Andrew's Paintover Thread

[Andrew Sonea]

Hey everyone! I've learned a lot from these forums and felt that I want to give back more. So I will be using this thread as a means to provide paintovers for people.



To see what level I am currently at, here are my two most recent illustrations:










If you have an image that you feel I can help with please do the following:

1) Check to see how many other paintings are waiting to be painted over. If there are four or more paintings that have not been painted over yet, DO NOT POST A NEW IMAGE FOR ME.

2) Please only post one image at a time, and try not to post very quick sketches that you can take farther without my help.

3) Please state what your intention of the painting is. What are you trying to get across/why did you paint this?

4) Wait. It might be a few days before I can get to your image--I work full time at a job far from where I live, have a girlfriend, and have to practice my own art.






Let's hope this thing works out

[Pavel Sokov]

Oh god. I will make you regret this!

So this piece is really important as it is the first page of a project me and a friend are working on. I have never done a stylized cartoony piece before so the design sensibilities of the Wolf are really worrying me.

Background info: The wolf is the main character. He is a proud, young wolf, who is strong, and at times too arrogant. He is not evil at his core, he just lacks the direction he needs to learn respect for other animals in his forest. I am worried his expression is still too sinister.

Thank you so much! I LIVE Paintovers.

[Andrew Sonea]

Hi Pavel--first off it's a very nice start. I tend to work in a realistic style, so I don't know how useful all this will be for a cartoony look...maybe you can take something from it though.

I honestly was fairly hesitant working on the wolf's expression since it is a very different style from how I usually work. Anyhow, I changed the shape of the snout to be more squarish so it looks more wolf-like. The eye was looking a bit weird to me both because it is too human and because I don't think an eye can turn that far to the side (the head would turn more if he wanted to look at the viewer). I also put more white above the eye so that it can act as an "eyebrow" and therefore will allow a lot more human expressions in general (beyond this picture).

The elbows are actually much higher on wolves than you have painted them, so I corrected that and made him leaning forward a bit more to emphasize the arrogance. I also put a lighter value behind the legs so that they were more obvious as before their shapes were getting lost in the background.





Okay, the landscape. The perspective in this image is playing some weird tricks. The wolf appears to be the same size as the trees and this is a bit confusing. I lowered the horizon line and made it so that the wolf is standing on a cliff type thing up high, so it is like he is looking down over his territory which he owns (or thinks he does at least).

The mound of snow he is standing on looks...well it looks mushy. By painting it more angular and having some rock showing through it looks solid, shows the viewer what he is standing on, and allows the shapes of rock and snow to lead the eye into the picture. The trees were also mushy looking, so I made them a bit more realistic and made the lighting consistent with the wolf (rim lighting from moon).

The canvas was extended as I felt the square format was constricting. This way he feels more like a part of the landscape and can look out over it. You can probably make the trees on the left more varied and interesting--I just clone-stamped them to paint it faster and show you what could be there.

The last thing is that everything in your original painting is very crisp. While this can work for cartoony looks, it also flattens the image a lot. To get depth I suggest for things in the background you soften them up a bit. My example is a bit crude as I took the smudge tool to it in a couple strokes, but with time you can refine it more.




Anyways, I hope that helped at least a bit. Thanks for being the first one to post up a picture!

[HarbingerofIllRepute]

Hey, pretty cool stuff here man! I wish more people would do paintovers, anyway, cheers!

[Charadas]

Hey, great idea Andrew, hope to see some more interesting overpaints really soon ^-^ and also it's great that you posted it side by side with the original.

Though I have to say, neither the overpaint, nor the original drawing portrays a proud young wolf who is a bit arrogant, but not evil. Povel's wolf looks kind, but also a bit scared (having his ears back and looking at us from the corner of his eye), your.. well, I'm trying not to be mean, but it looks a bit crazy to me with that wide open eye

If I were to portray a proud canine I would have him looking forward, ears up and forward, proud posture (maybe leaning a bit forward?) and the tail up (tail down makes it look quite sad and submissive). Then to make it look non-threatening or kind you could make it pant (having its tongue hanging out) and give it human-like eyes with large pupils

Anyway, just my thoughts, sorry Andrew for hijacking your post to critique Povel, it was a spur of the moment.

[Andrew Sonea]

Charadas, those are some good points! People shouldn't be afraid to pop in with their own opinions and critiques here since this thread is about learning. As I mentioned in my post, I am not really suited for cartoony type things or getting expressions like that. I really only practice painting realistically...so I guess the environment is where I felt most comfortable in that painting. I'd have to disagree a bit with you on the eye--I don't think a human eye is necessary, and I think it looks a bit offputting to be honest. Wolves actually have yellow eyes, and even with that can look nice:
http://blackwolfblog.files.wordpress...lebook_021.jpg

[ryansumo]

Well, since this thread is relatively new and you're likely to be overrun soon, I'll take advantage and post now!

