Harsh Critique is always welcome! Landscape

[Andrew L. Lauren]

Hey guys. I'm currently working on a huge background of my indy company website and found myself struggling quite a bit on it. My intent on letting so many space up to the sky is that I'm probably adding more elements there. The original canvas has 4000x6000 dimensions which I'm willing to enrich with details. Could you guys point me out few directions here? I can tell it needs texture at some point, since I'm not sure if I'll keep the innocent line stle for much longer. Book references that could help me out are deeeeply appreciated too.

Thanks in advance, guys.

[Avvatar]

Right now I have no idea what is going on. The shapes with the lights look like it is floating in the sky but the trees suggest we are looking at the ground? If you could explain the context and what you are trying to show that would help, as well as starting with thumbnails instead of jumping into a painting you obviously haven't thought out.

[Andrew L. Lauren]

You're right, Avvatar. This all started as a sketch to be honest, but playing around with colors and light this ended to be refined to what it is right now. So let's not face it as a advanced stage painting, but rather a composition try-out.

We are releasing a Fantasy game in the next few months and we were up to build up a new website for it. Since we're having a big chart in the middle of the page my aim was to actually have the elements of the painting on both horizontal sides rather than the middle. Composition-wise, my initial thoughts were to add a detailed landscape at night, revealing a village in the distance, prompting the concept of a whole new life for the adventurers that are shown to be looking to the village just after the moment they've made their way through a deep forest or mountain.

Further I wondered if adding a nebula of stars with the adventurers faces being revealed through it would be a nice idea.
I'm taking any suggestion to be honest.

Thank you for your post and for sorting those points out, man.

[justa]

Google "looking down from mountain" or something similar; getting the perspective correct is going to be really important, I think for people to grasp the meaning of the story, and it's hard to make that look correct out of your head (and as Avatar noted, you haven't succeeded).

D'Arcy

[Andrew L. Lauren]

Haha indeed, man! I'll do that. Maybe starting with few sketches focusing on perspective is a good starting point? I'll update it here. Thanks for your tip, justa.

[Chris Sanders]

Hey Andrew, A couple of things that i think could help this image. First of all I'm not sure about the composition. If you're going to show a lot above the horizon, make sure that there is something going on up there; and that it's actually important to the image. Also just because it's night doesn't mean the image is void of colour. In fact i love this time because you can use crazy colours that don't really show up much during the day light. especially purple and really deep cool tones. I've done a quick paint over to try and make it more interesting as in sense of a story. For instance you have a guy looking out to that cool floating village thing. But how is he going to get there? Also a note on conveying distance. Make things overlap, Also if the image is is about the dude there, try and give him some more real estate. Everything is really sharp as well. I would like to see more hand painted elements in this image. It looks like these trees have been stamped around and the shadows have are upside down stamps set to multiply. If there not i apologies; but if they are i honestly suggest doing everything with a hard round and just messing with the hardness to achieve different effects. It's the most natural way to learn how to paint digitally i feel, and then you can do whatever you want after you can paint anything with a hard round.

[Andrew L. Lauren]

That was awesome Chris Sanders! I'm taking notes here, I swear. Hehe And indeed, I've drawn the trees and made em into brushes. As a quick way to make their cast shadows I've inverted em into what I feel as the perspective I wanted and set em to overlay with a layermask over the colored background. You're right about night tones, thanks for the paint over! This story atmosphere that is created in a suggestive way is exactly what I need to work with this piece. I would love to read some nice books about color theory too. It's really hard to think of proper values at night using colors... I've even edited the whole painting to a dawn kinda thing just to avoid it while giving it new tries. xD

Guys I'm really thankful and pleased to hear from you. I'll start another illustration based on your notes. Maybe it's ok to post the feedback-based versions in here?
This is how I ended up with this...