Hi people of Cubebrush!! I´m new here and decide to give a step forward to improve my works and I know here I can find some good crits and comment in how to improve from many talented people...sooo here I go:
I have questions first of all about quality of the image. When I see pro artists finished works they didn´t look like a bit pixelated..I mean yeah it´s nice to see your brushstrokes, but too much?? Making you can see it pixelated? Maybe that is because pro artists work in high resolutions? Give me some tips about that plz T_T
Well the other question is the piece itself, tried to do it like a painterly feel, but I use some photo-textures for the dragon skin...it could took me forever to paint it haha and still dont have that lvl. Feel free to crit any aspect that I can improve to be a better landscape painter. I bought some tutorials from Stephane Wootha to try to learn how to use photobashing mixed with what I do and had more finished look on my pieces, to add them to my portfolio, but holy f*ck it´s hard...you have to take in count a lot of things n_nU.
Sooo that´s all thx so much for reading my first post here!!! ^^
Hi Thoridal. Im new here as well When I paint i usually start in a A4/A3 72 dpi when the sketch is complete i scale i to 300dpi and complete the render. Hope that helps
When it comes to your image its a cool concept but kinda a lackluster in composition. you have all that empty space above them. you can crop the image above the birds and it will look more intense. I have seen that Link pose before but is okay its a cool pose and the warrior looks good. I would spend some more time on the dragon and introduce some cool colors in the shadows and some accent colors on it to make it pop more. Perhaps a red tiger-ish pattern on his back or something. Right now its all the same color and that make it kinda uninteresting. What I do like about it is that you dont have scales on him and a really cool anatomy I would play around more with his expression.
I´ll do that what you say about working first in 72dpi and then scale it to 300 dpi.
Talking about your crit thx for that too. At first I wanted to add some big dragon(?) in the background but just a subtle way, but in the end didn´t add anything ahah.. I´ll crop the image above the top right birds and try to see what you say. Yeah it´s a Link pose that I saw in a MTG alteration ahah, I thought that making a bit of painting on top of that I´ll get that type of warrior and hope it finally works well =P. You´re right about the dragon, I struggle a lot with colors, but I´ll try to do what you say and that pattern idea...man It´s a good idea!! ahah.
Sooo thx so much for taking your time to answering me. I´ll make the corrections and post the updated version !! ^^
Yeas, pros tend to use higher resolutions. Also certain will especially look pixelated in smaller resolution.
As for the piece itself, I like where you're going with it. To add a bit more intensity, you could maybe add some smoke floating around and little flames on the ground. That could help you filling some of the empty space you have in your piece. Something a little bit like this
Also, maybe that dragon in background could actually be coming to fight. It could be cool if you made it just about to the fence with some flames starting to come out of his mouth to attack the knight.
Hopefully this helps in any way. I'm looking forward to see where you take it!
Thx for your crit!! I´ll try to add what you say about flames in the ground and some smoke around the place. The other dragon it´s just there having a meal of a poor victim ahha, my intention was never bring him to the fight, because that means that our hero is going to get his ass beaten and I dont want that ahha, but I´ll try to do something and see what happen to that dragon.
So I haven't watched any of Wootha's gumroad videos but I am intrigued now to see how the photobashing is used, but I cant help you there.
So we are going to stick to your Wootha inspiration as a goal for your piece. Thank you for stating your intention the way you did because it helps us give you a better critique.
To address the pixelization issue. It really depends on which size you are looking at but two things are giving you that effect.
Super sharp and contrasting in value edges like these. . . . . . . .
And Brush texture pattern repetition. Like these. . . .
This one picture in particular I'd like you to look at. In the top middle triangle, I dont know if he forgot to change it or if he left it in there on purpose, but the word composition, is used instead of abstraction which by some can be interpreted as the same thing when you start a piece.
And if you look through rest of his portfolio you can see that he does this A LOT. Even in this video where he is almost doing the entire piece in 3d, he is working in massive shapes until he gets his preferred abstraction. However, he has portraits, establishing shots, concept art and splash images. No dragons that I could find. But it doesn't mean you cant take these principles he has shown, and apply them to creatures.
................................................................................................................. Lets take some time to go over that material. ................................................................................................................. The one thing that I see is that not matter what Wootha does digitally he goes out of his way to make things have a painterly feel. In both composition, and brush work in final pieces. He's not here to ask, but that is what I take away from this research. ................................................................................................................. Okay. I'm going to look at this like an art director.
First your image is 3.1k wide. I think its wide enough for print or final work size. Think about how you are going to present your pieces to people. Is it on artstation? Is it at a convention on an Ipad or some similar device? Know how you are going to present it and make sure it looks good on those platforms and you should be good. I dont think you have to make it bigger but you can if you want. I don't think that size is what's causing your pixelization effect.
Second. Lets look at your abstraction. I applied a filter - noise - dust and scratches and we can get a squinty eyed view at your piece.
This second look with the more shapes and abstraction addressed two things that were bothering me. The brightness and white of the mouth needed to be brought down so that you didn't have white flattening your image. If the fire is the brightest thing in your frame, it looks bright, don't add white. And the eye. I was confused if it was two eyes. The anatomy of the dragon overall is a little unclear and I really had to stare at it to understand where the wing was so the form of the dragon could use some time.
And looking at this the background has too much detail for the moment in your piece. It's nice to wander around a piece at times but its not strengthening your composition. I might suggest more of a sweeping foggy mountainous landscape like Wootha instead of a dragon just chilling back there. And you can lose the birds.
And for painterly feel I would suggest trying these brushes like these that came up in a google search but not on Wootha's page. They are pretty good abstract mark makers and can lead you to a lot of happy accidents perhaps.
Normally I would do a paint over but I cant hold a candle to Wootha so I hope that this helps you look at your piece a little differently and learn some tricks to apply.
First of all thx so much for your crit positioning you like an art director, but you misunderstood me =P I say that I bought those tutorials, but not that this piece was made with tthose tutorials, this is just a personal piece trying to do some finished work on my own without any tutorial, just with what I´ve learned being self taught.
Even with that you are right in many points I try to figure out how pros do those simply but efective works, with just some brusk strokes or using photobashing/mattepainting whatever, but talking about the pixelated part....man dont know how pros use hard edges and they dont get this type of pixelated brushstrokes or whatever... in their case , they´re all clean and perfect..that´s why I say if it has some trick about canvas size and so on.
Soo thx so much for this crit and tomorrow I´ll sit my ass in the PC and try to improve it with all of this crits!!!
Heyy I came back..been too busy with work and so on, but didn´t forget about crits you gave me. Soo I tried to apply them...couldn´t remember all of them, but I think it´s a bit better ^^
Sep 20, '18
but is okay its a cool pose and the warrior looks good. I would spend some more time on the dragon and introduce some cool colors in the shadows and some accent colors on it to make it pop more. 
and I dont want that ahha, but I´ll try to do something and see what happen to that dragon.
