but in the mean time..... CLUTTER!! there so much clutter! do you guys have any advice on how to make this one battle field piece a little less busy? its a bit too much with all the bodies and roughed in back ground, but how else can i keep the feeling a little dark? ... maybe alter the coloring?
ok, so im trying to work out of a black and white back ground so i can focus on lighting issues and composition issues, any suggestions would be amaaaazing!
heres what was supposed to be there, please let me know if any of this comes through in the piece :D
-foggy sky
-marshlands
-and a somber or grim mood for the piece......
ali
These look great! i think the top gal has a shit ton of potential, as for the clutter, i think the foreground has just enough but the piles in the back need de-saturated larger, murkier brushstrokes. its just a little bit too much detail in the back and its messing with the perspective and flattening it. an easy quick way would be to just paint over it with a barely opaque blackish brush on an overlay layer maybe? I really feel like you should finish her up a bit more, could make an awesome portfolio piece:)
ReplyDeletehoho! thanks fluke! :D
ReplyDeleteafter coming back and looking at it some more im seeing even more errors to fix. i'll try that overlay brush trick and see if it can help that back ground a bit more.
I'm sure you're long past done with these pieces, but I'll comment anyways, maybe they'll be useful for your next endeavors!
ReplyDeleteThe top piece is working really well. I think this is particularly strong because you have a diverse, but unified palette of earthiness working for you, no color seems out of place.
I don't think any of it is too cluttered, per se. I would second Fluke's thoughts in trying to grey out the more distant bodies, but I would say use a brush closer to the grey of the sky, not a black one.
I think the most important thing I'd comment on is the "halo" effect you have going on. All of the bodies that we see behind her never really come close to touching her or going behind her and as a result the space you're creating is much less believable since we don't see close objects overlapping distant ones. Splitting the composition up so that it's in thirds of bodies|figure|bodies horizontally just makes the bodies look like they're big piles stacked up, rather than receding. Throw some variation of bodies and landscape or at least arrange them in a way that it creates a zig zag across the composition and it will feel a lot more like a real space.
Lastly, check her height...measure out some heads or something because I think she feels a little tall.
I say all of this out of a lot of excitement though because this really looks like some of the best work I've seen you do! Very inspiring.