So I actually have a pretty good idea where I want to take this piece, but a fresh perspective is always useful. Here's a bit of a twist though. I have two versions of this piece, one with tree branches in the foreground, and one without. I feel that the tree branch give an added sense of perspective, but without the tree branch the composition feels a lot cleaner, less cluttered. Pick whichever version you like and just paintover the one.

Trees

No Trees


Thanks a bunch in advance!

[Chris Sanders]

Hey man this is a really cool deed on your part, you have some cool work. I know this is the complete opposite point in this thread but it's bugging me about the dragon image. it's really nicely rendered but when i squint at the image the part i notice is grabbing my attention is the light on the creatures pectoral region, when surely the creatures head and the flame should be grabbing my attention. I think the problem is the sky is almost the same value as the flame, also they are both warm colours. I think it would be a much stronger image if you had some of that darker green in the sky haloing the creatures head, perhaps create a break in the clouds or something in that area. keep up the good work, peace!

[Danilo]

Hi, great idea, but I think you changed art direction in the both images.
As the first was child illustration, and you switch it to concept art.
The second was more hokusai on the original image, even if its breeding more now it is less ambientaly rich.
there is no more idea that the actor look on the house from the vital forest but from hostile naked mountain. And that changes the story.

On the other side I have no idea of how the paintovers should be done. Just like to crit others :p

edit: Anyway Im putting my image too. Thanks in advance

[Andrew Sonea]

Alright, I tried to tackle this one by Ryan.

There were some major changes I made to this one, mainly in regards to perspective and to values. Perspective-wise the building wasn't correct--if you were to follow the lines to a vanishing point that point is far above the horizon. This makes the building appear to be on a plane that is tilted towards us and not parallel with the ground plane. The lines also are very parallel and painted in a manner that looks very isometric. I lowered the horizon line a bit which allowed me to push the shape of the main mountain into something with more character and have it silhouetted against the sky.

The mountain itself is interesting, but doesn't match up with the mountains in the background, and is not the type of mountain that is typically seen covered in snow and in big chains like that (at least to my knowledge). I changed the mountain to a more typical Himalayan type look since that also appears to be where the inspiration for the piece came from. I significantly lightened the values both in the shadows and in the lights to push it back in space more and make it more interesting/snowlike. I pushed the colour temperature so that the snow is warmer and will separate from the shadows, and changed the hue slightly in various places so that the blue has some more green areas and some more purple areas (the hue variation adds interest and realism). With the lighting I made sure to make it clear what direction it was coming from, and made sure to include some nice cast shadows as well.

I also felt that the story side of the painting was a bit lacking. There was a single guy looking at a building--and that's it. I included more figures and some flags which allowed me to repeat the shapes showing distance/scale as well as show some story of a bunch of people trekking towards this giant building. Since we know the size of a person and the size of the flags (as they are next to a person), when we repeat those shapes smaller the brain automatically understands they are farther away. One of the travelers is also much closer to the viewer which adds an "extreme" foreground element making the painting more interesting and hinting that there is more going on behind us as well--it is a full world here.

[Andrew Sonea]

Just finished this one as well.

Basically you need to define the light source more clearly. Beforehand all the values were very dark and there was no clear direction of light. I made a warm strong light from above and put a cool rimlight as well to counterbalance it (as well as make the lighting more interesting since there is so much black in the painting).

Once the lighting was fixed, I made some modifications on the poses and size of the characters. The skeleton dude I made taller as before he was a midget, and I brought the hunched over guy forward a bit in space so that the three characters weren't all bunched together so tightly. I also added a regular sword to the skeleton guy since the previous weapon thing was not reading clearly.

Oh, and I removed the word "PIRATES" from behind them because it should be pretty obvious...

[Pete Hidalgo]

This is a really good Idea. I wish I had something to throw in ha ha. I could yous another artist perspective on what I am and am not doing.

[Pavel Sokov]

Wow Andrew, that was kick ass!

Thank you so much. So here is my feedback on your overpaint.

Moving up the ankle, and leaning him forward is brilliant. I will surely implement that. I do agree that my human eye is weird and I should change it to yellow, but your wolf's expression is... kind of insane in a threatening way haha.

The new composition rules! I just don't know what to do with that because I wanted to choose an aspect ratio that is the same for every page of the book. But I do entirely agree that yours is more dynamic. Maybe this particular page can have a different aspect ratio then the others.

