The Ape King's daughter

[firstIssue]

I like your story and as far as I can imagine it from your sketch, it´s a good fundament for your work. I like the style and colors. I could imagine more detail to show the jungle style. But I think, you will do this later.

[rawb]

Thanks!


I've been compiling a small list before leaving for my lame job today of things I need to work on. I appreciate the feedback! I definately need to add more to the jungle (and pretty much everything else). I still have 3 days left to work on it so it's plenty of time to add more details. I may lighten the sky a bit towards the mountains since the sky is overall pretty saturated right now. I'm not sure. I am still relatively new to painting so I am sure I am wrong about most things. :)

[rawb]

Hey everyone

Just posting an update before I go to sleep. Any suggestions would be very helpful. Thanks!

http://img198.imageshack.us/img198/9827/apekingwip13.jpg

[firstIssue]

I like the apes´ king face now much more. It looks really good. Also the face of the prisoner has a good and some kind of funny expression. For the backround, maybe it is to sorted. Is the jungle meant to be influenced by humans or is it just as nature made it. If it is not influenced by humans, you should bring more "chaos" to it. It is hard for me to explain what i mean, but i hope you understand what I mean ^^

[rawb]

I believe I know what you mean. A natural jungle wouldn't be so organized. I was giving it some thought and it was probably once settled by humans but driven out by the human-intellect apes. Since then, some of it has grown back as the apes are a bit more natural. I wanted to keep the trees in the far bg to avoid too much clutter and to create a stronger sense of depth, at least that was my thinking. :)

[rawb]

One evening left to work on this. Does anyone have any suggestions? I kind of like the hair color but I might redo the hair. The skin tones seem mediocre to me.. think i should add in some lighter tones? I admit I am a noob when it comes to painting human skin tones. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/3797/apekingwip16.jpg

[firstIssue]

In case of the skin I think it works well with the whole image style. But this is also just my opinion. There are surely guys here, that can tell you more about that. I thought about some more detail in front of the ape king. It looks very blurry in relation to the apes details. Would do you think ?

[rawb]

I certainly do agree. The foreground definately needs clarification but I was focusing on the more important elements thus far. Since tonight is my last day to work on it I am going to tighten the ape, add a few lighter tones to the woman, fix her hair and work the foreground. Then done! I hope I get faster. I can count the number of full paintings I've done on one hand and I am extremely slow, lol. :)

[firstIssue]

Art is always about quality, not quantity :) And as far as I can follow this WIP, it works out well. So, keep on painting until your fingers are burning :D ;)

[rawb]

Thanks for the advice, firstissue. Here is the final result! :)

http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/9299/apekingfinal.jpg

[firstIssue]

hey rawb, good morning ( in germany ;) ) I like the picture. I think you made a good work also related to my advice on the foreground. It is now more detailed but keeps the style of the whole image. Wish you good luck for the challenge or contest.

[rawb]

Thank you! I had time to do a few more tweaks that I feel look favorable. Thanks again for your time and insight. :)

http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/5517/apekingfinalsmall.jpg

[rawb]

The biggest problem with the whole thing I have is how long it took me. I am really slow ^^;. I guess the only way to get faster is to paint more and more though. :)

[firstIssue]

That´s what we are here for , isn´t it ^^ Hey, you worked on the edges, nice nice ! like it

[Stormchylde]

This is looking awesome!! I love her facial expression. The main thing that stood out to me when I first looked at this is that she seems to only have four fingers on her right hand...? I could ration it away by saying the pinky just can't be seen at this angle, but it just struck me as "off", if you know what I mean.

Oh, and on the stones right in the foreground, there's one little rock there. With more rocks it would look a lot more natural, but that single rock looks out of place.

Good work, anyway! It was fun to watch your progress.

[rawb]

Thanks! I was thinking about the rock today on my way home, lol. I might go add a few more later. And I left the finger out on purpose but I think I'll go add it back too. Thanks a lot for the advice!

[mechaniac]

hey rawb!
first of all: nice idea and nice image. but there are som issues:

first and easiest thing to change: create a color scheme for your image. right now you´ve pinated each object with a different color from top to bottom: i.e. the bananas are yellow, rock is grey, the apes fur is blue....etc etc.
as this sound very logical, its a very bad move to make an appealing image with a color scheme like this. It just ends up looking like a mickey mouse cartoon or a childrens book coloring.

One way to fix this quickly:
choose a color for your light and a color for your shadow and paint this over your image. possibly a very bright yellow for your light and a blue for your shadows.
add a layer for the lit areas an paint in the yellow. set this layer to screen, duplicate it and set it to color
add a layer for your shadow areas, and paint in blue for the areas which are not lit by your sunlight. Set this layer to multiply, duplicate it and set it to color.
I guess this should already help a lot.

[rawb]

Hey Mechanic!

First of all, thanks a lot for t he informative feedback. I want to implement the changes and improve my piece. A lot of what you said does make sense to me. When painting (and I am somewhat new at it) I was trying to mix blue greens with my colors and shadows but probably did it horribly wrong. I do want to avoid a colored book look and I DEFINATELY want to improve my piece.

I started to try the steps you listed, kind of grasping what you mean. What is the technical reason for this, rather, what does the layers do? I understand what you mean for the color theory, harmonizing the piece and mixing the warm sunlight for the highlights and the sky for the shadows.. but I am trying to get the layers to work and I admit that I am not sure if I should be painting with dark blues, or how saturated they should be. I tried experimenting but it either looks too dark or too light. I really want to understand WHAT I am doing and why I am doing as well as.. doing it right.

So hopefully you see this and can shed a little more light on the situation. I am very hungry to improve and learn. :) Thanks again.

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