woman with sword and fan

[littlejohn]

Here's a recent fantasy portrait. For the first time, I used Poser to make a well-proportioned reference based on an earlier sketch. I was pretty happy with how that worked out.

I find it difficult to use saturated colors harmoniously. If anybody has any tips on that, I'd love to hear it. Thanks.

http://www.davidhendee.com/images/kay.jpg

[daarken]

hey, i think you did a good job with the color. i like the way you paint as well. i think maybe her left hand is a little small. looks good!!

[celticdog]

I like the little shiny bits and the glint of the sword. Does she fan herself so she doesn't break a sweat while she's disemboweling someone?

[JoshuaTheJames]

the atmoshpere color and lighting makes me wish i was there!!!!!

-Joshua

[sparth]

littlejohn, i think you did great.

- to my own personal taste, i can't find really hard saturated tones in there. but the definition may vary. :D (or probably you consider there aren't any in there, doh :D:D)
if i had to use really saturated tones, i would probably limit my palette to an opposition of complementary colors i guess. blue vs orange, or something like that.
- on the umbrella fan thingie the cloud pattern should have been whiter that the overall object. don't know really, but for now, it looks like the clouds are detached from the back object.
-on the left hand, i cant' say i'm really a fan of the orange tone covering the hand. maybe it would be good to see this tone connected to the wrist, or see it elsewhere too.

sorry but i couldn't find anything else that i didn't like. i indeed have pretty much difficulties to comment your art, it's always been a very nice inspiration.
that "littlejohn" touch is so present in all your images, it's great.

[ljefe]

Oakland! hey, it's good to know there are some conceptoartorgians so close to home (Lafayette).
I like the painterly quality of it. all i could say is that i agree that maybe you should connect some of the color schemes a bit more, i think the sword maybe could be more defined near the end as it sort of fades into the background (this could be preference...), the fan does look odd, and that her left eye looks wierd (off...) but that could be because of the style. great work though, and i'll be hunting around the forums for more of your stuff.

[littlejohn]

Thanks for all the comments. I learned a lot! I'll definitely try out some of these suggestions next time.

[Darrell Bowman]

I love it.

but i think with all your faces they tend to be over painted.
they are perfect but to much info sort of muddies them fast
i would tend to put lets strokes in keep the face simple.
shadows and red on cheeks. If you see a clean one color face
against 50 strokes in a face the face looks old man like with lots of wrikkles not saying yours does but i try one with just
a light flesh tone and leave it see what that does but keep
everything else figure as busy and as great as it is.

simplify the coloring.