Conlans art thread part 2

[Conlan]

Hey everyone its been a while, I've given up working with colored pencils in favor of digital art, because I just could not get the level of detail that I wanted with the pencils. So I taught myself the bare bones of the program back in February (and thank God because I was getting laid off at the meat packing plant I worked at, and this helped me get a new fancy job working with the program, upgrade! ) and I am just now finally getting my technique to where I want it. I was very inspired by the style of the concept art for the video game Assassins Creed (somewhat sloppy yet still detailed), so that is the direction that I wanted to take my art.

I started doing character concepts for my favorite campaign setting HârnWorld (I've actually also gotten the chance to work with them a little bit creating some artworks here and there!).

These character concepts are purely for my own entertainment and are completely unofficial (unless Robin wants to use any of them ) So to start, here is my interpretation of a knight of the Order of the Checkered Shield. I have a few more in the works right now, and plan on doing a TON of these, because they are just too much fun for me! I'll post those as I finish them.

And please any crits or comments are most appreciated

 

[heruca]

Perfect. Nothing to critique. Looking forward to seeing more like this.

 

[Balathustrius]

Really nice! Great perspective on the sword, especially, and well-rendered chainmail. I have a couple of quick nitpicks, too:

The face is well done, but I think you're overemphasizing the eyes. Just about everyone does this unless they're specifically thinking about avoiding it; it might help if you cast a shadow over the whites; due to the brows, the whites of the eyes are almost never actually white. Also, a little touch that sometimes makes all the difference is to have the highlights reflect that color of the light being cast into them, rather than just making them stark white. Every highlight should ideally have its own subtle color and value shift, to really give the surface the illusion of three-dimensionality.

Don't be afraid to cover up detail with shadow (at least in a moody piece like this one). I've seen some amazing artists who will render out a face in perfect detail... and then drench an entire side in shadow, to amazing effect. In this piece, I can see that the light source is coming strongly from the right, but the shadows on the left of the figure don't seem to mirror the intensity of the light source. For instance, his nose doesn't seem to be casting much of a shadow; this could be explained by a secondary light source or reflected light from the left, but if that's the case, it might help the painting to evidence that more strongly?

One other thing; the drapery folds on the arms of his robe keep bugging me. I think it's because the folds look a little arbitrary, and are not giving evidence to the volume of the form underneath them. Check this out, it explains the whole science of drapery much better than I can:

http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=14739

^ Awesome community for artists, btw.

I really like the spectaculars on the belt, but something about them (I think the pure-white color) are making them read more as plastic and less as leather. Like he covered his belt in ceran wrap, or something. You might try messing with the colors a little; I have a feeling that keeping the highlights more in the brown range and using just pin-points of white at the extreme plane-shifts would remove the plastic-y feeling.

That's about it. Your drawing skills are obviously strong, and a little more practice with light will pull your paintings together beautifully. No problem in art cannot be solved by study of the masters and working from life. Keep at it, dude!

 

[Conlan]

Heruca- Thank you for the compliment

Balathustrius- Thank you also for the compliments and drawing my attention to shading and the highlights around the belt, head and sleeve areas, I thought I had already made a shadow for the eyes, then after reading your comments I went to the mirror and realized that I had forgotten that the shadows starts almost directly under the brow line, I couldn't believe I missed that!

Your right about the nose and the belt as well, I toned down the shine in the belt and added a bit more shadow to the right of the nose, I decided to keep the folds on the sleeves, reason being that the style I want to go for has some elements of speed paintings or "sketchiness" to them, and just using color to "allude" to folds and shadow and sort of going out of my way to not "over" render them, if that makes sense, but I should probably spend a little more time on them in the future so that they read easier for the viewer

I did read your link for shadows a CA.org, and I will be refering to it in the future if I get hung up on those things. I am very familiar with CA.org as well and go there frequently for inspiration and remind myself how good I want to be...

Heres the quick fixes that I made...

edit: spelling

 

[Conlan]

Here is a Knight from the Order of the Lady of Paladins.