Changing the composition is a pretty large undertaking, but I will do my best. I think a lot of the success of yours has to do with you moving down the horizon line, which I should really go for.

Am I allowed to bug you for more Overpaints? They are like cocaine for me..

[Andrew Sonea]

Wow Andrew, that was kick ass!

Thank you so much. So here is my feedback on your overpaint.

Moving up the ankle, and leaning him forward is brilliant. I will surely implement that. I do agree that my human eye is weird and I should change it to yellow, but your wolf's expression is... kind of insane in a threatening way haha.

The new composition rules! I just don't know what to do with that because I wanted to choose an aspect ratio that is the same for every page of the book. But I do entirely agree that yours is more dynamic. Maybe this particular page can have a different aspect ratio then the others.

Changing the composition is a pretty large undertaking, but I will do my best. I think a lot of the success of yours has to do with you moving down the horizon line, which I should really go for.

Am I allowed to bug you for more Overpaints? They are like cocaine for me..

I'm glad you appreciated the paintover Feel free to post another image if you'd like and I'll try my best again (although the cartoony stuff is a little beyond my usual comfort zones!).

[Andrew Sonea]

I figured that I'd cross-post this paintover I did a couple days ago in another thread since it got a very good response, and I don't want it to get lost in the sands of time when that thread dies.

The basic issue was that the person was having trouble rendering form, and transitioning from a line drawing to a painting. They posted a study that they were starting of a bodybuilder and I used that for the paintover. Below is my response:




"I looked through some of your other art, and I think you should avoid colour for now. Stick to greyscale and when you can show forms without colour you can begin to add colour.

Now I think another problem is you are using shape too much. This is an easy pitfall to get into when using photos as reference because they are all 2d shapes and you do not see it the same way you see things from life. Try to think using more perspective, and break things into basic forms (cylinder, cube, sphere). A lot of your faces even seem a bit wonky because they aren't in perspective--you are just copying the shapes.

I've done a little paintover example here. First I show some cross contour lines which are helpful in seeing forms when dealing with just line. It also helps set the stage as a map of sorts when rendering later on because it tells you the angle of each plane (and then you will know how light or dark it is). Next I simplified the figure into a few very basic forms. This may seem too "basic" but in reality is very important. You don't need to draw it out like this every time, but it is a good idea to think like that at all times.

You can see that the basic forms are very easy to light, all you do is separate lights and shadows and add in a core shadow. I picked a simple top down lighting situation, and lit it from my head. Using that as a guide it is simple to block in the actual painting with the appropriate values. Even though I didn't use any reference I was able to light this line drawing simply by thinking in three dimensions and simplifying forms.

It should be even easier for you to paint since you have the reference in front of you. Analyze where the light is coming from. Then look at any form on the figure and identify what angle that plane is to the light source. If it is close to 90 degrees it will be very light. And it will probably be darkest when it is parallel to the light rays (core shadow) then get slightly lighter as it turns away from the light source completely (bounce light fills it in a bit).

Another tip when painting a line drawing is to keep the lines on top of the painting for a while. Once you get to a stage where everything is blocked in fairly clearly, don't just delete the lines. Instead create a new layer above the lines and continue painting. As you do you will gradually paint over the liens until they are not visible all the while maintaining the structure of your drawing."

[ryansumo]

Hey Andrew, thanks so much for the paintover! It really gave me a lot to chew on. I don't know if it's cool to ask for some more help, but I'll try anyway.

So obviously perspective is a weakness of mine. I've actually rendered that temple out twice already and it's a little deflating to realize that the perspective is still off. I'm posting the perspective lines I worked with here and if it's not too much trouble could you tell me where I went wrong? Promise to stop bugging you after this!

[Andrew Sonea]

Okay Ryan, sorry about the previous post I made (I deleted it to avoid confusion). After talking with Dile_ about it, it became clear that I explained it wrong, and you should forget what I said. I also made the horizon line too low--it was actually between where we both painted it.




The real issue with your painting is as follows (and all credit here goes to Dile_)...

You painted the mountains and background in a one-point perspective, and then tried to fit a 2 point perspective building on top of this. And it just doesn't work. The building is in perspective properly, and the mountains are in perspective properly, but only when each of them are isolated on their own. To mesh them together you need to make some changes as the 2 point perspective building can't sit on the mountain without either cutting into it or floating in front.

If you remove the foreground and the building it becomes clearer what the perspective of the mountains is, and then you can see how the building does not fit.

[mRomano]

Sorry if 2 is too many, but these are two seperate pieces that I'm trying to work on to improve different aspects.

Overall I'm pretty weak with color.

