A couple of digital paintings...

[Dreamed-Reality]

Hello, I'm new to conceptart, so in my first post I thought I'd post some of my work to be critiqued.

So, here is the first one:
-Backed Against a Wall (http://home.attbi.com/~sinemesis/artwork/inftk.jpg)

And a little background on the picture, I started during the last part of the summer, worked on it profusely! So I got sick of it, and put it aside for a long while, and started several other pictures, and finished some... but not all.

All airbrush in photoshop :)

Then here is the second one:
-Soldier in Explosion- (http://home.attbi.com/~sinemesis/artwork/soldier.jpg)

For this picture I've had this image swimming around in my head for awhile, and I finally decided to act on it. What I want to accomplish, is a semi-realistic comic book cover feel to it with dramatic lighting and composition.
What I'm going to do with it is have the character in the foreground holding a couple of guns, and have a wicked explosion in the background hurling men in all directions, and having this one the only survivor in a desert... at least that's what I'm planning for.

Again, all airbrush and photoshop.


Please critique my work, whenever I ask for help its always
"It looks good" or "Fix this..." how? "...I don't know..."
Anyway it kinda makes me mad, and I'm sure I'm in desperate need of it.

Thanks!

[HellTaxi]

i cant believe you can get that smooth texture in PS. You must tell me how. One thing you can fix is the realism of the wrinkles in the clothes. In the first pic especially, there are some wrinkles that dont need to be there. Look in a mirror and study for yourself. Good luck.

[Dreamed-Reality]

Yeah, I didn't have any references on my pictures, that's just done from my head, and yes, the wrinkles are overdone.
I mean, I'm trying to go for the "over exagerated" effect, but I think I may have over done it. Bah, it's digital, it's easy to fix :).

And then how I get the smooth textures is photoshop is easy (at least it is for me anyway)
Take my BMW Z3 for example, it's a work in progress (as are all my pictures :cry), but I'm nearly finished with it.
BMW (http://home.attbi.com/~sinemesis/artwork/BMWZ3.jpg)


As you can see in the picture^^^ that some lines are smooth and crisp while the other are blurry. Anyway, I'll get back to that layer. I use Photoshop 6.0, because I think that has the better airbrush than 7, that's whyt I don't use that.
I always start out with the darkest color/shade first when I'm doing digital paintings, and I choose that color, then lighten it up and paint on the vehichle, pretty soon, after a little while you'll have your 4-6 different colors that you switch to regularly, I usually make those swatches.

After I paint over that, ANY rough spots I either blur out, or smudge out, though I usually use the smudge tool on a lowers brush size (and zoom into about 200%). About then I have a really smooth "about what it's going to look like", then I take the airbrush- as I've been working with this tool the whole time, and set the brush size to 13 round-soft and start working the highlights really rough, just to get an approximation of it all, then I work the shadow/shade colors with that same brush. After that's all said and done, I lower the size even more, and repeat the same process. All this maybe took me about 30-40 minutes, with reference, an hour to an hour and a half, without a refernce.

Anyway, if anyone has any questions, just email me.
SiNemesis@attbi.com

Anyway, thanks for the comments.

[Groady]

Nice work. It's always interesting to hear how different people work. I often find it hard to crit works in progress, the only thing tha really bugs me is the ground in the second pic. It's just too flat and lacks dimention. Also the placement of the ear in the first pic seems wrong. It seems too far up his head. However this may have somthing to do with the angle. Anyway good luck, nice work.