It's looking better as you work. Starting out rough is usually how I do things too. I've never seen a finished product from you so I don't know for sure just how detailed or refined you're going to go, but I'm hoping you keep going much further with this because it has a lot of potential.

The colors are working fairly well so far, though I'd normally have at least one color that's darker than the darkest that you have. Probably some sort of dark blue or purple.


Don't worry about people stealing things, since this site has no tolerance for it and normally the only issue I ever see is sometimes new people posting here not knowing what a rip is. It's not something you need to bother warning people about around here.



Edited by tanuki - 13 December 2011 at 11:49pm

A little more work done. added a goofy sun to help me visualize light direction and to lighten up my day... waka waka waka... tweaked the palette a bit after converting to grayscale just to see shade relationships.

Im getting a bit nervous about shading it. I want it to be rather dak but the palette is relatively light. I also want contrast... i wonder if i can have everything?

Well off to kickboxing I go. Any tips or suggestions are welcomed.

You're getting nervous about the shading because you seem to just be diving right into it. You should consider blocking out the shadows and highlights before you start texturing your piece, otherwise it'll look very odd when you progress. Make sure you have a strong shadow structure before you even consider doing those scales!



Really bad example, but it should help get the point across. Make sure you don't skip that step, it's very important to block out your piece before you go into the detail. Colors are also a bit bland and icky, but that can easily be fixed later on.

Hope that helps!

Hug help Delicious! Thank you, that post got me off in a better direction. I really like your interpretation but it still must be mine so I went back over the first image, filled it in better and blocked out the shading. I think itll go much better now.

I was envisioning the fins as the lighter greenish color but looking back at your depiction Im starting to like the red fins. I think it balances the colors off and provides representation of the 3 major light colors.

Oof oof coming from painting with paint and canvas makes color theory in light difficult... I have to start replacing yellow with green. In pigment yellow is the a primary not green.


Update* Yours still has better dimension. I wish I had more formal arts training. I went to a highschool specifically aimed at arts instruction(i was in visual arts) but its been so long that Ive lost it. The second png is a bit more work. I think Ill go back and hit the shadows like you have done and move the light source a bit behind the viewer to add the other side of the fish. right now mine looks like someone splayed it down the center and plopped it cut side down.


Edited by saji82NO - 15 December 2011 at 6:30pm