Death

[Sakievich]

Well, I think its done. I am, however, open to critiques.

So start the mudslinging!!


http://home.byu.net/~pas25/Galleryimages/4critiquefinal.jpg

[EVIL]

the pic doesnt work :) nm/ it already works

love the colorsheme

[talos72]

Beautifull work. Love the colors the rendering. Her cool colored face against the warm background, nice! I actually think the bottom 1/3 of the composition might not be necessary, even though the headstones are really nicely rendered. Other than that, not much major crit...great stuff.

Hey, maybe you can post some tuts on this one. Just a thought. :cool:

[MindCandyMan]

Looks awesome man...I love the tombstone in the distance behind her...that's a nice touch.

[stalecracker]

VERY nice! I like her face alot. My only crit is the space between her and the bottom set of tombstones. That area is a little dead. I did a quick edit in PS. Hope you don't mind and hope you find it useful. Either way. Nice work.

http://www.imagemagician.com/images/stalecracker/4critiquefinal_PO.jpg


I also added some cool blues to the foreground and a glow around her face. See what you think. BTW- Let me reiterate that I really like the image.

[mcotie]

Sakievich, I love it.... click

new wallpaper!

good job man, really.


Stalecracker... uuhh, looked better the other way.



Mitch

[stalecracker]

Perhaps..
the blues and glow where an aftethought of a crit. To me the stark whiteness of the face is jarring. BUT the space beneath Death and the foreground Stones, In my opinion, divides the image and create a void. It divides the image into 3's... Death... the red grass glow... and the foreground stones.

[Batteram]

Very cool. I like the perspective in this picture, that is, you detailed the close-up tombstones and added less and less details as you progressed into the foreground.
The face looks a little bit too clean for me. I know that Death is meant to be symbolic but she is meant to be the main focal point so maybe you could add a bit more detai to her face, like a little bit of dirt, scratches, maybe even have some blood dripping down her chin. I don't know, I just feel that she needs something else.
Other than that its a great piece and the colours in this one compliment each other very well. I like your style.

[Ironspy]

All these opinionated posts are starting to bug me. While art is in its entirety an opinion, it is the artists final decision what goes on. I can't say that without being hypocritical but oh well..

Death is a symbol... death is a myth that transcends stereotypical renditions and interpretations of the concept. First, Death is given a gender. Second, the colors are unusually beautiful for what one normally thinks of surrounding death. It is beautiful. The piece still contains the traditional harvest scythe, and "alas poor Yorick I knew him well skull pose". It questions our normal conceptions of what death is, I see it as more beautiful than anything else.

As for the face, stalecracker has a point, the glowy stuff is unesessary, but the blue contrast to the orange background could in fact help the piece. It doesn't have to glow in an angelic way, or even be "obscenely blue", but it could put emphasis on the figure if you so choose to. The blue can also be a painterly feature making a cold color move to the foreground in a workable way.

Blah blah blah. Cropping? Figure is in the direct center of the composition, it works, but ever consider it to emphasize your point? What IS your overall point or is it just something we should gather for ourselves. For crit purpose I'm curious :-)

I've gone and contradicted myself in a subtle way. Just some suggestions or questions posed. My opinion: great piece.

-Spying on mudslingers

[Lono]

Sakievich: this is fantastic!
i would love to see how you work.


Ironspy: FYI, he stated that he was open to critiques.
people generally post here to recieve just that. its the nature of this forum.. sharing..... artwork, wisdom, and opinions. all valuable.

nothing wrong with "opinionated posts".. so long as there constructive and tactful.. all of the above comments seem to fit that criteria.

-Lono

[talos72]

the compositional suggestion was just that...I thought the cool, brighter valued headstones in foreground somewhat compete with the emphasis on her face. That's all...again, it's a wonderfull painting. :beer:

[Sakievich]

Wow thanks for all the thoughts, critiques, and counter critiques.

Talos72-as for composition, I was tried to create a circular composition that would allow the eye to move around in a circle in the image, this way the viewer would not get "stuck". I will look a little at alternate croppings though.

Stalecracker-I took a little tour of your site, I especcially like your pumpkin on the blue background. Thanks for your thoughts on making a more dynamic image. There are a couple reasons why I decided to limit my pallette to an analagous (with red as the unifying color). One, I have never really taken anything this far in Painter and so I wanted to keep the colors really simple. Second, the original project was done in oil for a class a year ago as a Halloween project, hence the orange to red colors. In the oil painting (which is really horrendous) the face actually had a slight purple tint to it. I will look at the skin colors a little more later.

Batteram-I wanted to avoid the "gory" possibilities. Death is just doing her thing, very professionally and is doing her best to avoid the mess! :)

Ironspy-Don't worry, I can be plenty opinionated too, and part of being opinionated is taking others opinions!! My very first original point was getting a project done. My second was looking at the irony of the mythical death. She brings it to our door, but never to her own. She deals out eternal rest, but she must labor on. Why a girl, well...in many languages death is a feminine word (ie Russian and Lithuanian, I am told it is also feminine in Spanish). As for interpretations, I prefer to let others choose their own.

Anyway, please keep critiquing, I am going to set this image aside for a while and come back to it in a few weeks with fresh eyes!

Merry Christmas All and a Happy New Year!!!

[mushuhaha]

Well, I think death is a complete piece, but the only thing that troubles me is what defines this image's protagonist's gender. The only part of this image that speaks of gender is death's face, more specifically her lips, but her gesture and body shape don't really reflect the female language. I mean, every one just kind of take it for granted that this death is female, buy by looking at her body, I get the feeling that she's actually a very feminine male...

[davi]

Ironspy: I'm glad you said something about the opinionated pieces. I've noticed that alot on pieces. I've had people completely rip apart the main concept of my piece because they thought it would be "better"(aka cooler) if I did something another way. I feel like I get that with every piece I do.

To be honest I view crits like that to be more insulting than helpful. For every 10 crits i get, usually 3 of them might have some real help behind them, but enough from me whining.

This is a beautiful piece, I agree with talos72 about the tombstones making the piece look alittle odd as a whole, but I'm pretty sure it would be impossible for you to crop out because of how beautiful they are. Since they are so beautiful I don't think anyone would mind them being there either, unless they were asked to crit.

Great work and I hope to see more from you in the future.

[necron99]

I like it just the way it is. Love the way the red comes through the shadows - and the composition seems solid.

[Living Rope]

that one shouldn't suffer any comment. This is nearly perfect.
You rule, man !

JSR

[stalecracker]

I will agree, ONE more time, I like this piece. Sakievich ASKED for crits. I gave mine. Seems to be an underlying current of "How dare you sully such a masterpiece". Please... EVERY single piece I post gets crits good and bad. IF you don't want a crit don't post. This is not directed at Sakievich. He responded well. Took the suggestion like a Professinal. Not to start anything here but to those who have a problem with crits, constructive or otherwise... DEAL with it. It's a part of this job we all do (or want to do)
Trust me... I have sat on the phone through a 45 minute "deconstruction" of my work for a client. When I was a bit put off and said" Well, is there anything you do like?" I was met with "You still work for me so apparently there is."
Point taken.
So Sakievich... I do like the piece. Good Deal.

[Sakievich]

mushuhaha-Well, I guess you can interpret it anyway you would like.

davi-thank you for your defense, but I did post it for critique, not for "oohs" and "ahhs".

necron99, Living Rope-Thanks you two are much too nice.

stalecracker-Don't you love art direction, my favorites are the ones who know what they want when they see it, and not till then. And thank you for your honest thoughts.

[Jason Manley]

the face is the only part of the painting lacking atmospheric color...the reds....it looks cut out because of that....I think that is what stale cracker was responding to. the blue face in the edit is the same...it does not look like it is in the scene because its color and value is so isolated. I really dont think either work well that way...if she was emitting light perhaps then she would not have the atmospheric color...but she is not emitting light..she is death...

I dunno..over all it is a pretty decent piece...the reds in the robe look great...

maybe Im just crabby but I think you could find some more interesting tomb stones...the textures and colors on them are nice..but the design of them are so so. They are handled well though..Id use more reference for them.

the hand under the skull could use a second pass as well.

nice drawing in the head and face though...nice expression too.

j

[Blazzo]

I sling mud now.

The skull looks too shiny, the scythe is too flimsy, and I don't like the grey jumpsuit under her robe.
Granted, the first and last are baseless knitpicking, but I did some research on Google and found some ground to back up the one about the scythe.
Here is kind of what I normally imagine death's tool-of-whatever-it-does to be, without the chrome finish:
http://www.scythesource.com/anatomy.htm

To be fair, I also found this site (http://www.fellpony.f9.co.uk/country/haytime/haytime2.htm) which says that a version more similar to the one in your picture is older and was slowly replaced by the more efficient curved, handled model.
If you want to be really original and wierd, do something with the hay rake (there's a link in the second site), which was considered at the time to be a more feminine tool.

Isn't it bizarre that there's a site called scythesource.com?
:beer:

[Sakievich]

Jason Manley-I was thinking about pulling a little pink into the shadows of the face. The reference I used for the gravestones didn't have too many exciting gravestones, I guess I could do some more digging...(get it, Hah!). The face, gravestones, and hand...all reasons for coming back to this painting in a couple weeks after the break to adjust it.

Blazzo-Yes it is bizarre, and yes your scythes are much cooler! Your name is odd too.

Thank you both for your comments!