The rock shaped skull => need feedback or paintover

[Looee]

Hi guys,

I'm new here so sorry if I do something wrong.
If someone can paintover my sketch it will be very hepful.

The story : 2 men discover a rock shaped skull in the middle of the see. The scene goes about in the 1780s.
You can help me for the composition or the lights, or whatever you want

Thanks a lot !

[Deon]

Perhaps you mean Skull shaped Rock?
I would say perhaps you can add a little more depth to the scene by adding an additional light source in the form of a setting/rising sun.
The light source could be obscured by the Skull shaped Rock, and provide a nice backlight bouncing off the rock.

[Velocity Kendall]

looks pretty good so far, reminds me of Nostromo. nice light and colours on the guys, decent composition, its looking alright.

in addition to the above good advice, get refs for ALL the things you want to paint; rowing boats from the back, people in boats, paintings of people in boats, islands, trees, distant guls, water, the lot.

[Hexokinase]

There's a good sense of depth between the figures and the mountains behind them. There isn't a good sense of depth with skull mountain over there. If you're unclear about what atmospheric perspective is, look it up.

[Raoul Duke]

you might want to draw a skull and then get creative turning it into a rock. A mirrored reflection would be a bonus.

[Vernon Lee]

Just keep at it, looks really decent. Although part from the additional light source id try and lower the horizon a tad and add a slight convergence on the top of the boat cause it has a flat on perspective, so you want to emulate that with the background. At the mometn the background horizon is telling me the viewer would be looking slightly down on the boat but the boat has a straight edge on the top which suggests youre looking at it from the same height if you follow?

[RogerAdams]

Hi Looee,

I really liked your initial sketch. The lighting has some cool possibilities, the birds show some nice scale and the cave itself looks very scary.

I did a paintover to show another method of creating a composition. I really love using this technique and have been experimenting with recording my screen so there's a video that goes along with this.

One thing I notice from a lot of younger artists is the lack of reference gathering. You'll see in the video and the notes that I spent some time googling images for inspiration and actual information on what to draw.

If you have the cash, definitely pick up the book Framed Ink by Marcos Mateu-Mestre. It's really great.

I hope this helps. Keep drawing!

roger