Rate my gasmask

[Sept13]

After some tries in the weekly activities, I've calmy taken some steps back to study anatomy and lighting. Pretty much what I tried to accomplish with this picture, was to learn more painting, anatomy, shapes and lighting.

What I personally think, is that I've learned quite a lot of the anatomical part Painting still seems rather clumsy and I clearly don't have the skill to play around with lighting yet.

So, obviously, please give advises on what to focus on and possibly some tips how to approach it.

The picture itself took about 7-9 hours to finish from me.

[jubilee]

perhaps its just my monitor but this pic seems quite dark to me. its hard to make out the figure. And my work tends to run dark so that's saying a lot

[Jason C-M]

Originally Posted by Sept13

Pretty much what I tried to accomplish with this picture, was to learn more painting, anatomy, shapes and lighting.

That's an awful lot to try to get out of one painting! Maybe some more focused studies are in order. Your anatomy here seems to be coming along nicely, but most of the forms feel very flat (look at the neck and the gas-mask in particular). Some basic form rendering or simple still lifes would probably do a world of good for getting more 3 dimensional space into your work.
Especially with such a flat-on pose, you need some good paint work to give things volume. Do you notice how the b/g seems to be on pretty much the same plane as the figure? That flattens it even further.

[Jho]

I really love the lighting in the (his) right "arm", the machine one. I think you already know, but the biggest error is the skincolour. Can't do it right myself so its hard to tell what you sould/shouldn't do. But I just can't figure anything bad to say about rendering the machine arm.
Greate piece, and the darkness of the pic isn't a weakness in my oppinion, I rather like it that way.

[gl0gg]

When I first saw it, the biggest problem was that the arm appeared as if it was far in front of the character since the metal is so bright. What is the metal reflecting? It seems like it should be pretty dark around the character so then reflecting surfaces should be dark as well, no?

[Auralius]

I give it a six.

I like the darkness too, but I agree with gl0gg about the reflection on the metal. Looks like you'll have to choose one or the other...

Nice eyes.

[Sept13]

Thank you all for the critique, I agree I should take some more steps back and try not to include so many elements in my practises. Also, another thank you for the note on lighting, I didn't realise it before but now I totally understand what you meant.

I learned a valuable lesson with this thing, so off to practise more

Edit: I actually tried to do a really bold and fast shadowing of the mechanical arm, nothing more:
http://zaba.tiimipeli.net/roskaa/valaistus.JPG

[Pixeldragoon]

You know, you shuold read Prometheus's tutorial, it talks about how you should always start with the biggest, softest brush. I can see that you used alot of small strokes. Usually it's better to make bigger, longer strokes, unless of course you aren't using a tablet... Then it's pretty hard. Good luck to ya! (Thanks for listening to the critique offered by these guys!)