Spirit in the sky

#1

About two years ago a friend of mine passed away in a car accident. He was a big fan of airplanes and he a pilot himself. I made this picture for several reasons, to remember his death was one of them. However, when I look at it, it looks a little ā€œflatā€, boring to me. This might be because I made the picture myself and I looked a hell of a lot more than you guys are doing right now, but stillā€¦ so any ideas on how to maybe change a few things to get a little more emotion of ā€œdramaā€ out of it would be appreciated.

#2

beautiful! I love the idea behind itā€¦

some suggestions on the emotion you mention
-you could make the bird bow his head down
-you could add several bright stars to his eyes, to act as tears dropping down
-or you could add legs/claws to it, and make it drop a twig or something

another suggestion: maybe another colour of stars would fit the rest of the image better.
I love the image of the sunset with those yellow/goldish colours and it blends perfectly with the clouds and the ā€˜spaceā€™ above it. The blue stars look ok, but maybe another colour would look better :shrug:

oh btw, are you inspired by David Guettaā€™s videoclip?

#3

not really, but now I think about it I can see why you would think that :slight_smile:

#4

First of all I love the idea you are working with here, and so far it is looking great.

I think the biggest problem that you are having is that the two halves (top and bottom) seem very detached from each other. Unfortunately the stream of stars is not doing enough to tie the two of them together. The bottom half has a lot of depth and diveristy of color in it. It is also in not completely in focus.

While the top half is very flat, and few colors are used. Which is not a bad thing. But if you want to add to the depth of the shot I think you should try to excentuate how massive the bird is. Try playing with the back wing fading into the distence by fading it in some, and blur it out a bit. And the front wing can be brough out by making it brighter than the head.

The trail of stars that connects the two light sources is a little confusing as well. I donā€™t understand why it changes from blue to white to red.

And what is the light source that is causing the moon lighting/lens effect? Is that not the sun that we see in the bottom of the picture? It feels like that was thrown in to add a (very overdone) star trek effect. If the picture does not suceed to your likings without it, I would at least try to mimic the lens effect to that of the lower suns. If this were an actual photograph I would think that both light sources would affect the lense in similar ways.

#5

you could try to wash out some of the color from the sunrise at the bottom, just a little, to focus the attention on whats going on up top. I like how the bird came out, iā€™m willing to bet you could still give the overall impression of itā€™s shape.

good use of the canvas size and shape.

#6

Brilliant idea.

The tears donā€™t fall naturally. Maybe darken them along a curve. You could also tone the tears brightness down and make a single tear to create a focal point.

A woman praying with a wisp of clouds to the tail of the dove would add to the composition. That would express feeling as well since it would show the subject and object of the work.

#7

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.