Plume (finally finished)

[Qitsune]

Finished acrylic version at bottom

India Ink & Photoshop.
The background is a bit busy for my tastes which is why I did the out of focus blur thing, makes the character stand out a bit.
She's a character I play in a P&P rpg.
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y201/qitsune/plumeblured.jpg

[vcoleman]

If you're promoting the character then more often then not you need to show the face. I would love to see a reversial of this piece: an in-your-face front view with the forshortening of the bow and arrow and the dragon in the foreground. Take advantage of everything from a dynamic pose to bg to push a character in action.

[Sara-San]

I agree, you should take advantage of the dynamic pose. Also, remember that the entire torso will twist with the shoulders, especially with shooting an arrow. How it is at the moment, she'd likely snap the cord on her boobs, which is never fun.

[Interceptor]

Great detail. The thing that really stand out to me though, is that you have to think about the pic to realize she is fighting some large dragon-ish characters. They look like little bats or something. You have a TON of empty space in front of her, make the dragon closer and take up more of the screen

[BMunchausen]

I dont' think the blur strategy is helping the over-busy background. I think that needs to be toned down in a more practical way, by eliminating some of the detail.

[Qitsune]

I guess what I'll do is push the horizon down some. So her legs are in front of the sky, not in front of the buring city.

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y201/qitsune/plumelayersrework.jpg

[johann]

good idea, pushing the background down!

looking much better now, focus now really is at the girl.

[Qitsune]

Decided to turn this into an acrylic plainting so I reworked the main character, I will also use the second layout, redraw the dragon/demon things and touch up some details before it's ready to go on canvas.

Please crit the anatomy.

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y201/qitsune/plumewiptoile1.jpg

[DSillustration]

i was just going to comment on your anatomy.
but you seem to have improved it greatly.

her left arm is odd.
the elbow should be back toward us considerably.
i know asian archers hold their elbows much higher than westerners,
but still,
i really recommend having someone take that pose and photographing it.

a beautiful rendering of her back could make this an amazing piece.
dont sell it short on poor anatomy.
get reference.

[dogfood]

Her right leg is weirder than Elle McPherson at a Star Trek convention. It is very wide with a massive calf (almost a whole cow). The arrow hand is too high. The arrow should be perpendicular to the bow (with this type) and parallel to the bow arm. Reference. It's today's watch word.

But, this has a lot of potential and seems much better than the original. I'm a big fan of redrawing stuff in the learning process.

[madster]

Screw taking a photo of that pose gitsune. You know as well as I do the values/limitations of photographs...

Dogfood, while hilarious with his analogies this morning, is pretty dead on, as I'm sure you also know. While I agree some with the reference suggestion, I think it needs to be more selective than simply "reference" (NOTE TO "REFERENCE" PARROTS - Be SPECIFIC!), as in Archery references. You'll find that her drawing arm is too high. You pull straight back, close to the body. Her elbow should be behind her, as opposed to upwards and out.

General anatomy is pretty wonky across the board, but is part of being a WIP. Right now, she's real short, but too "stocky" to be so small, unless she's part dwarf, especially her J-Lo butt. Atheletes tend to have less pronouncement there, unless it is specifically developed, which I would not expect an archer to be that concerned with.

I like the lil' dragonettes, although the one she is aiming at doesn't look at all threatening, so much as kind of lazily cruising in her direction, with a somewhat bored expression on it's face.

Looking forward to the next incarnation of this!

~M

[Qitsune]

I think I looked at all the friggin' pictures of archers on the internet.

98.9% of them were taken with a front view, that does tell me how archers are positioned but doesn't tell me how it should look like.

Here are the very few references I found that relate more or less so maybe it will help imagine what I'm trying to achieve.

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y201/qitsune/rapid.jpg
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y201/qitsune/28.jpg
That's how high I want her elbow to be.
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y201/qitsune/tir_arc_yo01.jpg
(Yeah I know, nude archery seems a bit strange but we DO see his muscles.)

I often take pics of me or of my bf as reference when I need something specific, but in this case it's not quite possible.

I'll reduce her calf, I see the problem now as well as her being too stocky. I know her elbow looks weird but I haven't the slightest idea how to fix this.

Anyways, I'll fix the rest and maybe something will pop up.

