Miscellaneous doodles (now with Tasteful Dwarven Erotica)

I like the green background better than the latest one, but that may just be me. The reason is, for me, the blue sky, contrasted with the red tree, right next to it, is a little distracting.

As for the scabbards location, having a sword scabbard strapped to your back is a fantasy thing. Realistically, they would've never done so, despite it looking cool. So in that sense, I don't think it really matters what shoulder the hilt pops out of. You'd have to unstrap the scabbard first, before you could draw the sword anyway. ( I didn't realise any of this until I watched the xtras on the expanded LOTR:FOTR dvd).

Starting to shape up nicely, Sialia!

I have to ditto jericho on the stance. She may be leaning a little on her bow, but trust me... she's not *really* putting any significant weight on it. (Otherwise, the tip of her bow would sink into the ground, and her left arm would be getting real tired real quick.)

Background: I still like the green one best as well. The blue sky doesn't fit with the shadowy nature of the rest of the image.

Other things that feel "not quite right": Her head still seems too small and too high (as Oni noticed earlier), and her left gauntlet seems out of proportion (I think you resized the right, but kept the other one as it was, right?). Overall, her torso looks a little heavy-set, but her head and left forearm look very dainty and fragile. I don't know how skinny/chunky Tao is supposed to be, but you could try and slightly rescale the width of her torso (everything except the head and left arm). That would give her a more elven waist, and might bring her torso more in line with the size of her head.

Oh, what the heck, let me show you

In the picture above, I narrowed her whole body minus her head and left arm holding the bow (actually, I was lazy and just rescaled the whole left side of the image, including the doggie), then slightly rescaled and moved her head.

Here's a side-by-side view, to accentuate the differences:

Edit: probably could lengthen her face a little more as well...

Ok, here's the next go. Head lowered, shoulders adjusted, gauntlet resized.

Torso remains broad, 'cause Tao is seriously powerfully torsoed, and wearing a formerly-cursed girdle of storm giant strength, which has affected her build. If anything, she's a bit on the delicate side in this rendition.

I'm still having fun with the background. Don't mind me--I know the green is good, but I want to see what else I can do. I'd like to use the final "framed" , and the treatment of something that looks like a "sketch" in a gilt frame is a bit odd. It needs to look a bit more like an "oil" before it sits comfortably in the frame I want to use, which is pretty ornate.

The overall effect should be as of a religious painting. I'm basing my layout on a painting called "the Madonna of the Little Trees."

Isn't that a great name?

Ah, now if I were only a great artist.

Practice, practice, practice.

And good feedback, of course. Always a bonus.

Looking good. You may still want to make her head slightly larger. 5-10% larger seems about right

If you want a somewhat more feminine look, you could try to narrow her waist a little. She'd still look plenty butch... after all, bodybuilders have relatively thin waists as well!

I don't know what kind of tools you have available, but if you have some sort of warping tool (it's called IWarp on The Gimp, my photoshop clone for linux), narrowing her waist would just be a single mouseclick. With the same tool, you could also lower her left hip for a more natural stance.

Ah! I found a picture of that "Madonna of the little trees":
At first, I didn't much like your latest background, but I think it may work a lot better "framed". I noticed that with the original Madonna painting as well. At first I thought "man, that looks like a crappy composition". But then when you see the framed version, it looks so much better! Might be worth it to already add the frame to your picture, so you can better see what the end result will look like...

PS: any chance of extending the right side of the picture just a *little*? I originally though she was just leaning against a wall. Only when you mentioned she's leaning on an unstrung bow did I realize my mistake...

She's wearing a girdle of storm giant strength around her middle. Even if her waist is tiny and delicate (which it isn't), the girdle is a fairly substantial construction, plus she's wearing armor under it. Even though elven chain is thin and light, you probably have to wear some quilted underthings under it or risk serious chafing and little ring shaped bruises when you take an impact.

The sketch is done from a photo of an actual person. Going back to the original model, you were completely right about the shoulders, but I think the hips about match the model's at this point. The waist is already considerably thinner--and that woman was wearing leather armor and no girdle. Well, none that was showing. I chose her because I liked her confidence, heft and stolid stance. I'm still fooling with getting Tao to bear that weight without making her quite as heavyset. I'll look at the hips again and see if there's something I've missed there.

Another person mentioned to me about the head, and I'll look in to it. I'm just not sure though. The shoulders and chest are powerfully muscled, and armored on top of that. If you look a football players without their helmets on, their heads do look kind of small in comparison to their padding. And she has to be standing fully erect, chin up. No slouching. Bringing the head down too much really runs the risk of making her look slouchy.

You're right about the bow. I hestitated to do it when I got started because of some technical probelms, but I should have the tools I need to do the job now. Although it may look a bit odd. Most people aren't used to seeing the shape of a completely unstrung bow. May just look like a thin staff. Which is fine by me, but it would work better compositionally if it wasn't going off the page so quickly.

Thanks for the input--keep it coming.

OK, just for you Conail.

head lowered, enlarged, hip lowered, waist narrowed, framed.

haven't had time to think about the bow problem yet--the picture's a bit too wide to fit on the web page as it is and I'm looking to trim a bit off the dog side in the next go round to see how much narrower i can get it, or i'll have to scale the whole thing smaller.

too sleepy now.

I'll try again later.

Sialia,

Where did you get that background "stained glass image"?

I really like that last version. Not only do I like the background, I think the slightly larger head makes the proportions a bit more accurate (at least to my extremely unprofessional eye.)

Really good!

If you shifted the view to the left, cutting off part of Dogda, would the bow fit in the frame? I think seeing it would make the stance look more natural.

No! No! It is all wrong--I get it now--I've just seen it--I went back and looked at the hips again and I know what I did wrong--I can fix this---it is all clear to me at last . . .

except I have to work now, and then I must game tonight and I won't get a chance to fool with it till tomorrow night at the earliest--ah--what if the clarity doesn't keep?

Must draw--- must draw . . . need more hours in the day somewhere . . .

And I was supposed to be working on the website this week, before classes start up again . .. so few days left.

But I know how to fix the hips.