General feedback on first "Finished" piece

[strubey]

Hey all!

I'm new to this forum and just started digitally painting about half a year ago and this is the first piece i've tried to take to completion. It's about my cat who recently passed away, it's also kind of a redraw of a drawing I did of her when I was a kid where she was sitting by the window watching birds fly by.

I feel like my main struggle with this was knowing what detail to paint in the forms as well as lighting them properly according to the form. I guess I just need to do more rock studies and such haha. Also I had a hard time with the perspective which i'm not sure exactly how to fix or see where to fix it.. It just looks a litte "off" imo.

I guess the main thing I would like feedback on is how to really make the forms of the rocks "pop" in 3D and how I would do that with only ambient light as well as sunlight on the top parts.

Any other general feedback would also be appreciated! Don't hold back!

[epcmattos]

Hey! Wellcome!

First of all: I'm no pro! But I like painting rocky stuff and I've been in your shoes mate!

So.. The overall picture looks nice. I'm not sure about that cat as a seccond focal point, makes the eye go too far away from the main focal point. You already have some good negative spaces on the background and space beetween rocks that make the image breath, thats good. Water gives life to it, cool !
About the LIGHT: you could make it more ''one direction'' (sorry for broken english), right now its good, in a way that gives a warm peacefull mood to the scene, but it kind of spread all around, like the rocks are almost glass and light is bouncing all around. Just be more solid with light direction and it will be fine.

About ROCKS: from what I see, you thinking of rocks as brush strokes, that are some how just there in a organic form. I remember I use to think like that. ''Gonna make a bunch of strokes here and it will give the impression of clumsy rocks'', but the end result is not what i would expect. Everthing started to make sense once I reduced the information, and started thinking rocks as shapes on top of each other. Think more like big blocks of rocks, that you will put some detail on it. And not a bunch of little details that together make a big rock. Does that make sense for you? Sorry again for broken english

Keep up the good work!! Have a nice weekend.

[strubey]

Thank you for the feedback!

Yeah I agree with you. The main problem is the lack of bold decisions in the lighting and shading of the forms and a too uniform spread of random detail. As I said that just comes from a lack of understanding what i'm actually trying to paint. I just need to do more paintings and studies of rocks to understand that I guess haha.

I can also see what you mean with the composition. It was a difficult thing to balance since I wanted 2 focal points and your eyes to kind of bounce between the 2. Maybe I should have raised the cat up a bit.