[Hayabusa]

im no expert, but i can give u some advice becuase ive recently read up on something similar in a book

heres the deal..ur piece lacks a lot of depth...it looks as if the dragon thing is right beside the archer. to add more depth you need to vary the weight of your lines, and the amount of black and white in ur foreground or background. for example, the figure in the front most part of the piece should get some thicker lines (not TOOO THICK, but u know...thickest in the piece). the dragon and anything else should be outlined with a thinner line...also, u gotta decide where to put in blacks, ur forground or background. u have to chose to either have the character in black, and the background which recedes only done in tiny thin white outlines. this will give more depth. if u choose to whiten the character, then u can have the background buildings in the distance blacker. i think for this picture, it would work better if the character is the way it is, and the buildings and stuff which is farther from the viewer be done in just outlines, or at least less dark then it is now...that way u dont have to blur the whole thing to create depth

[madster]

Sometimes, it's hit or miss as to which keywords might pull up what you need...
Her head and neck look pretty dead on:
http://www.ayurvedichealers.com/images/Photos/woman's-back.jpg
Here are a couple more back refs. Hopefully the first one will help some with her elbow.
http://margo.student.utwente.nl/simon/images/photo/simon_shooting_back.jpg
http://www.theweebsite.com/tempus/archery/step07a.gif

The blur thing looks bad. You're too early in this piece to be worrying about something like that, since the lil' dragon dudes are working compositionally.
Will this be in color? if so, hues and contrasts will serve you much better in portraying depth than blur will.

Heck of a challenge for you, but it's looking good so far. Keep chewing, you'll get it, I'm sure!

~M

(I don't know a damn thing about art, but I can give you advice because I read about something similar in a book once, and I DID stay at a Holiday Inn last night....)http://smiley.onegreatguy.net/lmao.gif

[Qitsune]

Or so it seems, two posts in the same evening.

Thanks Madster for the pic, it's pretty much what I was looking for.

Here's the direction I'm taking. She's gotten slender, with a smaller calf, lower and rounder elbow, smaller head. I think her left foot needs to be a wee bit bigger.

Is her butt still too big? I'm not used to looking at chicks' butts.

I want to give the dragon a more chinese look too. And make it closer a bit.

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y201/qitsune/plumewiptoile2.jpg

Also, this is going to be rendered in color, a lot like this other lady:
LannSama (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=48893)

[Hayabusa]

the dragon looks way cooler

[dogfood]

Much better! The right leg is still weirding me out, though. I assume it must be a pant leg doing that puffy thing, but I would recommend drawing the leg without it, then adding the material. Clothing does weird stuff and it's tough to draw believably right out of your head. Digging the dragon, too; much more menacing. Great references all around, everyone!

Happy birthday, by the way!

[madster]

http://www.fortune3.com/~comp74688/49233003.jpg
http://www.artchixstudio.com/gallery/images/KellyBurton_geisha%20happy%20birthday%20by%20kelly .jpg
http://www.bemine.com/categories/bday/bday40012.gif
http://www.visionballoons.co.uk/images/Teletubbies%20-%20Happy%20Birthday.jpg
http://angel-guide.com/image-files/angel-cherub-happy-birthday-bouquet.jpg
~M

[Qitsune]

Thank you Madster! Thanks everyone for the good advices.

I'm back from my 3 days, 3K ppl birthday party (actually a psytrance festival) 4 hours in the woods north of Montreal with a sunburn from hell and I'm ready to take this drawing further.

[Silly]

This looks good, won't you consider changing her dress to show her bare back?

I think the curve of her right back is a bit too convex, given how I imagine her back is arched (legs are at an angle but upper body is straight) I think a more concave curve there would look better. As it is the thorax seems a bit too massive to me.

With the strange tower in the background, my first impression was some type of factory, with all the smoke rising. Do you really NEED that tower?

[Qitsune]

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y201/qitsune/plumewiptoile3.jpg

Ok, here's what I plan to do with the colors (I don't know how I'm going to pull that with acrylics tho)

Silly: This is basically telling a story (from a rpg I used to play with my friends), I'm treating it like it was a bookcover, so I respect how the story happened and what the characters looked like. I find it to be a good exercise in that it forces me to draw much more interaction than I usually do. She would look cool with a bare back, but she's a 50'somethin scout/spy type of character, I want to make her a bit more lowkey.

[Madster2]

Gitsune, you might want to rethink the base of that column behind the dragon...it's a bit, shall we say, provocative? :D

The color scheme looks real good for this, though! I can easily imagine it as a cover piece.

~M

[Qitsune]

There it is, finally finished! I'll have a better pic taken some time for for now everything I have left to do is a few coats of matte varnish.

I'm not sure I should post it in the finally finished section.

Thank you to everyone who helped out.
Anyone has crits?

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y201/qitsune/plumetoilefinishsmall.jpg

[madster]

Chantal, although it does look nice, and is worlds better than your starting image, I still would not consider this F.F. material, because the background is lacking. Beyond some vague color swirls of smoke/clouds/??? there really is no background to this piece. No atmosphere, no environment for this story to be happening. Nothing to catch the viewer's eye and possibly tell a bit more as to why this woman is shooting this dragon creature...

The dissertation about this alone could go on for awhile, but in and of itself, it is an important enough omission to keep it from "presentation quality..."

Just my opinion, I'm sure others have a differing POV... ;)

~M