The first one I cant figure out how to color it and keep the mood as it is, whatever it may be... I guess I just wanted some tips/advice to putting more detail and overall composition.

The second one was a pure exercise in working straight into a color palette that I developed. It's pretty weak on many fronts but maybe on how to get colors that really pop out more yet stay realistic?

[Dile_]

These Paint Overs are great man! The info is awesome too! I hope i'm not distracting you too much with my thoughts on things I'm loving the initiative as you know!

[Andrew Sonea]

mRomano: Cool paintings! I really like the first one, but thought I'd help with both a bit.

1st painting
The values are reading very well on it, and I don't have a lot to add. I started a paintover of it, but feel it really isn't necessary. I think it works quite well, and the changes I was making were pretty minor. Basically the changes to it I would make would be to make the design of the bridge and buildings to be more interesting, especially the building that the bridge leads to. Maybe add some towers, or some cool arches, or torches (which would add interest in colour and light). Even just googling "castle" and taking a look at the little details that make them unique would be useful.

Other than that, I guess you wanted to know about adding colour. I'd suggest first you decide what "mood" it is more carefully, and what sort of colours you want to choose. Is it going to be warm reds? Cool greys? a mix of the two? etc Do a bit of planning and visualizing before even adding colour. I'd then probably put a very light wash over the darks so they aren't quite as dark. They are actually a good value now, but when you add colour the dark areas get darker, so you need to compensate for that. I suggest using a mixture of several types of layers and using a number of layers to slowly glaze colour on instead of just trying to get it all right at once. I like using Soft Light layers, Overlay, and Color. But try out some of the others as well--every one will react a little different and cause different effects. Once you have a decent basic coloured version of your painting, create a new Normal layer on top and continue painting, fixing the colours or adding new colours as necessary.



2nd Painting
Okay, this is the one I painted over. The painting had an alright start in terms of colour and I needed to make only some minor changes. Essentially you need to think more in terms of WARM vs COOL colours. So the foreground which is in shadow needs to be a cool blue-green while the field is a more warm yellow-green. In the foreground consider that things are cooler overall, and the planes facing upward will have a grey-blue colour to them as the colour of the sky will start influencing it. Don't be afraid also to go a bit more saturated in areas such as the fields that are being hit by a lot of warm sunlight and can contrast the cool and less saturated shadows.

The other changes I made were to the composition and values. Value-wise it was not too bad, I just made the foreground a little darker so it reads as begin in shadow better. I also cleared up the sky as there were too many values there not describing anything (and a blue sky is the flattest smoothest thing in nature).

The composition was a bit boring (it still is in my paintover). There is no strong focal point or anything of interest. I guess the mountain kind of is, but you need to emphasize this more. Put more contrast at it, make other things point towards it. For instance, I added in a little character to try to make the painting more engaging (we relate to characters and feel like more of a part of a painting if there are people in it), and I made him looking towards the mountain guiding our attention to it more.

The shapes of the painting could be made a little more interesting. By putting a bunch plants in the foreground a lot of interesting shapes can be created between different branches, leaves, holes between leaves, general silhouettes of different plants etc. Other areas such as the patterns of snow on the mountain also were changed for the same reason.









Anyways, your paintings are quite nice and have good value reads, so it won't be long before you are creating some really masterful environments. To help fix your colour issues I suggest reading up on colour theory and doing lots of quick colour studies. For colour theory I recommend checking out:
http://www.huevaluechroma.com/

It's a bit of scientific and boring read for some, but is FULL of really great information on light and colour, so take an evening or two and try to make it through it if you can.

[Pavel Sokov]

Ok so you said it is ok if I post my second image.

This is Louis CK.

EDIT: I SWITCHED OUT THE VERSION I POSTED THIS MORNING TO THE CURRENT VERSION.


Reference photo:
http://collider.com/wp-content/uploads/Louie-03.jpg

or

[Andrew Sonea]

First off, my apologies for a longish post...try to read through it if you can. I think there is a lot of interesting things (for the stuff that applies to art in general and photorealism skip down past the specifics on this painting).






Wow Pavel, you are making this a challenging job for me! That's a VERY nice painting...and it is difficult to say a lot on it. I do not know your exact intentions with it, so it is made a little more difficult. But the painting brought up a lot of interesting thoughts on art and painting in general, so I figured I'd talk a bit about my thoughts. Before that I'll go over the painting itself.

