EASEL OF Jeffrey McDonald
Jeffrey McDonald
A Fantasy and Science Fiction realist painter.
I am open to critique
I WOULD LIKE HELP WITH
Testing, but always open for suggestions
A Fantasy and Science Fiction realist painter.
Testing, but always open for suggestions
Man, this went through a lot of changes! Totally worth it, it came out super nice in the end.
Thanks Dan! That means a lot! I really tried to implement all the things I’ve learned through the last couple of years. More to come!
Hey did a paintover of your work just to show you what lighting can do for your work. I think your rendering skills are good enough but you aren’t pushing your lighting in any way. It’s just a combination of photos right now. As a viewer I want to see a story and feel a mood. Without the lighting of a scene we only feel lack of emotion. This sometime works but only very few cases. We want to look at your characters faces and potentially the city behind them. Everything else matters very little to the scene, so we can knock it all back and simplify the details in those areas a little more than your focal point. I think you have a decent composition, it just needs to be polished a bit. I feel like your dumpster on the left isn’t very intriguing, it’s just a box. Think of the world a bit, it looks sci fi- maybe add some new tech equipment or something that tells us a bout the place a bit. If it’s just a wasteland, maybe some pipes or metalwork, something that can cast some interesting lighting onto the figures.
Not sure how to add my own jpgs..
Thanks Nick. I did get your paint over. I totally get what you are saying about pushing the light a bit more. I’ll keep that in mind on my next few in this series.
Hi Jefferey,
I like the image, especially the flow of the composition as well as the rendered world building elements, such as the props, clothing, environment. One thing I would want to see more is a little bit more light in the shadows. While I find the grouping of lights and darks to be strong compositionally, I find myself wishing for more color in the shadows. I think you could lighten up most of the shadows about 5% except the most important areas and you wouldn’t lose the overall structure. I can’t tell what is the darkest dark and this creates a lot of high contrast everywhere.
Hope that helps!
Thanks for the advice. I wonder if there isn’t a bit of a screen difference. On my mac, the grays, blues and purples on the ground show up enough to give a bit of texture to it.
I’ll look into it further.
Hi Jefferey,
I like the image, especially the flow of the composition as well as the rendered world building elements, such as the props, clothing, environment. One thing I would want to see more is a little bit more light in the shadows. While I find the grouping of lights and darks to be strong compositionally, I find myself wishing for more color in the shadows. I think you could lighten up most of the shadows about 5% except the most important areas and you wouldn’t lose the overall structure. I can’t tell what is the darkest dark and this creates a lot of high contrast everywhere.
Hope that helps!