Advices on lights & shades

[Phirmost]

Hello everybody,

I know I'm not very accurate about proportions as I draw like comics but I espacially wanted to get some advices on colouring and shades.
Many times I use to shade the character before thinking what will be the background. Here the ligths must come from the upper left.
I try to make the whole picture consistent.

After then, maybe I will do water on the floor, so the light could come a little from the ground.

Attachment 1726714

[Stoat]

It's a bit big to look at all at once, but the proportion looks good to me. She's a believable comics creation.

The thing about color and shading, though -- as it is now, she lives in a world of linework - not unusual for comics. Most of the heavy work of describing your visual universe is done with lines. You can color that (and do a beautiful job of it), but it's going to be a colored line drawing. It will still principally be a line drawing with color on it.

If color and shade and light falling on forms are the most important things to you, then you need to (eventually) paint out those lines so they don't, or just barely, show. I guess I'm saying you need to decide if this is going to be a painting or a drawing, philosophically.

I hesitate to post this, because there are so many awesome comics artists that I'm unfamiliar with, somebody is bound to post an image that perfectly balances line and paint and makes me look like an idiot

Oh, by the way, her right hand is looking a little flat. The knuckles of the hand form an arc, with the middle finger knuckle sticking up the highest.

[Phirmost]

Thanks for your comments.

Usually I don't draw background so sometime I don't know if I want it as a drawing or painting.
The lines will stay but will be colored .
Or I will do 2 versions. One as drawing, no background and one as painting that I will update on this thread.

I will fix her hand, I'm also not satisfied

[The Fez]

I'm not exactly a Mr. John Liberto with environments myself, but I do hope that this will be helpful in some way.:



So check it out. You've rotated your horizon line, but not your character (or the buildings). You're character is still standing at a 90 degree angle relative to the viewer, when she should be, in fact, oriented relative to the horizon that you have designated. Additionally check out the building/monolith you illustrated on the right hand side of your comp. Check out the right hand edge, and how it terminates very near the edge of your canvas. We generally want to avoid these situations, because it produces awkward and distracting effects for the viewer. Secondly, while the buildings in your scene are obviously objects, it pays to also think about them spatially. How can you use them to define space? How do you generate boundaries within your composition? Also, with the exception of your sky, your composition lacks what we call atmospheric perspective. A solid plane of baby blue will not inform anything. You can achieve atmospheric perspective in huge number of ways. In this particular instance, I'm using gradients, and then using the scale of my brush to force perspective into my totally unconvincing water. The end result is that there exists some indcation that the surface in the foreground is closer to the viewer than the surface in the background. This will also give the viewer a clue to the scale of the objects in the background. In yours, those buildings could be three feet behind her, or a thousand yards away. We have no way of knowing.

All in all, your anatomy is pretty solid. Her body is doing some things that it probably shouldn't, and her left arm is doing something that is, strictly speaking, unnatural. Always remember that the shoulder joint is not statically fixed to the collar bone, and has its own range of motion. Like, right now if you wanted to, you could move your shoulders forward, backwards, up and down. It's crazy, son. Most people illustrate shoulders like they're affixed to broom handles, and that's just not good for America.

[J.R.Hollis]

Yo, her arm is totally broken. Its pretty jarring haha.

[bish0p2004]

I hesitate to post this, because there are so many awesome comics artists that I'm unfamiliar with, somebody is bound to post an image that perfectly balances line and paint and makes me look like an idiot

Ah man, you had to go and ruin it......anyways:



Just came across this the other day and it immediately popped into my mind while reading your post.

[Phirmost]

Thank you very much Fez for your indications on sketch.
It's impressive for me to know you quickly done this bakcground as example
That's quite what I want to do for the water. Lights coming from the floor will be a shining blue.
The monoliths are buildings which are very from her as they will be around 300 feet high.

I think I will draw a map of the background before to put all objects spatially.

[Phirmost]

Now I slightly displaced the building following the perspective of the horizon. Maybe the reflections on the windows must be more yellowish because it is starting to be evening.

[DAMJAN]

I would change a bit of that mountain's shape that's behind that building, it's too close of a shape as that building. If it's evening, then yes your building should be more red,yellow,orange reflection. Is that water at the bottom? Add that reflection too to the building. Add a moon or something in the sky, it's pretty empty.