The drawing and accuracy of it is very strong (THANK YOU for posting the ref). Initially I thought the eyes might be a bit small, but I was unsure, so I overlayed the photo over your painting at 25% on a Normal layer. I highly recommend doing this yourself and hiding/unhiding the layer, experimenting with different opacities and layer types etc as you will see even better where you diverged from the photo. Anyways, the result shows that it is nearly identical (did you trace at all? If not, great job!). The hair/head is a little larger on the left side in your painting, which is probably what made the face and eyes seem a bit smaller to me. The hand is also slightly differently positioned, and the shoulders you painted may be a bit big. Otherwise it is identical. So I won't talk about the drawing side of things since it is very solid.



As I said before, I am unsure of your intentions for this painting. It is photographic in the way it is painted, and if it is just a study then it is perfectly fine. If you are trying to make it stand as a piece of art on its own however (which I am guessing you are since you changed the background) then I think some changes are necessary. Below is an overpainting showing the direction I think you were headed for.



I felt that the original painting could use a bit more punch, so I duplicated it and put it as an Overlay layer on a lowish opacity. That boosted the contrast a bit and made it a bit more saturated, pulling out those warm skintones. I felt there was still a bit of an issue with the arm feeling very pale and "separate" from him. The hand especially does not feel like it sits on his face, but rather floats forward in space; this is partially due to the fact that it is SLIGHTLY positioned farther from his face than in the photo, but mostly it is an issue of values. In the photo there is a LOT of ambient light, but in your painting you have set him in a dark room where there wouldn't be so much light, so the value on the hand as it recedes back in space should be similar to the value on his head as it recedes. In addition to darkening the hand I glazed some warm colours over it as it was very pale and cold, and hands/knuckes usually have a red hue to them from blood being close the the surface.

I wanted the main focus of the painting to be his face and eyes, so I did several things to emphasize this. The elbow area was drawing too much attention due to its high contrast, so I darkened that area. I put an Unsharpen Mask (which actually sharpens contrary to its name) over his face since it was a bit blurry before. I also took the smudge tool and softened edges that were not as important and softened his hair. I wanted to make his eyes more of the focus and tried to make them more "wet" feeling rather than a matte dry surface. You probably can't tell too much at this size, but I made the transitions a bit harder between things implying a more reflective wet surface. I noticed also that the light on his irises was backwards. The lightest part of an iris will be the side that is farthest from the lightsource since the iris in a concave shape and is not convex.

I think that about covers the paintover...oh, I added very subtly some of the lighter blue background on the other side of his head. I like the transition of blue from dark to light, but feel it is a bit too even and splits the painting a bit. So maybe try bringing some of over to the other side.





FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO READ THE GENERAL THOUGHTS ON PAINTING AND PHOTOREALISM READ BELOW (my apologies if I offend anyone)

These are some of my thoughts that were brought up when I was looking at Pavel's painting, since he did a very accurate and photographic interpretation of the photo. This is by no means meant as an attack to anyone, and represents a very personal opinion, so please read through it and don't take it as an absolute truth...think over stuff and come to your own conclusion. So the above covered what changes I think reflect the direction Pavel wanted. BUT, Pavel's painting is NOT the direction I would have if I were to approach this painting. The background is handled in a traditional painterly manner, and then the figure and face are photographic. This creates a bit of a disparity between the two (one or the other probably would have been better). I think that an overall more painterly approach to the entire painting would be best. Personally, I find photorealism boring. It is great for practice, but for a finished piece of art? It is pointless in my eyes. Sure, it shows a control over the medium that is worthy of some praise, but it means very little. All the decisions in the picture were made by a camera, and not by the artist. You might as well just have left it as a photo. It is ESPECIALLY pointless when you are painting digital. You copy out pixels...to more pixels. It is like a slow and painful way of pressing ctrl + c and then ctrl + v, and probabyl slightly less accurate. At least with an oil painting you have a physical copy of it.

So what makes a painting better than a photo? Well the artist can put thought into it, and make conscious decisions (and unconscious ones) that will affect the outcome to create something more powerful than what a camera can capture. A good artist can direct the viewers attention to a certain area, capture more emotion, capture better colour (the human eye is more receptive to different colours than a camera is, and also has a higher range of values it can see...look at a backlit photo and look at something backlit in real life), choose where to downplay things and where to exaggerate them, can have looser passages, and tighter ones etc. There is really no reason to copy out a photo exactly and call it "art". An artist who paints everything like a camera sees it, down to individual pores, is limited. Take a look at the best portrait painters of all time: John Singer Sargent, Velazquez, hell even Bouguereau did not paint things like a photo. If you look at and analyze their art you will see how often then simplify things, and how many changes they are making. It is this DESIGN and intentional DECISIONS that are important. These design choices are not made when a photo is copied directly 1:1, or even when life is copied 1:1 (a lot, but not all, of the stuff some modern ateliers are pumping out is so DULL). Photos can be very useful, but should not be copied exactly. A face requires surprisingly little detail to read well. Take a look at a couple examples here.

http://www.artrenewal.org/pages/artw...0465&size=huge This one is interesting because it has a similar palette to Pavel's painting. But take a look at how simplified that hand is, and the face. Look at how soft some areas are and how some are very sharp.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MkjjmBFSzp.../paxton003.jpg This one is by Paxton, and is a rather extreme example of how little information you actually need to put into a painting--but it is a very beautiful painting. Obviously if you are doing only a portrait you should probably put more detail, but it is not necessary is what I am trying to say, and a camera can never understand or show this.

