not so good...

[meesta spawkoro]

hey everyone... i recently bought a wacom and i've just been messing around with it a bit. this is my first attempt at painting anything digitally and i'm not too happy with the results. any suggestions on how to improve would appreciated. thanks in advance :)

http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid68/p5a4f70f108f7f47f59bcf74c34eac8f1/fbc31d1a.jpg

[meesta spawkoro]

87 views and no responses? is it THAT bad? if so, please tell me.

c'mon, help a brotha out.

[incognito]

don't worry. I like it, but I think that the eyes are whats bothering you. Nice drawing any way, I like it.
:chug:

[black_fish]

Overall you need more contrasts in your values. Where is the light coming from? What is the color of the light and how is it going to affect the shadows on her face? Painting is about understanding light, as opposed to drawing which describing shapes with lines.

And the background is distracting.

[thomasjm]

I like it, my first attempts at painting in PS are all failures, so to me, that is a VERY good first attempt or so!!! :)

[behemot5]

it's a cool drawing but it needs more volumes..it's flat..

[daniele]

i like it, you should pu more light, darken some parts and putting light dots on others.


I like very muche the"feeling" that this work has.

i do'n understand what she has over the head, it' s not perfectly readeble.

[meesta spawkoro]

thanks for the comments everyone :)

i know it's flat, but i'm not really sure how to make it pop out. i know i have to some more lights and darks, but i don't really know where/how to put them

the thing on her head is supposed to be a bandana, it didn't turn out well at all, i know. it's supposed to be bangs (fringe) in front, then the bandana, then spikey hair at the back.

[DustinTrimble]

I'm way new to painting too, but I think there is two main ways to get that contrast,
1. value painting,
2. color painting.

Value seems to be more like adding whites and grey to your color to create darker and lighter versions.

Color is using colors that read as lighter and darker values to create the kind of illusion of value.

It's not quite that simple, it seems a whole different world than drawing.

[skvv]

I like this one for the content already, let me guess, is this a ladyfriend's webcam pic? The facial light source looks like a monitor. I think if you were to remove the overhead lighting this piece would have a much better effect. Another thing that might give this piece more life would be a neutral background (dark blue/grey or dark pink) so the spikey hair is barely seen but still noticeable.

The lines around the main parts are being thrown off by the semi-realistic lighting on the top of the head, like everyone else has said you could try to give more volume to the face (but that's probably pretty hard with the given lightsource), if you want to go realistic take away the black lines, if not I'd say increase them, put them around everything like a sketchy comic book.

[Blackwell]

Hey Meesta,

I think this is a really nice start for being your first attempt with the Wacom. I don't have any suggestions as far as technique with the tablet, having not used one much myself, but here's my take on the lighting.
From the specular highlights in the hair, and the subdued lighting on the face, it looks to me like there's a fairly strong light source coming from above and ambient lighting coming from the front. Based on this, I did a real basic paint-over focusing on using the overhead light to fill out some volume in her face. I mainly concentrated on the nose and cheekbones, with some subtle highlighting in and near the eyes, the top lip, the ear, and some speculars on the eyebrow ring (which are actually wrong based on the light position, but oh well.)
The other option would be to take evisr8r's advice and bump up the light coming from in front of her, in which case you'd do almost the opposite - add a blueish light to the very tip of her nose, the middle to bottom areas of the lips, the areas of the face below the cheekbones, above the eye itself but under the eyebrow, and some additional specularity to the eyes themselves. If I had had time, I would have gotten rid of the black lines and used darker values, but it really depends on the kind of look you're going for.

http://members.cox.net/pmansfield/overpaint.jpg