are u sure u looked at the reference when u made that?... coz it looks quite nothing like it... O__O

Yes thats what I'm saying I've had a total loss of faith in my abilities and I'm looking for help. I can't seem to do anything without getting discouraged almost instantly.

The Tardis I added to my gallery is probably the best example of my abilities and the "pillar" above is my worst.

The pillar is something new I created to attempt to get help on rebuilding my skills. I forgot to mention that the pillar I've created is meant to be seen from a frontal angle and not sidewards like in the screencap.

I attempted to upload an edited version with changed width however I accidentally overwrote the original pillar, so please see the original post for the edited pillar.

Even from the angle you say you want to draw the pillar, it's not quite right. The proportions and shape of the two sheaths are different in your reference than in your art. I would recommend looking at the reference very carefully and maybe even measuring the proportions to make you art more accurate. Furthermore, I think the angle you've chosen is less interesting because it doesn't show the interesting geometry involved in the column. Play to your source's strengths.

Also, I would reconsider the colors you're using. They don't look bad, but your reference has very different colors and the lighting in the ref is more interesting than what you've drawn (notice how there seem to be two different lightsources--an orange light from the right side and a bluish light from the left). So maybe try to imitate your ref more closely.

You're just going to have to knuckle down and work at it some more before you can get more specific help than what these guys already gave you.

It's better. Maybe too many colors and dithering on this seems inappropriate. Try to make those curves consistent.

That's dithering too, just more free-form than the 50/50 you had before. Its best if you don't dither as straight lines tho. Try to follow the curve of the column and it will help it round it :)

Look at your ref image, that column has blues, purples and yellows to create your browns.

It's for a small star wars based area in a game. The pillar should be very similar in design but it doesn't have to be an exact perfect copy. As long as it follows the same design/look it'll be fine.

I'll try improving it later on today and hopefully I'll make some better progress.

Check the 'I don't get it' color thread. This might work for you since its made from one color ramp.

This was posted by onek on a recent WIP thread

onek: ...a technique for nice, natural color ramps that I'm recently using, is to spice up the colors simply by putting some 10% opacity fill of (full!) blue, magenta, red and yellow, from dark to bright, the result then (because of the full tones) looks very comic-ish, (sometimes thats nice too...)... if I'm not satisfied, I pretty much try to edit the colors as I would do editing a photo, meaning 'color balance', 'hue/ saturation', contrast etc editing...
maybe this makes it more clear

OT