it or it's just a perspective problem.

I've did some sketches, in red about what I seem to see about what you are trying to show and in green what you might want to were trying to show (but it also might be otherwise ).



The way I see it in your drawing, your upper jaw seems to be behind the lower jaw (which could be "lowerbite" ? Don't know if it's the right terminology) which is OK, but the teeth seem to be coming way straight down to be "teeth" (Maybe they are just a defensive protrusion).

It could also be due to the lighting in the jaw, the values in there aren't convincing me (they should be darker if they followed the right direction because light is coming from above and teeth should be forming a >165º plane from the light, which means they would be under shadow/reflected light, but the values they have are way too bright, which tricks my mind on actually thinking the plane angle they form with the light position is way lower, which also means, the fangs come more straight down than "inside", and that might be tricking my eyes to think those teeth are following a different direction). Sorry if it doesn't makes much sense, it's just a matter about how the values inside the planes that face or turn away from a light change, but I'm not really experienced in this topic so, just a wild guess.

I apologize if I have said something wrong in advance.
Cheers!

[Kiera]

Wait, I've seen snippets of that on Facebook.. oh hi Marlon, nice to see you chill around it here .
I really like the face of the girl, it's very strong .
Did you try an alternative version where you crop really close to the dragon's head and the girl?

I'm asking because the composition is kinda dull: The only interesting places to look at are really close to each other.
Those focal points are the head of the girl, her chest and the dragon's head. There's not a lot of interesting stuff going on in the rest of the picture.
Scattering some focal points throughout the canvas might loose the composition up.
You could for example add decorative elements to the girls hair or add the dragon's hand. Or crop the picture heavily .

Did you construct the dragon properly? I have trouble understanding how it makes sense in space and anatomically.
I don't know what the red thing behind the girl is, is it part of the dragon or part of the girls clothes? I can only see it as the dragon's chest.
So the front of the chest and the back with the spines are visible at the same time. It makes the dragon appear like it's a meatball with a head.
It also seems to not have a neck. The result is that it makes the creature appear more like a humanoid creature, like a gargoyle or the Hulk.
But if it's humanoid, the shoulders are in a strange position... it goes on like that.
I can't give a lot of advice here, because I don't get how you wanted the creature to look like and what pose it has in space.
Oh yeah, and if you crop to the heads, no one will ever notice .

But if you want a smaller critique with the dragon:
It's horns are asymmetrical. Draw a straight line through the middle of the dragons head and compare the horns.


Oh, and nose smoke!
If you hadn't mentioned the nose smoke, I wouldn't have noticed it...
Maybe references could help?
So I looked up people smoking cigarettes, but it turns out that cigarettes don't make exceptionally good looking puffs of smoke.
But what about those beautiful strings of smoke that you get from...
http://azarius.punt.nl/upload/BobMarleySmokingPot.jpg
http://www.marijuana-addict.com/wp-c...de-effects.jpg
http://www.tobacco-news.net/wp-conte...ha-smoking.jpg