In addition to understanding when to simplify and when to put in more detail, a huge difference is in edges, as I have been saying repeatedly. Edges are one of the most powerful tools we as artists have at our disposal (and often one of the most overlooked aspects by digital artists). A camera will have some edges soft and some hard, and depending on the lens and a variety of other factors different areas will be sharper or harder. And to a degree this can be controlled by the photographer. Oftentimes though there are too many hard edges, and this really splits the viewer's attention and flattens things. A camera never can have the same degree of decision making as an artist--it will always be limited by depth, or motion, or some other aspect. Here is another example by Lipking: http://www.artrenewal.org/pages/artw...467&size=large I love how he plays the softness of the face against a few select sharp edges.

Hm, when I started typing this out I had a LOT more to say, but now I can't think of what else to add, so I guess I'll leave it as a mini-rant. Again, a lot of this is personal choice, but I felt the need to get some of this off my chest. There are too many people idolizing photorealists these days, and especially in digital art too many people are trying to paint like a photograph. Photographs are boring in the same way many 3D renders on the computer are boring. I think digital makes it too easy to constantly fiddle and zoom and in paint every single detail. I often find myself doing this and am tryig to break away from this. People like Jaime Jones and Craig Mullins are much more interesting to me than Algenpfleger or Adonihs. One last thing I would like to say is that photos are not all bad. They are very useful and a great asset to artists. I am just saying that copying them 1:1 for anything other than a study to learn is very boring and limiting.




EDIT: Reading through this again I realize I was too harsh on Pavel. It is a really strong painting and you actually did change a lot of things making the image much better than simply copying it as photorealism. A lot of these thoughts came to me though after I did the overlay and saw how close you were to the ref drawing-wise, but most of it doesn't apply to you.

[zephyri]

Hey Andreas, hope you don't mind me hopping in here with a paint over too! Nice to have a thread where people don't mind and encourage paintovers. As you mentioned cartoon style wasn't your thing, and I've already given Pavel one paintover, thought I'd hop in with the wolf.

Pavel, I hope you don't mind me saying that you seem to be reluctant to change the wolf to any large degree based on your own wip thread,and you've been tweaking here and there bits and bobs, but it doesn't change the fact the personality you're trying to portray here really isn't coming through. His body language for a canine is hugely submissive and it sort of looks like he's been attacked and is embarrassed the viewer caught him limping back to his lair. The expression is friendly, but more of the apologetic kind of friendly rather that the slightly confident, ambitious feel you seem to want. You should be doing a bit more research into wolves and their anatomy and body language overall, not to mention trying to get a certain amount of human emotion in if this is a character you want the viewer to relate to in any manner. I know you're trying to push the proportions a little, but his front end and back end don't match size-wise, and dogs of this nature generally have a fairly squared off kind of shape through out, from their snout to the backs of the tails. photo link

Things I tweaked for the body language are: squaring off his back and elongating his neck, to bring his head up (denoting pride, not trying to hide). I squared off his muzzle as you had it more like a mouses nose with that little bump, and his eyebrow was pulled up in the middle making him look scared. Straightening his legs out more and making them a little longer (this is more a personal thing, feel free to make them a little shorter if you want, but the longer legs might denote a more young and athletic character) Facing his ears forward. Cats and dogs will only put both their ears back like that if they're either listening for sounds behind them, if they're trying to be subservient, or if they're scared and defensive. Forward facing the ears also adds more of those strong straigh lines to the character and make him feel more alert and confident. I also made the mouth a little less curvy, but added that little hook at the end to keep the smileyness.

