Fat Cat's Honor

[Snowfly]

This is a commissioned piece done on and off over 3 days, only the head of the human character was photorefed (it's the guy who commissied it)

Still not happy with my color work, everything I do has a chalky quality to it, probably from my background of painting with watercolor. WIsh I could paint more like this http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=83455 , the pieces have a very slick and oily feel to them... how to get that effect? Is it the color choice? Brushes used? :(

[Faustie]

I think the coloring is really working in this piece, as are the cat people. My only real beef is that the guy looks too feminine. When I first looked at it, I was wondering why the woman in the front was pointing to the statue in the back. Maybe tone down his lip color or give him more definition in his face. Also his right shoulder pad (left to us) looks a little too big. But it does look very nice, keep it up!

[Mr-Joe]

Hi, I think its a pretty nice piece, I think there are a number of different reasons for that oily look you are talking about, I think it is a combination of brushes, use of hard and soft edges, blending and rendering. Which program are you using to paint? If it is photoshop, I would stay away from the chalky grainy textured brushes at first, lay in your colors with simple round hard and soft edge brushes to establish the basic colors and values of the painting, I'm sure a lot of artists have there own custom blending brush in photoshop, I know a lot recommend having a splatter like brush to blend to give a more natural paint brush look. I think there is a thread in the photoshop section of the forum that people post there brushes to share, I would try finding some brushes that look like real brush strokes.
I'm sure that painterly look also comes from knowing where to put your details and knowing a lot about compositions.
I think its more of the way you render the painting, if you want a more realistic look, sometimes that gives it a more "oily painterly quality" rather than a less rendered cartoon like cell shaded look. Which this has a lot to do with knowledge of how to use colors and values to paint realistic light.
If you have Corel painter, it might be a bit easier to obtain a more painterly look, just use some oil paint brushes or acrylic brushes, or brushes that have a realistic paint stroke look to them.

it seems that you have a good understanding of light and color, I would suggest trying different brushes to render and blend.

also study some of the paintings of styles that you want to obtain similar effects in your own works, and try to see how they use color and values as light, and try to figure out how different brushes can give the effect of textures.

I hope some of this made some sense.

Joe.

[Mr-Joe]

Hey Snowfly, I hope you don't mind, I did a quick paint over to try and get a more painterly feel to it, I mostly softened up some of the shadow areas and did a little blending, I used a couple brushes, a Basic round Hard edge brush and a basic round soft edge brush for blocking in some areas, with no options on pen pressure,
then I also used a Oval brush similar to basic round, Bumskee has this brush, you can get it in his sketchbook thread, it has Flow set to pen pressure, I used 100% opacity for some of the highlight areas and low 25% opacity for blending and softer areas, with flow always at 100%
Then I overlaid a wooden like texture around 35% and masked out the areas that would "have more paint" so that areas with "less paint" it shows through a little bit to give it a more traditional look, then I used a paper texture with multiply layer on around 35% and masked out some of the areas of shadow to make the characters pop out a little. Merged it together did a little color adjusting and thats it.

The first is the original, then second is painter over in black and then the color paint over version,

Please let me know if you would like me to take these images down,

[TOOLED!]

i like it for the most part but the figures seem stiff and expressionless, and the human doesnt seem very happy he got a key to a city. good job none the less.