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Originally Posted by Mahjix
Spitfire! Thanks for thought out critiques, I really appreciate it. I did forget to change that green rim light to white due to the wand. My mind was all over the place, hahaha! I did think about the green light close to her face but I didn't want it to detract from her face so I made the tooth brighter to sort of make the illusion that the tooth was shining more so than the green smoke.
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I realize you did that, but it seems unnatural looking to me, since the tooth itself is not glowing (and even has shadows), while the green edge gives an indication of it being a light source. Typically a light source is always brighter than what it's illuminating so technically it's not even possible for the face to have a brighter value than the green lights but that's ok if it's used consistently (which it isn't yet). The main point I was making though was that the light sources are in different spots in space, but do not seem to interact with parts of the body that should receive light from these light sources.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mahjix
As for the limbs in that deep purple, it was to be a sort silhouette effect since the coins are emitting light (like a sun setting and everything in front of it being seemingly black). Mine is exaggerated, however.
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I also realize you were going for a silhouette effect, but a believable silhouette only appears when there's a really bright light source lighting the object/subject from behind and no apparent light source from the front. This is not the case in your painting though, as you have various light sources (the coins, the tooth, the staff and an off-camera lighting that lights everything from the front). If you were going for a receding depth silhouette, it doesn't make much sense either because there -is- still a light source behind the leg (one coin) which separates the leg from the background. And for a receding depth silhouette, it most commonly takes over the color of the background it's receding into (ex. blue sky, mountains in the distance become blue too). Your color is a rich dark purple color while the background is a lighter desaturated kind of purple.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mahjix
As for the black, I have it fading to black because I wanted to have her pop from the background as much as possible without adding a lot of highlights. I did, however, include the purple hue throughout just as a small indication that she is, somewhat, part of the background or belongs in the picture, at least, lol. As for the boot, the only shiny part of the boot is the bottom lining part. It cuts off at the first lace hole and becomes a microfiber/suede material. >.> Did I pass? XD
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You don't need highlights around the edge of your subject to separate your subject from the background (which wouldn't make much sense anyway unless there's bright light sources behind it). If you have the right values (or the right color contrast) established, you can make anything stand out.
This is a quick and good example of what I mean:
You can see in this picture how the subject has an extremely strong silhouette regardless of the colors. When this artist added the colors it only makes sense to put the shadows in the same color scheme as the rest of the background. Colors (and values) are relative to whatever is next to it. Take a look at the inner sides of the legs for example. The side of the inner legs have a different hue shading than the front parts of the legs in shadow. This is because the legs reflect their light back to each other (as little light as they get, they still get light from ambient lighting).
I didn't even notice that lining of leather compared to the rest of the boot until you told me btw. A change in value could help differentiate between that but my point about the leather highlight still stands. There's a coin in front of the leather part of the boot but there's no highlight on the leather of that coin. Only of the coins on the side.
I realize you're going for stylization, but stylization only works in regard to fundamentals of realism (Lighting, composition, anatomy etc., or if you're going for extreme stylization of anatomy, have balance in the way you build the character etc. (which your character has)). I liked the drawing regardless though, it's not like you didn't pass yet, before my critiques lol. It's better than what most people put out either way with lots of dynamic and some storytelling in the drawing. Just pointing out things you can work on :J