Other big thing you need to fix: lighting. Currently it's very inconsistent. The moon seems to be the main source of light, yet your sky is darker than your scenery. Even at night, the skyline will be lighter than the horizon landscape, so I've added a strip of paler bluealong the mountian egde (which also injects a bit of brighter colour too!). If we go with the moon as the main light source and that it's pretty bright (you could knock it back a bit on the floor as I've done it) - any sides of things in the picture that are facing away from the moon, including the entirety of the wolf as we see him would be in shadow, and would cast shadows coming towards the viewer. So the bright whites you have in his chest and face would actually be in shadow. His chin also seems to be casting a really harsh shadow that doesn't appear anywhere else on his body (all the rest are soft), which would suggest there's a light above his head. If I'm looking at the shadow he is casting on the rock, and the lighting on the rock itself, it appears the main light source is actually off to the right of the image and it pretty bright (this also applies to the trees). You need to decide which lighting you're going with... if the moon's your main source, there's nothing wrong with having a bit of bounced light so the wolf isn't totally in darkness, and if it's not the moon, have a think about what could possibly be causing such bright light in that environment at night.

I've gone mostly with the moon, but kept the wolf himself fairly pale, even in shadow. I've been lazy with his shadows, but they should come more down towards the viewer. Oh and the one other thing was the fact the rock and the tree both seemed to be resting on the same plane made the tree either look tiny or the wolf look huge

Hope this is all encouraging, I really respect your desire to want critique, and to get better.

[EduardoGaray]

I think this is a great initiative and very kind and generous from your part Andreas, and you too Zephyri. I´m gonna post something here in a few days

[Andrew Sonea]

Oh wow! That paintover is GREAT Zephyri! I think you handled the wolf much much better than I did. I really appreciate you popping in to help out

I also find it nice to see you make the same points about the lighting and landscape that I did--it means I'm not just blabbing my mouth off!

Anyways, as Zephyri pointed out, this thread is about everyone learning, so if anyone else wants to chime in like that then don't hold back as I think everyone can benefit from a new set of eyes, opinions, and skills.

[Inca]

Hi there,

I'd really appreciate some help with a piece of World of Warcraft art I'm working on. I'd really like someday to work for Wizards of the Coast or WoW TCG so I'm trying to push my artwork further, to make it more dynamic and tell a story.

Here is the initial thumbnail of what I'm going for:



The idea is that two troll shamans have been in a big fight (they're working together) one is a melee monster the other is a healer. They're both pretty beaten up but right when they're looking done, the healer drops a torrential healing rain spell, invigorating them and quite literally closing their wounds. It'll be a low camera angle with the viewer's eyeline/horizon line around the belt.

I've started sketching as I want to get down a more accurate pose for them both before I lay in lighting etc. Here's where I'm at currently:



With this guy I want to convey a sense of foreboding badassery, these guys thought he was done but he's just getting started kind of thing. He's kind of head down, poised and tensed and about to go apeshit. I want to convey that sense of strength and power but most importantly, he has to be recognisable as a World of Warcraft character and I'm not sure I've quite got his anatomy correct for that.

So first up, what I really need help deciding is;

A) which of these postures is better and,
B) correcting the anatomy, foreshortening and readability issues

I'm totally open to changing his pose and appreciate any tips people have.

- Inca

[Pavel Sokov]

Andrew
Thank you so much for the second overpaint!

Here is the progress chart for Louie. It is not outdated by a few steps actually, so the last image in it is not the one you worked on.


I did not trace anything, I just had the photo on the right, in a much smaller scale. Me being an amateur has probably caused a lot of problems in terms of the photo being a different scale then my painting. I will avoid that in the future.

I did however take the last image in the progress chart, and decided to try and overlay the photo over the image, and made sure to match it by clicking the photo off and remembering where the lines went. I eventually started even checking some bits by holding my finger on the screen and turning the photo off to see where my painted feature are in relation to the finger. Cheating I guess, but I tried to keep it as civil as possible and have not used that up to the last update/

I really like the changes you made. The biggest problem to be addressed in the pale arm and elbow which draws unneeded attention. I love how you receded the hand into his face by applying a shadow. Very easy but great change. Also bringing some of that light blue color to the other side added a better sense of space.

By the way, I assume you liked the blue background more then the green? I still can't decide.

I was especially happy to learn that the lights of the eyes are meant to be on opposite sides from the light source due to being concave. Very cool, I did not know that!

I am a bit surprised about you being struck the way you did at this particular painting, because I actually made a conscious effort to keep the painting fine-artsy and paint-like as opposed to a lot of my other portraits I made. I do think next time it could be very cool to keep the face as painty as the background though. I lack confidence in that though, as I feel it is much easier to define the whole thing then to hint at things. Perhaps I reckon that looser work styles that properly hint at features are the mark of an experienced artist. (It is also a bit funny because my other painting was really cartoony and you were uncomfortable as well I know how you feel though, because I am entirely uncomfortable and confused by the cartoon style. However it must be done )

Some of my portraits where I was not as painty:
http://img831.imageshack.us/img831/4...lfixedhead.jpg
http://img829.imageshack.us/img829/8...ouplesmall.jpg
http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/5...inalsignat.jpg

But I do realize now the power of leaving details untold. The Lipking paintings are MURDERING any of the work I have ever done. And not a single one of them is as detailed as mine. That is an important fact. It is also true that when people commission a portrait from me, maybe they shouldn't just get a slightly enhanced photo back. I should put more of my own decision into the pieces.

I have not heard of Lipking until today and I absolutely love his style. He will definitely stick with me.

I want to take this time to link to some of my more painterly works and see if you like them better:
http://img641.imageshack.us/img641/7...inallarger.jpg
http://img850.imageshack.us/img850/6950/enmasse.jpg
http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/612...aitfinalfi.jpg

EDIT: Here is my finished Louis based on your PO. Thanks so much, looks much better. Which one is preferable the green or the blue version?

[Pavel Sokov]

Zephyri

Wow, that really hits the spot! I love almost everything about it. The new head shape, the legs, the nice added blue above the horizon line!

I do think his butt is a bit too high, and his eye came out a bit Asian.

This PO will definitely save my character, I can't wait to implement it. I thank you deeply, as you fixed the main character in my project. This has loads of value! I also still have you bear PO. Sadly the climate will be arctic throughout the project so I might have to paint him in with snow. Which is a shame because I really liked the forest environment we had for that one.

Is the owl doing ok?

Thank you so much! I am afraid that when I get stuck on this project, it will be you who I will bug. I hope that is ok with you!

[Andrew Sonea]

Inca: I'll try to get a some stuff posted later up tonight explaining some things

Pavel: Thanks for the big response there! It's very cool to see the progression of the piece along with some other paintings of yours. Oh, and I do prefer the blue background. The cooler temperature of it plays against the warm skin tones nicely.

Lighting on eyes is very interesting indeed. The best breakdown I've seen on eyes and their structure can be seen here (scroll down a bit and it talks about the concavity of the iris):
http://www.stanprokopenko.com/blog/2009/05/draw-eyes/

Since you were asking about my thoughts on your other paintings (numbered based on the order you linked them):
1 - I like the lighting/texturing on the hair, and think you pulled it off quite well. The texturing in other areas is muddying the form a bit though (such as on the cheek on the right, below the eye). I'm also not a huge fan of the red background. Overall it's well painted, but not particularly interesting to me (sorry!).
2 - This one is painted much better than the previous one. I think that the forms read well, and the only gripe I have with the faces are the teeth look a bit off for both of them. The texturing on the interior of whatever is framing them (a pipe?) is cool. I think that with this painting though you are being limited by the photo. For instance the sky behind their heads is completely blown out, and you just copied this. One advantage the eye has over a camera is that in extreme lighting differences like that the eye can still see a blue sky and clouds or whatever behind them instead of solid white.
3 - This one is not too bad. I think the light sources are too saturated--maybe you can keep one that is saturated and the other a more normal colour. For example turn the blue one a more cool white colour so that it is a bit more natural but retains the temperature shifts. The edges are all a bit soft overall, so if you were to vary them more (put some nice very sharp edges in a few places, and then lose some edges in other places) I think the image would be very good. This thread has some great info on edges (especially the Greg Pro painting in the second post):
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=51913
4 - I like this one. The collar feels a bit too sharp and plastic, but other than that I like how you handled this painting.
5 - My favourite of the bunch! It's painterly, has great colours, and hints at some story (not sure what, but it is more interesting than a photoreal portrait). Just be careful with your stroke direction as in a few places you are painting around the shape of the figure too much. You can put the same stroke and value there but in a different direction so it doesn't "cut out" the figure from the background but rather shows the the ground plane going behind the figure. Below shows the direction of your strokes on the left, and on the right the direction that makes more sense to me--following the ground plane.

6 - Hm, not such a fan of this one. Again, it has a lot of trademark photography things in it that make take away. I'm assuming it's a flash causing the lighting to be straight on from the front, and this create very flat forms and some awkward cast shadows. And like painting 3 I find that that all the edges are the same and ever so slightly blurry.

[Pavel Sokov]

I will read both those threads. Thank you so much for your suggestion on my student protest piece. The logo of the student protesters in Montreal is the red square. They were disrupting life and causing millions of dollars of damage and lost revenues, as well as traffic because next year their tuition will rise by 300$, even though they have the lowest tuition in all of Canada. I illustrated my distaste for them by having one of them headless with his blood leaking out as their logo.

I finished my Louis based on your PO, I just edited the previous post, check it out!