Posting some finished stuff

[Jim Parks]

Hi all,

A breif introduction: I went to school a million years ago for illustration and long story short became a costume designer. Since discovering digital painting, i've been inspired to give it a go again. (we didn't do anything on a computer way back in the stone age). I'm having alot of fun, but i'm new to this medium, so please crit me!

Thanx

[carnalizer]

As you probably have guessed one needs to know how to paint, then the media is of no consequence. And you sir, seems to know how to paint so there is little need to give critique. I'll give you some anyway! :-)

First painting: Her head seems crocked, Too little skull on her left side.

Third painting: The mosaic looks great and the girl too, but the collision of styles don't do it for me. Something if wrong with depth. The person in the mosaic is bigger and there is no shadow or anything to show she is in front of it instead of part of it. I'm a little vague here but that's because I can't put my finger on the problem.

[H.Evans]

Welcome to CA!

your work is wonderful. check out the "best of CA" gallery and see how other artists worked out more complex compositions. Maybe that could be a way for you to go. your first three are close and portrait like, youre sort of getting at my suggestion with the scuba one, i guess i am saying that it would be interesting to see how you handle deep pictorial space, a vast background, one or more middle grounds, and a foreground area.

awesome stuff.

[auden100]

These are all really nice, buy I think the first needs the most work so: I think it could be improved if you gave that sash some more highlight. It seems a bit too dark for the amount of light she's recieving. Come to think of it, I'm really not sure where the light is coming from. Her face seems lit from the water, but her body and arm are all definitely lit from the side, but her sash isn't giving any shadow to it. In its present state it just looks like you PSed together a couple of photo refs without considering how they might interact. You should also add couple of dark spots in the reflection itself. Her image in the water is just too solid to be distorted so laterally. Cut that reflection up a bit. Hmm. I think that just about does it.

One final note. This might just be a preference, so disregard if you like, but in the first two your objects are REALLY hardedged. That happened to me a lot when I first started digipainting. Its one of the things that I think strips away that painterly quality from a piece. You got it pretty well in the other pics, but the two women just clash so heavily in the way they contact with the background. It makes the picture more feel more contrived and less natural.

Hope that helps.

[SaiVix]

beautifully done foo

[Jim Parks]

Thanks so much for all your responses. I completly agree with all the crits. I think i am a halfway decent painter, but i have a hard time conceptualizing (sp?) the whole piece. It's alot easier when an art director just says "here, do this!". So here i am, trying to learn from you concept artists.

Ok, the following is a piece that i was playing with last nite, what drew me in was the vinyl, and to see if i could get it to look right. But i would like to put her in an environment and i'm having a herd time visualising that. I know i should have planned that out right from the get go but here i am and i thought it might be fun for some of you to dream up some suggestions for me to play with. I will probably need to reference whatever it is though so i can get the same realistic feel i hope i have acheived with the figure.

[Snakebyte]

Heh, yea, I recognize the face in the first painting, not her best in my opinion, but I kept the picture for the same reason you did, just looked helpful in someway…..I think what would have made it work is if the water gave off a colored light with a matching light color on her.