The Journey Begins Challenge (2D) Entry: Theresa Ryan

#561

Hahaha… God-Rays for Paperclip and Walrus! Is that your secret sign for your secret society (The God-Rays Club :slight_smile: ) or what? Anyway, I want in! :smiley:

I think the parting clouds to reveal a clear blue sky behind is a good idea! It livens up the painting a great deal more! Like walrus said, the cloud under the ship looks like it is holding it in its place. Uh oh, now you gotta make the people’s expressions that of hope and relief instead of the original’s sorrow and uncertainty. Oh, try not to make the building (station) too black… use a lighter tone than black, like dark bluish/purplish colour (A tip for you: make a new layer, choose a suitable bluish colour, set your brush opacity low to about 30 percent, paint over the station with one flat colour, adjust the layer opacity until the building is not too black anymore and not too bright either. That way, I think the station will have a nice sense of depth of being further away in the distance. Merge the new layer to your original layer to finish it) Maybe you can also do the same for the black part of the sky too?

How about putting a sea below the black (stormy?) sky in front of the ‘beach’?

I hope I didn’t confuse you too much!

#562

I think I’m going to return the sky to a stormy color, it seemed to suit the overall effect of coming out of the darkness and the crowds in an abandoned land and …man, this sounds so unclippyish! Most of my stuff is much happier! (apart from the little dead dragon in the grass for the DSG ‘dragon slayer’ the other day)

Liondogboy: I’ll take your advice regarding the lightening up, it’s sound advice and it does look like it needs it.
I also like your sea idea.

Adonihs: Hm…but I LIKE doom! I might put more colours in there though, especially around the stair area.

Mu: Epic only in that there’s far more chances of messing up. :smiley:

Ed: Tiochfaidh ar la, buaichaill! :slight_smile: I think I’ll just give it ONE flag, two seems to be overdoing it a little…

Riddick: thanks! I really like your entry, I’m keeping an eye on it, so I am!

#563

Hey Paperclip,

I’m glad you’ve decided to get back to a somewhat moodier atmosphere. It was beginning to look a little too bright and happy for my taste:). I think a sense of approaching doom also really fits the comp, though.

Thank you very much for visiting my WIP-thread! I appreciate the compliment:blush:. But it’s exactly the reason I’m very much inspired by all your stuff, so right back at ya!:slight_smile: By the way your tips are really spot on and helpful, I can’t wait to get home and work more on it.

Keep working on this, I feel you’re only inches away from hitting the nail on the head and finishing. Go go go!

#564

:slight_smile: Looking good paperclip

and updates are really working well. I thought I had my work cut out painting three faces, but this a completely different scale!!

Great facial expressions and I like the dark atmosphere - way too much cheerfulness in this challenge

Looking forward to seeing how this develops :slight_smile: (smilees aren’t working, so I can only use happy faces, but they should be jumping up and down and clapping)

#565

Wakey, wakey Theresa. The wedding must be over by now unless you have really taken to painting mushroom paint on walls :-).

I’m missing all your updates and watching the progression of a masterpiece. Give us an update.

*Ed

#566

hi theresa ive been away for a week and shocked to see nothing new here:surprised

are you alright?

#567

Hoi Theresa, where’s the next update! The clock is ticking. Bip bip bip!

Is everything alright with you now? Are you busy with work? Hope to see your new update real soon. Perhaps you are waiting to spring your surprise on us! :smiley:

#568

very powerful - IMHO - I think you should clean up/tighten up the ship and forground figure a bit. Terrific effort - you should be really proud of this work!

Gord

#569

I dunno if I’ll finish the challenge- right now, I have a problem calling anything finished- not just this piece, but in general. It’s very frustrating and it’s something I definitely have to break past if I want to mark myself as anything worth calling an artist. Right now, I feel rather discouraged, especially since I recieved very harsh criticism from one of my closest friends. He told me it wasn’t worth finishing and, well…

However, my tenacity may win through in the end. We’ll see.

#570

Hey come on, you’re almost there! Don’t give up.

#571

Theresa, Don’t let that stop you! You have to believe in yourself and focus on bringing out the best you can manage in every work you do. If anyone said things like that to me, I will really want to try my best to prove that person wrong! I understand how you feel because I have had that experience many times before. Let it make you stronger and better instead of the other way round!

#572

your piece is evolving wonderfully! i am impressed by the textural feel you’ve developed, and the composition that leads you from the characters in the foreground and away to the sky ship ready to set sail. very impressive piece – your talent is amazing! a pleasure checking back and seeing your progress…

#573

It is definitely worth finishing!

