I have been working on this one for way too long. It's a second piece for my 7 deadly sins- series (I'm not going to make you guess this time, it's sloth). I'm stuck. The colours are too blah, and the composition lacks dynamics, but I don't know what to do with it anymore, so any suggestions will be taken into consideration. I think I'm not going to be drawing these 7 deadly sins -pieces for a while, because I don't really like the direction they're taking me stylewise. It's a bit too art nouveau, too cute, too polished. I really want to finish this one though, so any feedback is appreciated!
I know I've been kind of abusing Illustration Friday -topics a few times now (there must be a special section in Hell just for us IF-abusers...), but I promise I'll draw something inspired by the topic next time.
16 comments:
Great illo!! You've a great style!! I love it
I still like where this series is taking you! You're style is so great! How about (a humble suggestion here) perhaps bringing some of the orange into the fish below, and perhaps making her hair blue or lavender for added punch and color harmony? It's still great the way it is :)
I can't really give you any suggestions about the style becuause I love the Art Nouveau look. I think it really communicates "sloth" with the dripping down flow.
The only color I think of when I think, "sloth" is a blah gray, as opposed to white. Gray however, may make it less aesthetically appealing (but then again maybe that's what you want.)
I have not seen your work before and I think it's amazing and you should keep going! It's really incredible!!!
Really well made; style, colour, composition and components!!
"I'm stuck. The colours are too blah, and the composition lacks dynamics, but I don't know what to do with it anymore, so any suggestions will be taken into consideration."
Are you KIDDING? This piece is spot-on! One of my new favourites. You must have been working too long on this and that might be the reason you think it´s "blah". And it certainly doesn´t lack dynamics.
Very well done. Keep it away from yourself for two days and look at it again, you´ll see it´s perfect as it is.
What about brightening up the background with more intense sky colors - make it look like she's sorta floating in the air, even though she's laying on a tree branch?
Or turn the sky into a colorful sunset...
Or leave the background as is and brighten up the rest of what you have already there...
Or brighten up the fish and add a hint of an ocean at the bottom to round out the piece, adding to the surreal feel...
It's hard to offer suggestions because I'm not really sure what your goal is for the piece.
I'm curious, is your piece digital, painted, pen?
Thank you all for taking the time to give me feedback and suggestions! I promise I'll try out your suggestions and I'll post the finished piece here to show how it turned out!
slw: I like art nouveau too, I just don't want to rely on a certain style yet, I'm still kind of finding my style and experimenting on different things. I agree on the dripping down flow, I think I'll modify the braches a little to accentuate it further!
fred: you're right, I've been working on it forever, I think I started drawing it a few months ago! Plus lately I've been obsessed with Aubrey Beardsley, and compared this one to his work, that may be the reason I'm not happy with this one at all...
black mamba: very good points. I'm not sure what my goal is either, usually I just play around in Photoshop until I like the result, but this time it didn't quite work. The green stuff in the branches, the skirt and part of the hair is done in Illustrator, so it's vector, but everything else is drawn by hand with pen and pencil, and then I kind of merged them together in Photoshop. This is how I make most my work, I like to do the drawing by hand, then the fine tuning and colouring digitally, it really seems to work for me.
First of all I can see the influence of Aubrey Beardsley in your piece. It is really interesting. The line work is really cool and the colors I think are great. I think that making them brighter might make it feel less slow. The neutrals make if feel slow which is good for "sloth" I think.
When I first looked at it though my it was hard to tell what was going on. I think it might be a value thing.
The skirt thing really stands out more than anything else followed by the white. The amazing line work is a lot harder to see and it tells a lot of what it going on. (for example I didn't notice the fish until I blew it up ) What do you want everyone to notice first, and then go from there.
I am really excited to see what it turns out like. It is really interesting.
Good Luck
the best advice somebody ever gave me was "don't try to finish!".
it sounds weird, but you might notice the sketch are often more interesting than the final image. Well, i don't know for you, but this means really something for me.
don't focus on what this line, or that character could mean, wich color to use, etc... just draw! and it doesn't matter if there is some "empty" area, you should see then on the final image that it could be good sometimes to stop drawing when you don't feel it anymore.
I like your picture, I was thinking of that beacause you said you worked on it forever...
Very cool piece, what about a hint of blue to make it come alive a bit? I was going to say "pop" but it's so overused!
Very beautiful and sensitive!
Thank you for your comments!
manelle: It's partly intentional, that it's not easy to see what's happening in the picture. Although, the piece loses a lot of details in this size, so that might make it even harder to read. Great points you made!
itadakimasu: I know what you mean. I often like my sketches better than the finished pieces, too. I think about the outcome too much and that always makes the picture more formulaic and boring. As opposed to when you don't think about anything, and just let it happen, that's when the weird and interesting stuff happens!
I will be trying out all your suggestions later, now I'm trying deliberately to distance myself from this image. It's kind of working already, I'm liking it more and more!
thank you so much for your lovely comment. i cant believe i havent come across ur blog as well. its all so beautiful and mystical, im bookmarking you, definitely :)
cheers to IF!
-Jen
I agree.....take some time away. You aren't as far away from being finished as you think (if you ever are finished). As for the BEARDSLEY influence, it's there, but you've evolved it quite a bit.
cool one here!
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