Escape of the Royal Family: Critique/Comments

[ronna15]

Hi! So, this is my very post here. This is also my very first digital painting. Looking for some really helpful critiques and feedbacks.

A little backstory; my inspiration was this cape (http://tinyurl.com/6r8d9da), designed by the late Alexander McQueen. There’s just so many story to tell with this so I created my own.

Escape of the Royal Family: Late one night, the queen was awakened from her slumber by a sense of dread. She walks around the palace to calm her thoughts, only to overhear the guards and their talk of overthrowing the royal family. Frightened, the queen rushes to her chambers to wake her King. Still in her nightgown with only a red cape to protect her from the cold of night, they fetched their child and fled into the dark forest. The king, transforms into his more powerful form to protect his Queen and princess.

Critiques and suggestions are welcome. One specific question tough, any suggestions in painting white fabric?

P.S. There’s gonna be a dark forest in the background. She’s also going to be holding an oil lamp.

CU

[Stormchain]

not bad, contrast on face is too high though. rest so far looks good. keep it comin

[Lunatique]

Don’t work on a painting with areas isolated like that. Work on the entire scenes and work out all the composition, main shapes, values (tonal composition), block in the rough lighting/colors, and then build upon a solid color sketch in passes so that each iteration is more detailed/polished than the last. When yo work on areas in isolation like you are now, you are not constructing a coherent scene where all the elements are working together hand-in-hand from the very beginning, and you’ll find yourself trying to shoehorn things in later, or pain yourself into a corner.

And you need to use proper references for that wolf. The proportions look odd and unconvincing.

[ronna15]

Don’t work on a painting with areas isolated like that. Work on the entire scenes and work out all the composition, main shapes, values (tonal composition), block in the rough lighting/colors, and then build upon a solid color sketch in passes so that each iteration is more detailed/polished than the last. When yo work on areas in isolation like you are now, you are not constructing a coherent scene where all the elements are working together hand-in-hand from the very beginning, and you’ll find yourself trying to shoehorn things in later, or pain yourself into a corner.

And you need to use proper references for that wolf. The proportions look odd and unconvincing.

^
Thanks. I’ve tried that before, but I don’t have the patience because I obsess over the details. And I’ve been watching hundreds of online speed painting, and for one of the artist I really like, that process seems to work for her. But I’ll try this too again; see if it’s gonna work for me.

And what part really of the wolf doesn’t work? I’ve been looking at it too since I’ve drawn it, and I know something’s just odd about it, but I can’t tell?

[Lunatique]

I don’t know which artist you’re referring to, but maybe her workflow isn’t efficient and the weaknesses in her work are partly due to this inefficient workflow. When you learn from others, you want to be careful and not pick up their bad habits and weaknesses too.

The wolf’s proportions are way off, such as the legs being too short, the skull structure incorrect, the torso too squat, etc. If you used references, you need to check your drawing against the references. Flip your image and the references horizontally (so they are like mirror reflections of the originals)–that helps you spot mistakes you couldn’t see before (due to the bias in your brain).

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