Shadow wolve.. help wanted for creating a cool creature

[Sebastian W.]

Hi everyone.

After reading "Song of ice and fire" I wanna paint a badass wolve, as bigger as a horse and angry. I´m happy about every hint or critique.
At the moment I´m not sure about the legs. Maybe they are to straight.
The structures in the background will become a nice army hopefully.
Its important for me to get the values right this time before coloring.

[Lhune]

The face looks pretty cool so far, I think I can see what you're trying to go for. It would seem that you're not very familiar with wolf anatomy though. Wolf legs are stiff and straight, but not quite that far apart. I also kind of miss it's hind quarters, because wolves have very straight backs. It could be hunching somewhat, but that's a very awkward and not very convincing position for a wolf to be in.

Here's my 'red'lines:



Other than that though this looks pretty promising .

[MT-Mystic]

Yeah, go do some wolf studies from photos or something. Your forms are really mushy and the pose is really off.

[Bai Fan]

I agree. Doesn't feel very "wolf-like" right now.

[Daniel Andrews]

Great paint-over for underlaying structure.
Studies and good ref will help you big time.
"Its important for me to get the values right this time before coloring." If this was a question, then yes. Rule of thumb for steps to flesh out as well as you can is; 1. The drawing 2. The values 3. Color
You have a decent start, have fun with it.

[Sebastian W.]

Thank you all for your replies, and thank you Lhune for the overpaint. It helped me a lot.
I searched for some new references and decided to go for another perspective. In my opinion the image is much clearer now, but I have to think about the composition.

[Lhune]

Sorry for continually painting over your picture, ahah!

What I think will really strengthen your composition is giving the wolf more character. The soldiers are relatively tiny and dark, the wolf is the first thing that catches the viewer's attention, so it should be worth it. Make it stand proud, have it tell a story.



(Shameless copy-pasting going on there)

I did a bit of experimenting with your picture myself, I hope you don't mind. I think it would really add to the pic and the impact it gives if you made the army look huge. For instance, keep showing those spears and heads up into the far distance, where the rest of the army is waiting on a hill for their wolf-riding leader to give his command.

Really just sharing ideas, I hope it'll help you out !

[Sebastian W.]

Lhune: Thank you, it´s priceless having people like you, around me in this community.
I made a few changes on my image, as you can see, and followed your suggestions with the wolves head and the legs of the rider.
And don´t mind. You can paint over my image as often as you want

[LaurenMagpie]

I agree with the other crits you've got so far, your image would really improve with changing the wolf's body position, not just its head. And do some studies of wolves to get a good grasp of their anatomy and the way they move.

[misosoupaddict]

Lhune's head tilted downward with narrowed eyes seems like a good idea, the wolf seems more menacing. Also research wolf body language, there are a whole set of signs they use to indicate aggression, pride, boredom, whatever. Highly intelligent animals.

(this post brought to you by rum)

[Novbert]

I'd also suggest to completely redraw the wolf's body. It's way to big in comparison with the head. Its legs look too stiff and are in a too symmetrical position - they could use some dynamism. The leg of the sitting figure is too small and is a bit out of perspective. The tail of the wolf doesn't look like it was connected to the body. You could also experiment with more contrast to define focus.

[Sebastian W.]

Thank you for your comments everyone: I changed the wolves anatomy a bit.
I´ll leave the face, at the moment I´m happy with it. Here is a small update.

[Sebastian W.]

anther update...

[Sebastian W.]

I made the rider bigger and stronger and changed his pose a bit. Then I added a lot of detail everywhere... It turns out good in my opinion

[Marlo]

It feels to me like the chin of the wolf dissapeared.

[Spiderlok33]

Yes that was what it was no chin, it might be just me but the leg armor doesnt seem to match the wolf, for some reason i saw the armor as a horse (lol) but then again that could be just me

[Lhune]

The wolf looks rather more like a monstrous terrier than a wolf because of all it's long hair.



But then vicious, like. It still looks cool though . I like how you made the wolf's armour out of parts of human armour.

I'm just not sure where the light comes from? I think you should make the top left part of the picture lighter overall if it's to create such a strong highlight on the wolf and human's armour.

[Truepinkas]

I am loving the color choices in your most recent update.

I'm not sure if your going to continue to work on this piece or not, but for this one, or next one, you should really make better use of references for animals/creatures. You clearly have a very strong grasp of human anatomy, and clearly a much weaker grasp of animal anatomy. That difference in knowledge is showing through in the image and is really dragging down what would otherwise be an extremely awesome picture.

Best wishes, looking forward to seeing more.

[MarcSampson]

it looks odd sorry but at ur level i dont see a reason in adding detail to this confusing composition..go get pics of wolves and horseriders and make some studies ..show them here then u can go one step ahead and make a "wolfrider" this is a very difficult picture u want to master with not enough studies .

[Sebastian W.]

Thank you for the many helpful replies. I made a few changes on the wolves anatomy.

Lhune: It´s very painful seeing this cute little dog compared to my badass wolve, but you are totally right.
I made his hair shorter and more clumpyand tried to get a better lightning in the upper left with a few gradients.

Truepinkas and MarcSampson: You are right too, the wolve really lacks.
I will try to improve him as good I can...

[Sebastian W.]

last update for today...

[Lhune]

It's better because you can see the structure of the wolf more this way, but you could push it a lot further, especially in the muzzle area.



This is the best ref I could find that comes close to your wolf's position. Study the head and muzzle carefully, what makes them stand out from the chest? As will become obvious, a wolf is not entirely covered in long thick hair. Instead, the whole of a wolf's muzzle is covered in tiny little hairs, smoothly following the structure of it's face.



I hope this helps! You've really come a long way with this painting as it is!

[Sebastian W.]

Thank you again, Lhune, the references are awesome. I have to work on another painting at the moment,
so the next update on this image will be in one or two weeks, perhaps even later. I think some fresh eyes will be helpful.

[Adrian Devine]

Wow this is getting really epic!

In your last update you seem to have toned down the figures in the bottom right. Was that so that they don't distract from the focal point? I don't think they did, really. And by toning them down you've lost a lot of depth from the painting. Looks a bit flat there to me now.

I guess the only thing that's not quite working for me is the wolf and the guy seem a bit... disconnected. I mean, he seems to be willing the stationary wolf onward and it seems like it's oblivious. Something else has its attention. I guess such a large and presumably vicious beast might be a bit temperamental, but to me the guy looking a bit like a frustrated passenger is less satisfying than him being the victorious master.

It's turning out pretty fantastic though - hope you can work on it again soon

[ImagineTheEnding]

I think that the knight is a little bit too small and is far too close to the wolf's bum. It looks a little like he's going to fall off. I also think that the head is way too small.

Otherwise, the color scheme looks nice and when finished it should be kick ass.

[Sebastian W.]

I finally found some tme and here is another update.

Adrian Devine: The idea was, that the wolve is watching something outside the picture, perhaps a menace the rider doesnt´t saw yet. But perhaps I´ll change it later.

ImagineTheEnding:Thanks, your response was very helpful. As you can see I made the rider bigger and changed his position. It looks much better now, imo.
I think I will keep the small head, I really like this warhammer kind of proportions with a huge armor and tiny head, like a space marine.