Two Environment Paintings

[DanRob]

Me and a friend are giving ourselves weekly 'homework' assignments and this time its two environments. I have til the 29th to Perfect them so I thought I'd ask for some extra Crits through Ca...

The characters are rough drafts for placement, They will both be obviously reworked, but if you think I should move/resize then please let me know

[DAMJAN]

I think you should do thumbnails first, establish an interesting focal point, create good value and atmospheric perspective there and then go from there. Stop using pure blacks and whites for highlights and shadows. Use reference for both people and mountains. Your brush work is very murky and soft. Use hard brush, lasso to make things sharper. You won't be able to perfect a painting until 29th. You need a lot of practice.

[Velocity Kendall]

not wanting to contradict the above, i actually think these read quite well. i think both have great potential; the cave one in particular could look amazing. make sure those little figures are as good as you can make them!

[DanRob]

I see what you mean about murky and soft.. So I'll try and sharpen up the edges just a tad so they'll read at a bigger resolution well too. As far as the black and whites.. The Castle piece I was going for sort of a Disney-esque Magical feeling. The torches in the cave definitely shouldn't be pure white though, I'll try to make them look more like actual fire and repost my changes.

[fxEVo]

The green of the grass of first one is too vivid for me, especially in a dark night like that, also the detail look too soft and color is too opaque, most of the time the environment painting need solid and sharp shape.

Second one is brilliant, love it.

[fxEVo]

Here is a bit of paint over.

[Velocity Kendall]

my 2c is that theyre both really quite well laid out; the scenes are well designed and lead your eye nicely. i think the castle is more Stephen Kings Dark Tower than Disney, and im not sure about crtopping the horse's feet off, but it reads really quite well.

maybe extend the bottom and have a big shadow cast back by the horse..
as in this horrendous paintover




the cave looks excellent, but a piece tends to fall to the level of its weakest elements, so it hangs on how well you can pull of the people. i look forward to seeing how you handle them going forward, but i think youre off to a strong start; the fundamentals look good.

[DanRob]

Thanks for the great C&C! I can actually use some of it now.. haha.

fxEVo: That's quite a paint over. I think I'll take your advice and get closer to that lower perspective. Both images fell close to a Square canvases and I've been too chicken to make drastic changes to fix them.

And here's the people in the cave, as well as some more fire-yellow lighting.. Keep going with the crits please

[fxEVo]

The big shape on the lower right corner I suspect it's your idea about some foreground element? and that just blocking the view, any photographer will risk his dear life to get around that and take the picture that without it, also right now it dont feel like foreground at all, it fell like it's a dropping to death on the planar surface those people walking on.

[DanRob]

Pretty much done with both. I'll take any last suggestions.

I accidentally saved the cave painting at that smaller size so I won't do too much more to that one.. >_<

[Velocity Kendall]

the humans in the cave still need tightening they are placeholders at the moment.

if drawing people is proving hard just find some peolpe in google in the positions you want..
look theres a few in there

[Ales S.]

DanRob, I prefer your first version in the opening post. fxEVo had a good advice regarding the vividness of the green grass and lack of sharp shapes, but his paintover image killed the atmosphere for me. Your OP version has a more direct feeling of gloominess, mistery, desolateness, death surrounding the place, your lack of concrete gives it a more first hand, immediate comprehension of an atmospehe (which means that the viewer himself experiences how it is to be unable to rely on his senses and abstract shapes can form content through his interpretation/imagination). fxEVo got rid of alot of the fog and he rationalized too many objects, for example too much factological information on the trees, too accurately placed and designed spikes/trunks across the field, individualized grass blades, etc. which killed the mistery imo. Your OP picture should maybe get a little bit more concrete, but only where the focus lies and only if it doesn't hurt the overall experience. You should get rid of the blur tho, your lack of concreteness, your lack of recognizability should be painted more solidly.

[David_a_ray]

I feel like the castle in the newest version is giving me the finger.

[fxEVo]

BTW, sometime painting figure in too small canvas space can be tired some, expecially when it's 300x300 pixels, my advice would be you crop out that part of figure, enlarge it into another document, paint it and the rescale into original.