Green Planet

[blissik]

Have been getting back into art the last couple of months after a long hiatus. It's been fun getting back into it and discovering this intense artitsts community online. Anyhoo here's a lady on a planet with apparently alot of green light. Don't know where to go with this. I'm thinking leave it as is and move onwards and upwards in the next piece. Let me know. Thanks.

http://home.comcast.net/~vq001/tinsl041c700.jpg

[shortmikeshort]

She looks as though a green light is being shone her rather than there simply being green atmospheric light.

Her right boob (our left) looks lumpy and sucked in. A few other parts of her body are obviously unfinished.

I like the mood. I would tighten it up though. Crop it a little more closely around her, otherwise you have a lot of unused space.

[blissik]

Yeah, now that you mention it I see the boob is out of wack, I'll work on that and the rest of the torso. There maybe a nuance to your comment about the green light that I don't understand. The light is being shown on her, since all the light on the planet is green.

[Chris Beatrice]

I like where this piece is going, and from a 2D perspective the red / green color scheme works well.

But if the intention is that the figure is lit with a (very saturated) green light, then it's not reading that way to me. This is probably because of the red lips. In pure green light, a pure red object would appear black (because there is no red in a pure green light, and a pure red object reflects only red). You don't need to literally make the lips black here, but with that saturated a light, they would not be able to be so red. Same with the purple in that river thingy.

If you want to paint the illusion of an extremely (saturated) colored light, you have to think really clearly about a) what are the local colors of the objects in the scene?, and b) what color(s) will those objects appear in the light in question? Green is one of the harder light colors to pull off, because it occupies a very narrow portion of the spectrum.

You've also (evidently) got some minor light above the figure, making some specular highlights on her hair and goggles. What color is this light?

If you work with 3D rendering software at all, set up a quick model of this scene and you'll see what I mean.

Hope that helps.

[blissik]

Wow, very interesting stuff about light. I looked thru the galleries with light and atmosphere in mind and began to get a feel for what I think Chris and shortmike are getting at. Also redrew the figure and cropped the right side of the picture. As far as the lips and rivers, I wanted to have accent notes to offset the relentless green and don't space babes always have red lips?:D . No really, I see where you're going with it wrecking the believability of the environment. But you know, if you can't see it, it's hard to fix. So right now for me this is training in seeing more than painting.

So here's the next installment. If you could provide follow up comments would be great. Thanks.

http://home.comcast.net/~vq001/t1700.jpg

[Steph Laberis]

I think the second sketch is a big improvment. i think your next step would be to tweak the values between her costume and the background, maybe tighten up your outlines. Also, the shadow on the right side of her ribcage is very dark and seems to cut off her anatomy; maybe a rich, dark green relfected shadow at the back of the ribs would help.

kudos to you and your hard work!

[blissik]

Thanks Willow. After I posted I started looking at the picture and thinking where are the edges - everything is soft. I think this lines up with what you're saying with tighten up the outlines and tweak the values. And I'm a gonna try to do just that.

[Chris Beatrice]

As far as the light goes, this is a huge change (for the better). Kudos to you for having the guts and making the effort to rework the piece. The highlights on the hair, goggles, etc. are now consistent with the rest of the piece. Look at how all those colors are singing together.

Look at how you killed those red lips and they still read clearly as red!! Why, because, they are the reddest thing in the piece, and that intense green is making them even more red.
Here are those same lips on a red background:
http://www.chrisbeatrice.com/images/green_lips.jpg
Now they look green! Scroll back and forth between the two images, and you can't believe they're the same lips, but they are. This is 2d light phenomena which works in conjunction with the 3d thing I said in my prior post. Most people understand this (like when you put the gray square on a blue background it looks orange), but then no one ever applies it. This ability for a color to remain ambiguous, that is, to defy identification in any absolute sense and to vibrate between different, often opposing identities is fundamental to how color operates in a painting

Now maybe from a "design" perspective the piece is "too green", that is, some people might not like looking at it for very long. But that's just what I was saying about the problems, or I should say the limitations of working with with such saturated green light. Often you'll see artists using this type of green light as just an edge light, or something only illuminating a small part of the scene.

Anyway, on to "where to go from here." I concur with willow-wisp fully. To be specific, for example, most of the folds in her clothing are just vaguely and blurrily suggested. It's great to do that, and as all can attest, economic line and shape work tend to be a lot more compelling than hyper-detailed photo-realism, but you still need to very clearly understand the form you are rendering in order to execute it economically. Assuming you're not using a photo reference (or maybe even if you are), I would suggest drawing the folds of her clothes (i.e. make a clear and unambiguous line drawing on another layer), then using this as a guide to paint the clothes. Loose clothing is a pain in the butt, and unfortunately you can't fake it (believe me, I've tried).

Nice, nice work.

[blissik]

Chris,
Thanks for your time and advice. Feedback helps feed my muse and gets me going. I have redone this image again. Hopefully improving the drawing , getting some hard and soft edges in there, a bit more detail, and backing off from the all green-all day motif. Not sure how real the sense of light and atmosphere is. This image is all from imagination, but I think I'd be better off using reference material more until I really "get" things like folds.
http://home.comcast.net/~vq001/t1700b1e.jpg

[blissik]

Decided it was too static and too dark, so did another repaint. Here it is. Comments, critiques welcome.
http://home.comcast.net/~vq001/t1700c_640.jpg

[Chris Beatrice]

My advice: time to move on my friend. I can't figure out what you're trying to do with the lighting any more. You've learned a lot on this one, and maybe now you need a fresh piece.