WIP Beauty, The Beast - The stuff of nightmares

[karikoga]

Hi everyone.

According to Shona (African) myth, when the sun sets and darkness falls on the land, evil spirits of witchcraft invade and posess innocent souls in their sleep. The possessed, who do not bother to get dressed, wake up and mount awaiting hyenas (transportation) and head off to the graveyard to snack on the dead. They have snakes as charms and advisors of evil. Owls are messengers and scouts to avoid being discovered.
After eating their fill, the witches make their rounds casting terrible spells on those who have insulted or wronged them, those they are jealous of and anyone they do not particularly like.

[karikoga]

A few closeups

[JAG.]

the colors so far are coming along nicely.. pay close attention to the details on this one as they will destroy your work if you ignore them. the sketch is nice, though the woman's posture is a bit odd and her leg's anatomy is incorrect. i like the texture of the grass. also re-examine your perspective. - JAG

[karikoga]

Thanx JAG. I will try to fix the leg. You are right about the detail and I seem to have underestimated how much work will be involved.
A little update

[merlin-zandor]

Here comes the Lion King!

[dracken]

This is just my opinion which might not be worth much, so please take it as such, but to be perfectly honest, it's a bit early to give detailed critiques. I'd work on it a bit more before asking for specific comments.

Right now what stood out for me is that the light source doesn't seem to be very clearly defined. There are no strong shadows and light seems to shine on the woman's shoulder as well as her breasts, the skull under the hyena's head has two light points on the front and the back, and most of the back branches of the tree should probably be more shaded...

That being said, have you considered constructing a black and white value drawing before adding colors? it might help define the light source and what not...

Hope this helps. Good luck.

[Swamp Thing]

Get references for those animals, finding some in the poses you need with the light source you need still is a lot better than a lot of wasted work. You actually imho have to rework a lot if you want to improve this. Forms and shapes will create your illustration, keep that in mind instead of investing a lot of time into details. Also dawn sunlight asks for strong shadows. You shoudl always start with a thumpnail to clear where what will be, how shadow may looks in this distance with the used light source, how the composition will work, what colors are looking realistic. Finally shadow, light and color are worth more thousand times than any detail, because if set right, they will already create the illusion of what our eyes think to see.