Snakewomen and knight in forest (illustration)

#1

Hello,

I’ve been working on this piece for about a while now, somewhere around 9 hours I think.
It isn’t finished yet, I still have to put in detail and start retouching it, especially on the snakes and the knight. But before I do I would like to get some feedback on the painting till now, so I can still fix the bigger shapes without messing up my detailing.

So what should I change or redo in it to make it better than it is now?
Please give me something I can work with and not that I should learn the basics or that I should follow the become a better artist course. I know I need to learn the basics of everything, and I’m working on it, but I can’t pay for expensive classes online.

Thanks in advance,
Esther

#2

Not bad at all, imo. I like the nature, the green and the water, the painting style and the colours there, while the characters are improvable. Not recognisable at first glance the species of those female creatures, looking more like clay sculptures of mermaids with huge ears.

  • so i’d address the snakes first, making absolutely clear what they are: 1. their ears should remind more on expanded cobra hoods, i guess, needing then to be more around the neck. 2. the snake bodies should obviously belong to the female upper bodies >> focus on very continuous overall shapes (around that stone; in the water). 3. skin could look like snake skin >> colours, reflections, etc., integrated much more into the environment. 4. expression of the lady snakes >> what are they doing? are they trying to seduce the stranger, or are they attacking him?

  • then i’d think about that stranger: is he needed in the picture at all? If yes then: what is he doing there? (looking more like posing for the ladies at the moment) Where does he come from? >> styling? (looking currently a bit like an ancient Roman with modern trousers)

  • the vegetation in the foreground is rather spare. The two trees at the sides are also too obviously framing the scenery >> especially the right one could be much more curvy, more complex, needing the romantic style already applied in the background.

  • lighting is nice btw, except on the stranger, where the light seem to come from the other side.

Keep it up!

#3

Thanks Zokana, thanks for the compliments and your feeback, this is something I can work with :slight_smile:

I guess that the stranger was just making his way trough this forest and stumbled upon these creatures. They like it to play around with their prey for a bit before eating him, and are pleasently surprised that little human walks right into their hands.
I’m going to sneakily hide some faces and hands of humans poking through their bellies (that way you can be sure that they aren’t friendly) =p

I’m still working on the snakecreatures and the stranger, but your comment on how the upper and lower bodies don’t seem to match really is helpfull (since you’re right and I didn’t see it yet for myself).

I hadn’t really figured out who the person in the forground is supposed to be, but I like a stranger or a vagrant better than a knight which I wanted to make first. And the lighting on him is indeed kinda bad.
I’ll fix that as well.

I’m going to ‘romanticize’(?) the tree on the right a bit more as well, but isn’t it necessary to frame the illustration like I did?
Before I just had some bushes on the right and It felt like you’d wander to easily out of the painting, that’s why I painted the tree over there. o.o

I’ll try to post a new version asap :slight_smile:
Thanks!

#4

Concerning framing: following rules should look like handled very relaxed, looking more incidentally. Having strict verticals at the sides while the rest of the picture is more fluent won’t give a natural feel. A landscape has mostly quite uniform shapes, the same kind of geological formations, the same kind of vegetation. I think that you would like (or already do like) baroque/roccoco landscape paintings, like for example the works of the capriccio landscape/arch painter Hubert Robert with his dreamy sceneries, or the greatly lit landscapes of Fragonard. Both more than worth to check their trees (see also their landscape drawings).

Concerning your stanger: think about his pose. How would he stand their? And the more when he’s not a knight: what is he doing here? A shipwrecked guy collecting mushrooms?

And i’d suggest to study snake poses very closely. How do they look like before attacking, or when relaxing? How do they wrap around stones, branches? Their movements have fascinating dynamics - just a little bit of that, and the viewer is yours.

#5

You need to really make it clear what the sense of scale is. You don’t want the knight to end up looking like a dwarf or a child, so you need to make sure his proportions are of an adult, and you need to make sure the environment matches his scale, and have the snake creatures look obviously larger than normal scale. You can accomplish this by placing telltale signs near the knight and also near the snake creatures, so that we can clearly see how they compare in scale. For example, a berry bush near the knight will show the scale between the knight and the berries, while putting another berry bush near the snake creatures will show how they compare to the size of the berries.

#6

Thank you both for your replies, these are things that I can actually work with :slight_smile:

@zokana,
I’ve been working on the snakes and their skin mostly now (still not as much as I would want to) and tried to make their upper and lower bodies match more by adding more red into their lower bodies and green in their upper bodes. When I’m satisfied with their expressions I’ll make the skin in their upper bodies also more structured like their lower bodies.
I’ve also changed the appearance of the stranger and the lighting, he feels much more in place than he did before imo.

@Lunatique,
I’m thinking about adding a dog next to the traveler, would that be a useful option?

I’m also not very sure about the topmost snake’s position, I don’t know what she should be doing with her left arm.
I’m first going to give the rock where she’s on some shadows too see if it might turn out okay like this, but if you have any suggestions, i’d like to hear them :slight_smile:

Thanks again that you take the time to help us students :slight_smile:
Esther

#7

Yes, the stranger is much better! (he seems to be left handed now, looking a bit for the right-handed viewer as he was attacking the snakes with words)

So i’d imagine the situation: a guy is attacking the snakes, but the snakes keep posing…? Maybe better to have the snakes looking more aggressive as well, or the guy surprised/frightened, instead of attacking them (needing anyway always a very good reason to attack such a giant snake imo…). Or an other possibility to keep the guy’s aggression, but letting the snakes laugh about him - taking the expression of the upper snake lady further, giving her an amused face/head pose, while she’s already leaning at the stone and holding her belly.

#8

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