Landscape - critique please~!

[Zyphre]

Alright guys lemme have have it. ;)
I spent a lot of time on this and showed no one until I started running myself in circles, I used no references and It was done in painter X and photoshop cs 3.

Things I am particularly interested in, just as much as knowing what is wrong - a suggestion of how to make it better/right. Original res is 3000 pxls.

[balfek]

Hi Zyphre,

There's a couple things going on here, and they are pretty common mistakes...

There's not much depth in this image. Are you familiar with the term "atmospheric perspective?" This term refers to the phenomenon that occurs when things get further away... the more distant an object, the bluer/hazier (closer to the colour of the sky) they become. Look up some landscape photos online and you'll see what I mean.

The second thing is don't be afraid of the gradient tool. You'll also notice that whenever you look at the sky, it will be (most of the time) lighter near the ground and a much deeper hue the higher you look. The same is true for the ground and all the objects, except in the opposite direction. The closer to you they get, the deeper/more contrasted the colours become.

And now for lighting. Basically, when you're thinking about objects while you're painting, it becomes less about the "true" colour of the object, and more about the colour of the light hitting it. You have green grass and brown dirt, but I would suggest that you pick a colour for your light, say that orange, and then think about the colour the dirt might look if it had that light on it. Imagine you are standing and looking at it, try and imagine how light might fall on the surface.

And one more thing. Perspective. We all have to do it, very few people can draw an environment without commiting much time to getting the underlying persective right. The nice thing about it though, is that ANYONE can learn it. It's just a bunch of rules. Pretty friggin boring to learn if you ask me but your drawings will be so much better afterwards.

I suggest buying a book or looking up a guide to 3 point perspective online.

Other than that, there's a nice ethereal quality to this image, it's quite charming.

Hope this is helpful.

[Zyphre]

Ill keep these in mind. Ill do a few quick speedpaintings with different random colors of light to get a feel for what your talking about.

Ill go look at one of those 3 point perspective tutorials right now.

Thanks for the help!

[Farvus]

Elo. Here are my suggestions.

- When painting think first about getting the values right. I turned your image into grayscale in Photoshop and as you can see there isn't any defined lightsourse. Everything is hidden in very dark shadow. Maybe even try painting in grayscale and later put some layer with "Color" blending mode onto it.
- I guess your intention in this pic was to show very big height of this abyss with waterfall. More vertical cropping would make this feeling stronger. Try experimenting with different proportions of cropping.
- I also agree with balfek about lack of atmospheric perspective. It would help this enviro a lot.

Cheers :)

[Zyphre]

Thanks for the advice! I will play with the grayscale technique in the future :)

[BANNED_For_POOPY_PANTS]

Zyphre,

First of all the colors are really.. i wanna word this properly.. deliciously pleasing :). The three things in my opinion holding this piece back from being breathtaking:

1. Texture. The clouds, sky, top half of the waterfall, foreground grass, and wooden houses are all amazing. The cliffs are cool.. but don't really seem 'up to par' with the rest of the other textures.

2. The perspective seems a bit off on the right cliff connecting to the foreground grass, the lower half of the waterfall is also slighly confusing.

3. Composition. I tried cropping it a bit in painter.. it loses some of the depth the lower half created but here's an idea..

http://i148.photobucket.com/albums/s31/Vaiagra/croppedoccasussmallgx6.jpg

Great job, dude. 100% eye candy.

[Zyphre]

Yeah I agree, I was really pleased with the clouds myself. The cliffs were a pain in my side, and a first time thing for me. Went off a bad photo of some scottish shoreline/river bank cliffs. I may come back and re-work this when I get time...

Thanks for the help :D