Painting trees

[erysium]

Been trying to improve light and textures here. I started out with values and then threw some textures over it before painting in details, but now I'm stuck on making it more readable without losing the textures. Any suggestions on how I could make it look more finished? Any critiques overall are welcome though, thanks!

[BickeringDog]

I'm honestly having a hard time figuring out what is going on. Is the little person standing on a tree branch or is he wading through a river? Also, I'm not sure what the focus of the piece is supposed to be but my eyes keep going to the upper left corner with all the fish in it.

[Velocity Kendall]

i like it a lot! its a little hard to read as its all kind of a mix of dark and light bits everywhere. Maybe try darkening some areas and leaving others light, to break it up into 3d and be less flat.
heres a very quick p/o, see what you think..

[erysium]

BickeringDog - It's just a huge tree with some fish kites up in the branches, and the person climbing up to hang one. The fish in the top left are the main focus, but I thought the direction they're pointing+shape of the tree could lead the eye to the figure also. I'll work on the pose to make it clearer that the figure is climbing, but I'm not sure how to fix the river resembles since I don't really see it, I think following Velocity's tips will help that though.

Velocity Kendall -ooh thanks very much for the paintover! This is a big help. I see what you mean, I'll definitely work on the scattered values, having bigger variation in fish size looks better too, even the pose of the little figure is nicer. At a glance the bottom of your paintover looks to me like the tree is growing out of water, might try using that idea since it looks pretty awesome

[Velocity Kendall]

im afraid when i uploaded it it made everything abit darker than i intended, so the bottom and top do still look kind of flat, but yeah i think you get what i was going for. one thing, the wind needed to keep those kites flying would be pretty strong and throw up lots of debris. maybe ake them baloons or laterns to preserve the tranquil atmosphere.. looking forward to seeing how you continue! good luck

oh yeah and water, why not! it looks like water in your original, a nice pond for the tree to grow from. id like to go there and fish.

[erysium]

Finally had time to work on this more (the help I've already had improved it so much!)- I'm still having trouble figuring out how to render plants though. I've been looking at PaperBlue's work (http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_md...7c93o1_500.jpg) trying to figure it out, my mind can't seem to wrap around it though.

[Velocity Kendall]

pretty! i tried some sunbeams but im not sure theyre really working..

[Lectriece]

I really like the concept for this painting, it has a lovely mood. You may want to take the painting into gray scale mode and check where the values are blending- I think Velocity's paint over with the light beams definitely help to delineate the values. The only downside to them is that they are drawing the focus to the upper left- which may not be what's intended? You might want to use a photo ref for one of the plants (or maybe do it as a separate study). Try having the photo up and while you work on the painting for it zoom out until the plant is very small on screen. See how few lines/details you really need in order to get away with it reading as a plant rather than noise (which can happen if its over-detailed as easily as if it isn't detailed at all). Can't wait to see how this piece progresses.

[Griffonnage]

No prob with the beam focusing the attention on the top part, just add some reflection into the water (actually, the beam reflection :p) and that will do the trick.
It's a very nice painting, I love the mood and colors... Mystery, peace, it feel really like an old and quiet forest

[erysium]

Velocity - Thanks for the paintover again! It gave me some great ideas, made me change color temperatures a bit, and the misty light helped with the depth a lot. I need to push the light beam/ray look more, but I'm a lot happier with it now.

Lectriece - You're right, will work on the values more, and I should definitely do some studies to understand basic shapes of the plants better. Thanks for mentioning that.
I don't think the focus being on the top left is a problem, I'm just having trouble getting things arranged so that the eye can go through the whole picture, rather than just that little area.

Griffonnage - Cool idea, I'll see if I can get that to work! Glad it has a distinct mood for you, that's exactly what I what to do with pictures like this (: