3rd Demon General -WIP-

[Lalilulelo]

Hey, I'm having trouble (or so my friend says) with this background Something is missing as far as the feeling or look. Says it's getting a clay look or something. He can't put his finger on it. So I don't know what he's talking about. If you think it's lacking in anyway and have suggestions colorwise or look/feel related can you please drop a line! Anything else wouldn't hurt either.

Edit: Hahaha WOOPS. In such a hurry I didn't even link the image. Here's a thumbnail (click on it please). Again any help is appreciated.
http://xs22.xs.to/pics/05132/Debiru2005.jpg.xs.jpg (http://xs.to/xs.php?h=xs22&d=05132&f=Debiru2005.jpg)

[Skulldog]

Broken link, might want to check that. :)

[Lalilulelo]

Sorry about that. Fixed.

[P E N Ricklund]

Nice. The first I come to think about when I see it is the contrast between the mountain and waterfall/smoke, you need to make them stand out from one and another. The same comes for the knight and the background, they have about the same color scheme wich makes him even harder to recognize.
Another thing is that the background looks a little blury, and makes it look like mist (or clay).
The last thing might just be me, but the head and shoulder is the same size and almost the same color, which make them look alike, when I first looked for the head, I looked at the shoulder...

Hope I didn't rip apart you whole painting :/

Hugs!

[dogfood]

If you were to destaurate this, then blur it just a little, you would lose all cohesion. With a full range of values in all of the elements, you really flatten the image and make it very confusing.

The camera angle does little to add to the tension, along with the large amount of "dead" space (that which isn't helping tell the story, like the lower part of the piece).

This has a lot of potential and I like a lot of the design elements, but the rendering and value plan could have gone better.

[Lalilulelo]

yeah, it's not even done, I'm trying to get things worked out before I blindside myself and lose interest, thus ultimately fucked. So any suggestions are great.

[dogfood]

yeah, it's not even done

Yeah, I figured that was why you put "WIP" in the title (it actually took me a while to figure out what that meant when I first started posting a while back). What I'm saying is that it's much easier to lay in the foundation right from the start with a big brush. Be bold and put things where they belong. SLAM! You go back there! WHACK! You come toward me! Ka-TINK! Get me a cold beverage!

If you also lay out a number of thumbnail sketches, quickly done and very small, you can easily lay out your value plan and I find that they help me with my motivation. It's like having a road map. You may not no where you are, but you know where you're going and you can still pull off and see the world's second largest ball of string and get a Dilly Bar at the DQ.

I'd love to see you work this one over like a red headed step-child. You wouldn't believe how much you learn when you rework a piece.

[Lalilulelo]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v368/Lalilulelo/Debiru2005.jpg
any better?

[MuffinMan]

looks more like an alien rather than a demon...