Here is (again) my first digital painting. I done in about 4 hours and i think that is good enough for my level of knowledge about digital painting. But still, i have a lot to learn, and i would like to see where my mistakes lie on the picture, if you guys could point them out.
Thanks.
Link to full image:
http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/5184/theironhills.jpg
Ok, so i got no reply from that. Fine, i’ve done a new one that in my opinion look tons better but still isn’t an exemplar piece or anything awesome. So i’m updating the main thread so you guys can take a look at it.
Well, i uploaded it again, hopefully you will se it now. Sorry about that. (I could see the image thou)
You should try to have the secondary ridge line dissolve a bit when it reaches the edges of the foreground ridge (atmospheric perspective). Also think about the shape of the foreground ridge a bit more and drop most of it into shade, and highlight only the places where the light is reaching.
I think the foreground ridge should be more contrasty, in general (darker darks/lighter lights).
Good luck!
Yeah, i agree about the contrast. The overall picture needs more, especially in the foreground. I don’t really get what you mean with defining the shape more, you mean to rethink it a bit? I worked on the colours a bit, added more red to make it look more ironish. I will do some adjustments and then i post the updated version later. Thanks! 
The shape meaning that simply by knowing the shape beforehand, the lighting will become simpler to do. I think some of it was a bit confused, especially when you got down near the bottom of the ridge and the fronts of some of the root-like shapes were lit by a light from behind.
I did some overall retouches on the picture. I added some darker shadows, added more atmosphere feeling and worked a little on the lighting. The shapes of the ridge are a bit confusing in my head, not really defined, that’s why it looks confusing on the pic.
While i worked on it, i started to notice that it was looking too ‘blended’ and ‘polished’. Here’s what i was getting:
[spoiler][img]http://img534.imageshack.us/img534/958/theironhillsbefore.png[/img]
http://img534.imageshack.us/img534/958/theironhillsbefore.png
[/spoiler]
So i decided to do some history brushing to get some detail back. I also added another element to the foreground to hopefully make the composition look more interesting. It is suposed to be a segment from the right ridge, but it feels a little bit weird, i think it isn’t blending too much with the ambient.
[spoiler]
http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/7645/theironhills.png
[/spoiler]
What are your thoughts about those two guys? Which one looks better in your opinion? I’m temporarily blind to judge, been working about 2h and a half on this (i’m really slow).
Thank you!
You really need to use photo references to get the rock formation/surface right, because it currently looks very unnatural and unconvincing. That whole left area looks like long-shaped rocks piled together instead of natural rock formation.
That’s something to change as well. But i remind that this a fantasy landscape, something like an alien planet or somehting. So if it turns out to be interesting for the composition, i might change it to look even more human made, but i will have to think more about that.
OFF Topic: Can i change the thread title? I didn’t found the option, only to change te message title. Should i contact a moderator?
Fantasy or not if your desire is to have people understand your setting (for instance, rocks/ridge/cave/etc) the elements that make up your setting should read as something familiar.
Rocks should look like rocks, for instance, or people won’t know what to make of them.
Robert is right; looking at similar rock formations will give you ideas about the shapes and lighting. If you know what the shapes in your composition look like, it’s easy to light them.
I find that rendering (shading) is dead simple when I know 1) where the light sources are coming from, and their character 2) how the shapes that are lit are constructed. Rendering when those shapes haven’t been worked out is ultimately impossible. The results will look tentative, not clear.
My personal critique is that there’s nothing interesting for me to look at here. It’s a good experiment for learning color and texture maybe, but if that’s the case you should be doing dozens of these over the course of a day instead of spending so much time on one piece. I think I would be bored stiff if I tried to work on something like this for 4 hours.
Play with a little extra color, add an element or two like a small human/alien astronaut wandering the valley to spice things up a little. 
I was going to add some human (like) silhuetes, but i wasn’t so sure about the actual scale of the piece. By looking at it right now i can’t tell if it is a huge parade of rocks or just some small boulder’s. This was suposed to be something like a speed paint, but i’m still getting in this hobby and i’m really slow. I try to make it perfect, but i don’t think working like that will make me learn more than doing a little more rough scenes but in more quantities through my hours.
I think i will just adjust some things and i will move on with another one.
Oh, also, my Wacom Bamboo Capture is coming through the mails! I have confidence this will give me some hand on the drawings/paintings (i already messed around with a Genius tablet for some months, and it was pretty neat until it stoped working :banghead:) .
Thank you!
So, i decided not to touch the shapes, since that would take some time and i don’t want to spent too much more on this picture. I added some textures (still a noob with that) and tweaked some things, added a little fog and so on.
I think it is almost (maybe is) complete.
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