Aid me in my quest of excellence.

[LovainMaster]

I need some critique on this picture of mine. I recently realized legit digital coloring (Not just using the paint bucket and gradient tool and MOAR GAUSSIAN BLUR) is quite a different thing from normal pencil shading. So It would be cool if anyone could say anything about this picture, mainly about the coloring, especially with the background. Hopefully one day i can be a real boy and draw a soupy good picture in an hour.

Alright My pants are down, lay it on me. Please its getting chilly.

PS: This is a fan-pic of an episode of Achievement Hunter. Ending of Michael's Hiest.
PSS: Made with a Tablet, Kritia, and lost time that could had been used finding Diamonds in Minecraft.

[LovainMaster]

Oh yea, u can go to my profile for a bigger version of this.

[Havegum]

At 5/31/14 04:47 PM, LovainMaster wrote: So It would be cool if anyone could say anything about this picture, mainly about the coloring, especially with the background.

Alright, I'll try my hand at this.

The main issues I spot is that the main focus blends with the background in certain places.
When creating a composition, you should pay attention to what it is you want the audience to notice, and build the setting up in such a way that it becomes as clear as possible.

In this case, the lower part of the boat blends with the water, the water blends with the mountain, and the mountain blends with the silhouette of the tough looking dude. It can be useful to spend a minute to sketch a hierarchy of values before doing the actual drawing, just to get a clear overview - whats dark, what's medium brightness, and what's light.

In the overpaint attached below, I chose the water as the darkest object, followed by the main focus in the mid-ranges, then the mountain lighter, and the sky as the brightest. I toned down the saturation of everything but the sun and added some fog to create some depth and push the values to the direction I wanted. Afterwards I just applied the sketch I had made to the painting, and voila. Some of the changes may not have been for better, but it serves as a rough sketch to show what I'm talking about.

As a more general advice, I'd recommend avoiding using 100% saturated colours, and shading directly towards black. It's rare to find very saturated things in real life, and it tends to look glaring and unnatural on screen.

[LovainMaster]

At 5/31/14 06:31 PM, Havegum wrote: As a more general advice, I'd recommend avoiding using 100% saturated colours, and shading directly towards black. It's rare to find very saturated things in real life, and it tends to look glaring and unnatural on screen.

Oh Wow never thought i would get this in-dept of a look on it, especially modifying the picture, thanks a lot. Ill be keeping this advice in mind on my next pictures. I especially like the fog and glare effects you put.

[Syrupmasterz]

While I might not be able to offer the same kind of advice as the fine fellow above me, I can suggest a few things.
-Removing the lines from the light sources (the setting sun, the moon etc..) should make the colours shine through a bit more and make them look less scribbled.
-Some of your colours on the mountains blend on top of the sky and vice versa. Going over the colours on the background should make them appear less smudged.
-While the angels in the background are further away then the characters in the main focus, it might be a good idea to have them appear as people in the distance as opposed to stickmen. When you look down the street do people look like stick people? :P
Your character art is fairly good, if you draw them in a style similar to the characters in the boat but with less detail, it should make them appear as if though they are in the distance like you originally intended.

Hope this helps!