Need help D: I can't seem to ever get a painted picture of mine to look finished. I just keep painting and painting and it looks like poo. I watch tutorials but I think you guys are just magic lol. I am using a ref as well.
This is precious! I can certainly understand your frustration, though. It seems like you've put a LOT of work into this already and to feel dissatisfied with it at this point is aggravating.
My boyfriend is more of a professional artist, so I asked for his opinion (hope that's okay!!) and we came up with some suggestions: Keep your brush opacity at 100% and use a lot of different colors to help your brushstrokes stand out. I think adding a darker color to the background (behind the farthest fringe of grass) would add some more depth to the piece. I saw this very nice tutorial on how to shade with opposite colors rather than selecting a darker version of the current color, but I can't find it right now.. It seemed really cool, too.
You can also add some additional elements, like dust in the sunlight, or maybe a little bug resting one some of the grass nearby. I'd also recommend adding some kind of contrasting element to stand out a little.. maybe a red ladybug to emphasize all the green!
Here are some examples: x Very sort of "sketchy" looking with a grungy texture on the top layer, but the most detail is in the face, which is the focal point. The faces stand out more because they have more detail and everything is so dark. x See how their strokes are easily visible and how they're able to use it also for shading, but they don't have to be super precise with their shading? That's a cool thing about using larger, more noticeable brushstrokes! They also incorporated some floating leaves to really tie this piece together and give it more visual interest (although a winged dinosaur is already pretty interesting imo) x The palette they chose is very muted and calm with blues, greys, and greens, but the addition of light sources (lantern, fireflies) makes it stand out. Imagine if the lantern and fireflies were gone!
Hope that helps! I'm by no means a super artist, but let me know if anything isn't clear enough.
Also nice to see you posting again c:
What stands out most to me is very sketchy black lines (present only on the deer), and lack of shading.
You could easily make the lines a darker variation of the colors underneath them to reduce how much they stand out, while still keeping an outline visible.
One thing I learned with shading is that the shadows and highlights tend to need to be much darker and lighter (respectively) than you think they should be. And, since your deer are directly under a beam of sunlight, the shadows are going to be pretty stark.
This is a very quick, rough, sloppy example of how I might shade it:
This is precious! I can
My boyfriend is more of a professional artist, so I asked for his opinion (hope that's okay!!) and we came up with some suggestions: Keep your brush opacity at 100% and use a lot of different colors to help your brushstrokes stand out. I think adding a darker color to the background (behind the farthest fringe of grass) would add some more depth to the piece. I saw this very nice tutorial on how to shade with opposite colors rather than selecting a darker version of the current color, but I can't find it right now.. It seemed really cool, too.
You can also add some additional elements, like dust in the sunlight, or maybe a little bug resting one some of the grass nearby. I'd also recommend adding some kind of contrasting element to stand out a little.. maybe a red ladybug to emphasize all the green!
Here are some examples:
x Very sort of "sketchy" looking with a grungy texture on the top layer, but the most detail is in the face, which is the focal point. The faces stand out more because they have more detail and everything is so dark.
x See how their strokes are easily visible and how they're able to use it also for shading, but they don't have to be super precise with their shading? That's a cool thing about using larger, more noticeable brushstrokes! They also incorporated some floating leaves to really tie this piece together and give it more visual interest (although a winged dinosaur is already pretty interesting imo)
x The palette they chose is very muted and calm with blues, greys, and greens, but the addition of light sources (lantern, fireflies) makes it stand out. Imagine if the lantern and fireflies were gone!
Hope that helps! I'm by no means a super artist, but let me know if anything isn't clear enough.
Also nice to see you posting again c:
What stands out most to me is
You could easily make the lines a darker variation of the colors underneath them to reduce how much they stand out, while still keeping an outline visible.
One thing I learned with shading is that the shadows and highlights tend to need to be much darker and lighter (respectively) than you think they should be. And, since your deer are directly under a beam of sunlight, the shadows are going to be pretty stark.
This is a very quick, rough, sloppy example of how I might shade it:
Thank you both!!! Very very
You're very welcome! C;