Escape Plan B

[Bouke285]

Hi! Ok first things first I see that you are using nice hard brushes (most beginners fall into the soft brush trap) but the good thing start to fade away here. First of all you must plan out your piece if you want it to be at all appealing to the eye. I mean no offense by any of the comments I am about to give just giving advice which I have learned over the last few years.

You are starting to build up a flow in the center of the canvas, but the eye is strongly pushed into the background or off to the bottom left hand corner this majorly hurts your piece. You need to always make sure your perspective is perfect. Plan out the lines at the start and stick with them throughout the entire process. However your biggest problem at this point is lack of contrast and value. Your color scheme is very bland especially for the small amount of action that is happening in this picture. You need to make your darks dark and your brights bright. This is something I struggled with for a long time and am still struggling with today. Just because your piece is from your imagination doesn't mean you cant use reference. The rocks for example if you look at real rocks while you paint them you will see much better progress and be less disappointed at the end. Starting with small thumbnail sketches of what you want to accomplish will fix the majority of these problems. Maybe a good place for you to start would be working in value gray scale only and then moving on to color after you have grasped this process. I was once told Every brush stroke should have a meaning and if not leave it out.

[Tfozdar]

Thank you for your critique and advice. You're correct on all counts.

I've decided to put this piece on hold indefinitely, as there are so many issues and it would be best if I started over with a more solid concept.

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