Creature form?

[fathomcube]

was practicing and studying form on this image....and practicing getting the full scale of light to dark
so i chose to paint something with a lot of wrinkles or creases apposed to painting a bunch of spheres......gets boring....I like to have fun when I paint...so if I need to study arms....I'll make a monster with many arms ect.

but anyway here's a rough of some weird whale head creature

[JesterSeraph]

The most forward positioned arm feels as though it's behind the body. It fades into what's behind it too much, because of how similar the values are and how muddled the piece as a whole get towards the bottom. Solid job on the head and armpit/pecs though.

[fathomcube]

My focus was really the top part but which arm, it's left arm? Because I was thinking of making the arm part darker while fading out the back side a bit.....also yeah it does get faded out at the bottom and that was done purposefully but now that I look at it the bottom part should be darker....so that the fading would work since there would be little light......was also trying atmospheric fog to distance the arm or the side from the viewer but I guess I faded it tom much...I have a problem where I make things look flat so i'm trying to fix that....and thanks for the critiques like always

[JesterSeraph]

Its left arm, that being the one furthest in the foreground. The right arm (ironically to the left) that's mostly just silhouettes is perfectly fine. It's the one that's more in front of the body which feels flat.

It looks a lot better on my tablet than it does on my desktop, but it could still use a little depth, and by that I mean contrast. I did a quick run over the painting with a multiply and an overlay to darken some edges and shadows, while brightening a couple highlights, and tried to separate the arm a bit better. I then parts blurred it a bit, and here's the difference.

Not much, but it helps the image pop and your eyes track toward the focal point of the head better. I may have gone a little overboard with the arm though, since now it has a fair amount of contrast with the background...

[fathomcube]

I feel like the chest area was unnecessarily blurred but I thing that darker part you put on it's right arm by it's pit area is perfect also the faded blur behind the left arm is exactly what i was talking about!!! makes it seem more 3D!! also I see where you put the darker area around the rib cage and your definitely right about that .....the only thing I wouldn't do it blur it out with the soft brush.......THANKS! (critiquing among critiques) Thanks for the feedback I really appreciate it and yes yours seems better

[JesterSeraph]

-looks up- I did what!? Oh shi--Woops... Didn't mean to blur that far up the chest that much. There was only supposed to be the slightest amount of it to take a tiny bit of edge off the chest and keep the sharpest area as the head. I was in a bit of a rush to get back to my own stuff, sorry ^^;

Glad I could help though.

[fathomcube]

Thank you for your time!

[Arthurv]

I would try to give the piece more contrast, at least on the creature-to-background relationship. In the torso it looks like the creature is blending into the background. Unless that's on purpose, of course. Really nice piece! I love the design of the character. Especially the head.