First of all, it’s a good piece.

Second of all, the feeling of completion that you will have in your heart knowing that you stuck it out and finished it is worth it all by itself. Weigh against that the feeling that you will have if you don’t finish it: You sound like you’re feeling a bit down about your artwork right now, is abandoning a piece that you’ve put 3 months into really going to make you feel better?

Plus you have to finish just to be included in the contest. I’ll tell you a secret: Years ago, the very reason I started doing freelance artwork was because I had trouble finishing things. Doing contract work forced me to have to complete them, and the habit’s (mostly) stuck. Doing a contest, especially one with this many onlookers, is pretty much the same thing: You’re comitted, now you have to finish. And all of us are watching you and cheering you on.

Now get back to work!

-mike

#574

I suspect your ‘friend’ is probably jealous that you have got this far in the challange. Come on Theresa, get your ass moving there is only a few more steps for you to get it finished. If you like give me a call or I can meet you somewhere to go over it or just talk it over on the phone.:wip:

As far as I can see all you need to do is -

  1. Straighten the ship and (although I’m a bit reluctant to say it) get rid of one of the flags.
    The people are fine now, the ‘heads’ overpaint I sent doesn’t apply any more because of the way you’ve changed the building.
  2. The heads on the right near the trees are probably a bit small for the size of the trees.

That’s it your finished then. :arteest:

Who cares what some ‘friend’ says. If you count him as one critic you still have an awful lot of admirers here. Have a look at your posts, for God’s sake, you’ve got more than most people. Your hot stuff just don’t let one splash of cold water put out your fire! :banghead:

*Ed

#575

I couldn’t agree more and just wanted to send you my support along with all the others. What I think is your main obstacle is that you are really superb at developing rough, sketchy pieces with a lot of raw feeling: after that it comes down to the ‘boring’ stages of rendering and I think you’re less sure how to go about that stage.

The only way is right through it! Come on, you can only get better and the pieces you’ve done already have superb emotion and atmosphere. Really, if you don’t finish I will. And I’ll muck it up, so I WARN YOU!!:slight_smile:

Go on then.

#576

i think the piece looks really good clippy and would be a shame not to finish it . First of all you are doing this challenge for yourself so U can be better and practise. Sure u are going to get critisisms and some of them even harsh, thats part of the game, but that should discourage u but rather make u more stuborn and work more to make yourself better. Go clippy go clippy :smiley: u can finish this :smiley:

#577

Theresa, all I can say is finish your piece. If every artist gave up everytime someone told them to give up, a lot of great art work would die instant deaths. You got this far when most of us stopped even before we started. You are almost there, just needs some tender touches here and there, so girl, chop chop chop!

#578

Why the hell would he say something daft like that? Seriously, it’s a strong piece that begs some extra lovin’, and abandoning all the hard work you’ve put into it thus far would be a travesty. And if you’re feeling down, hop on IRC and act like a fool. :smiley:

#579

dont let your close friends pull you down, i had many very close friends made me lose many things.

and all artists has that ‘down feeling’ time, most pessismist; you dont want to finish anything and you want to give up whole art thing for a moment (i lived this 2 years ago). but the best way to pass it is to fight it. finish your work and you’ll feel much better it may go hard until the finishing time, but its most rewarding to finish that kind of work. even if this one finishes as not a good artwork of yours, finishing this one will upgrade you and you’ll be much better next time believe me.

and let me say if i had more than 500 posts in my thread nothing could stop me (supernatural powers may:P ) i mean ive past 50 posts i was nearly going to celebrate it.
believe your supporters. your concept rocks and picture is great. you’ve got lots of faces there and all done with naturalistic expressions and its something hard to do.

you have to finish this for us but more than anything for yourself.

i totally agree with ed, jeromoo and walrus (you can read their posts again and again) and with all others but absolutely not with your friend:curious:

god-rays club will support you too:)

now have a cool drink(or hot whatever you like) and start to work
go theresa, go theresaaa!!!:bounce::bounce::bounce:

#580

:slight_smile: :slight_smile: YOU MUST FINISH…YOU MUST FINISH…

This is a great piece of work Theresa and it would be a shame to stop because of what your friend says. When you put a lot of effort into something, it’s easy to feel unhappy with progress and eventually you come out the other side with an even stronger piece of work.

I’ve had to constantly rework and change my entry for this, and it’s taken a long time to get to a stage where I felt it might be worth carrying on with - but I’m glad I did

…and individium is right …if I had that many posts, I would be very happy
Keep up the great work :slight_smile: :slight_smile: