new illustration for portfolio

**the good war** · July 27th, 2004, 05:57 PM

heyo i wanted to make something that looked like it might have a story behind it for my portfolio so here she is c/c would be appreciated thanks

JEZZARTS · July 28th, 2004, 12:10 PM

Hey this is cool. My only crits..maybe to make the masks come out more 3D, black out the sides a bit, leaving the masks to protrude outside the picture. Also you could fade out the head piece at the top as it tends to make the pic look top heavy. That would finish it for me but hey...good pic anyway.

**the good war** · July 28th, 2004, 07:07 PM

hey thanks jezzarts
your crit was really helpful
everything was dead on but i tried to fade out his head but i couldn't quite get it to work correctly or well so i added a bunch of bones on the bottom to correct it

**Signature** · July 28th, 2004, 07:20 PM

This is a powerful setup. Gotta love the shadows cast on the curtain-like thingies.
(It sucks to suck at writing in English)

Somehow it just doesn't read well and looks busy. It took a while until I got that there is an interior with a door.
Did you work with layers? Can you maybe move the room so that more of the ceiling is visible?

There is something about the shading of the skull that makes it look rendered sloppily.
I'd love to write better suggestions, but I really don't know what to suggest.
Well ... whatever ... I think it is pretty good already.

**the good war** · July 28th, 2004, 09:32 PM

i refined the strokes on the face as well as adjusting the placement of the hall
thanks for the comments everyone this has definately been pushed farther that if i had done it alone

do you like this version more?

**SirRon** · July 28th, 2004, 10:08 PM

Yeah, I like it better now that I can see the trunk of the tree. It looks really good, I would put it in a portfolio.

Here's a skull reference that might help you. I'll shrink it if anyone complains about the size.

I got the reference from here (http://www.em-arts.com/skull/index.htm). It's the very first one, I just adjusted it using ACDSee.

Your teeth has the same tone on both upper and lower teeth. Since it's normal to have a slight overbite the bottom teeth are behind the upper, therefore it would be more in shadow.

And you might want to make the zygomatic arch (I think....kinda rusty on my anatomy... let's just say temple area

) a bit sharper. You can pretty much see the differences compared to the photo. I don't know how realistic you want the skull to be so I'll leave it up to you.

It's really good. Great improvement from your first post.

**Signature** · July 29th, 2004, 08:08 AM

Yeah that is better! Almost perfect.
And good reference SirRon.

Especially the darker shadows around the teeth might help with making it less flat in that area.

JEZZARTS · July 29th, 2004, 01:09 PM

Cool, heaps better. Has much more depth to it now. Siron has a good point about the shadowing on the skull. Those scattered bones look good.

Now all you need to do is colour it...he he just kidding, good work.

**the good war** · July 29th, 2004, 08:43 PM

SirRon- i added a stronger edge to the temple and messed with the eye sockets a bit i would have added a bit more realistic detail to it from the ref but i would have to revamp the whole painting i kept the odd formation in my skulls nose bridge area because it gave it a little personality. thanks for the ref and effort
sig and jezzarts gracias
i'm moving on to another illustration now
later

**SUPERBUM87** · July 29th, 2004, 09:45 PM

hey.im new.the pics nice.n e ways.i was wondern how i post pics

**the good war** · July 30th, 2004, 02:17 PM

i accidentally deleted my explanation for you but look into a photo bucket website.… to post you upload images to a web space or a server (like photobucket.com check out angelfire for sure that is where i used to store my images) then you place the location of the picture( the url or the long name that describes the location of the pic you are viewing) in the text box (where you normally place the text in a response to a post) with these brackets around it [IMG] [/IMG]

tell me if this doesn't make sense i am bad at explaining things in general

**jetpack42** · July 30th, 2004, 02:31 PM

hey bro. The piece is interesting, compositionally. I like how everything works together...but I have a real issue with the way it looks put together. The rough edges of the bottom of the skull, and the dreamcatchers ,in perticular, bother me. Maybe bring the dreamcatchers out from the cloth as elements of thier own, or have them coming out of the cloth? Maybe have the skull structurally work its way into the cieling of the building, or go into shadow and then have the building come out of the shadow? the masks make more sense. the fact that they are on their own plane doesn't bother me, but I get a feeling like the other things ought to be interwoven, and it really draws my eyes to all the harsh edges. maybe smooth the edges of the masks more? just make them less jaggy?

you handled the feathers on the top nicely. Enough detail to show, enough shape to suggest, and not too distracting.

just tossing out ideas.