Hello,
Great piece, with cool masks, and lots of potential.
Withdrew my last post because I think I gave you incorrect direction the more I looked at it. I changed the lighting and you were initially concerned with finishing the piece.
Lets get you that finished vibe you are looking for.
The piece does have a flat feeling. It is brought on by several factors. First, non-unified light sources. Second, lack of overlapping value patterns. Third, non-subtle form changes.
Okay lets address those first.
Non-unified light sources.
Lets compare the girl's face and hand, and the masks to one another.
These two groups of elements we will relate to each other as the viewer stares at the image. As you can see the face and the hand do not have a unified light source. Neither do the masks in some parts of their faces. This makes the information unclear, and unfinished. Which can be seen as flat to the viewer.
Even if a non artistic person was looking at this they could tell something was off but they couldn't explain it, so they might even tell you it looks good.
How do we fix that: Go through the painting and make sure that all plains of surfaces facing away from the light source have similar value ranges as their relating counter parts.
A quick tip to do this is to make one element of the illustration (example top left mask) a foundation, or reference, and make sure your light sources for the other similar elements match that foundation. For the hand, lets use the same light source as the face (top down light). For the Masks, lets use the top left mask because it already looks pretty solid. But lets brush it up a bit.
You most likely already know this. But as an example we want to keep these planar surfaces in mind at all times, and relate them to our light source. Those surfaces facing more towards it are more in the light, and vice versa.
Overlapping Value Patterns.
This might be hard for me to explain. But any object which is behind an object needs to appear as such. And you can make that object appear to be behind by making it slightly darker than the value of the object in front.
Such as the example shown below. Areas such as these on the left----can be corrected with overlapping like the examples from the right image.
Third. Non-Subtle form changes.
In areas especially like skin we do not want hard edges in the value changes of the shadow pattern. I'm mainly thinking the hand. Edges edges edges is always what it comes down to in rendering.
Last. Final suggestions.
Fix that hand, or totally lose it. Its about the snap motion I can tell, but you need to push that pose of the hand better and make it about to do something really f***ing cool like getting some magic ready or something. If not it needs to be a fantastic and impressive hand painting if you leave it like it is.
I can find the reference really fast in google by searching "girl hand finger snap". And so should you.
Lose the sketch marks at the top of the nose. As an art director when I see those types of things it makes me think, "this person doesn't know what finished is." You have to think that this is going to be the loading screen in a game, a splash page on a website, or a title sequence. People might see it thousands of times. Find similar images and make the same level of judgement on your own.
Push the dramatic lighting a bit more. If your strong with top down lighting it can still be more dynamic and dramatic. This is from the critique that I deleted earlier, just as an example. Don't follow it verbatim. But make people remember it.
I think overall this is a great piece that you have here. It can be really powerful when you finish it. When you think something is done, spend two more hours on it. Then wait a day. Then spend two more hours on it. Rinse and repeat. Your level of finish is only based on your personal knowledge. The more art you see, and create, the more you understand what you have when you are finished. That level will constantly change when you grow.
Throughout history artists seem to go through similar stages. They learn learn learn. Make things tight tight tight and correct. Then later on when they relax they are very loose. So just remember your taste will change.
Keep up the good work.
