Apr '17

Hello everybody! This is my first artwork post here on Cubebrush and I was looking to get some constructive feedback on my latest completed illustration. I really like retro scifi/fantasy art with airbrush effects. What could have been done to improve my piece? What should I take into consideration for my next artwork? Thank you! :grinning:

Apr '17
1

Hey! Awesome illustration, looking really interesting :smile:
So, I changed quite a few things. One of the main things I changed was the values and the overall composition for the values. The main character wasn'¨t really standing out by values, making it quite claustrophobic to read your picture, since everything is very satured, and very sharp. I also lessened the details in the background, made it less saturated, added some fog and some atmospheric elements to make it seem more distant.

As for the colours, I tried to keep them the same but I made the sky bluer, since everything is pretty much a red-colour. This helped with the contrast!

Hope this helped!

Lastly, I added just some texture elements, such as gloss on your metal robot.

EDIT: Seems like the pictures have more contrast on this site. No idea of why.

Apr '17

Thanks for responding!! I always struggle with values, so it's great to see what should of been darker/lighter for better a better result! That added green in the background is really cool, and the added gloss is another thing I should of considered doing, thanks for pointing that out to me. Thank you for you time, I appreciate it! :smile:

May '17

First off I just want to say I'm loving the colors and you've done a decent job with the composition, though with that said I still believe theres much to work on here and that's a great thing! ....so lets dig right in shall we?

Color variety
-Now remember when I said that your color palate is amazing and awesome a couple seconds ago?.... yeah, it's a little too amazing and awesome... don't hear that often do you? What I mean by this everything in your piece is over saturated, that's going to make it harder for the eyes to focus on one object at a time which may lead to the viewer being overwhelmed. You can avoid this by adding in colors of lower saturation and vibrance giving your piece not only contrast in tone value but color variety as well.

Light and Shadow Balance
- From a photographers stand point this photo looks over exposed and what I mean by that is there seems to be way too much light for this piece specifically. Over exposer isn't always a bad thing; however with all the light and saturation of this piece if I were to view this at night in a dark room... well, I'd be blind. A good way to fix this is to find your main light source. In this piece you definitely have an established source but it almost seems as if theres too many sources of light. This is what leads us into our 3rd and final topic!

Composition
- You know that feeling when your around a huge crowd of people and everyones just trying to go there own way ? Well we all know how nerve racking that can be, almost like where trapped in a box... yeah well... that's how this piece feels to me. It's almost as you set the size of your image and just tried to fit your whole idea that was pre-determined. The problem is your illustration has no room to breathe! you've gotta give your piece some fresh air! there are many ways of fixing this and I'm pretty sure you don't need me to explain how. I'm so sorry for the long winded critique but I have on last thing to say.

What you have created is amazing so please never stop creating. Keep working hard and always strive to learn more! That's all I've gotta say!

Cheers!

Exofley Signing out.

May '17

Thank you very much for your response, you've given me a lot to consider and practice on when I get around to my next artworks! :sparkles:

21 days later

May '17

Reply to

exofley

Hello! This is a little odd, but it turns out my artwork has a lot of the same issues as Stefanie's here. It was very helpful reading your critique, and I wanted to thank you!
I will be working on these similar things with my paintings as well.

1 month later

Jul '17

Hello! I realize it's a few months since the latest reply, but I think I have a critique worth mentioning for any future work :smile: . First of all, I would like to know the setting here. Is it set in outerspace? On a planet with an atmosphere? Is the main lightsource a sun or moon?

Jul '17

Hey! That's okay, I'll be happy to hear it.
This piece is set in outerspace on a planet with a thin atmosphere and the light source is supposed to be moonlight.

Jul '17

Alright! The first glaring issue I've noticed is that she is not casting shadows on her scarf.
Since this is outer space with little atmosphere as you've mentioned, and with her being this close to the camera, surfaces on her body that's angled away from the light source should not be lit unless light bouncing from different surfaces hit her body. Such as her right shoulder pad's side surface being lit by the light bouncing off from her scarf.

Apart from that, the moon behind her, provided it's not emitting any light/glowing, looks really flat. If it's being lit by the same light source that's illuminating our character, it should be lit according to its geometric anatomy. Since it's a sphere, it should be lit like a sphere.

However, if the moon behind her is indeed glowing, then, based on something I learned from stargazing and photography, all those stars shouldn't be as visible as they are. Maybe turn down their twinkles by 50%? It's because the glow emitted by the moon, and the fact that the moon is really HUGE, overlaps the light emitted by the stars. Apart form that there should be a visible glow around it.

bot1.jpg1109x749 827 KB

Overall, the general problem in your piece is there are so many contrasting elements in the image, it's quite hard on the eyes and harder to identify the focal point. So apart from the fix I did, here's a suggestion to tighten up the comp by adjusting the lighting on her.

Hope that was helpful :smile:

PS
I am sorry for this long overdue reply. I wanted to work on this critique when you replied to my previous comment, unfortunately, I was swamped with work the entire week.

Jul '17

Wow! I didn't realize just how many elements I overlooked that could of improved my piece drastically. I think my biggest downfall was that I wanted my piece to be quite bright and colourful as that's my preferred appearance with my art and I went overboard with it. Thanks so much for your in depth review on my piece! You've given me a lot to consider for next time, I appreciate it! :grinning: