@fosco

Paintover

Hey Percy. Interesting composition and storytelling in it! So, you have to correct the perspective first. As Ian already mentioned, everything seems slatend. Set the horizon line and attach to it; make sure the objects converge to it. He already gave you great feedback on this area, so I'll focus on the painting and mood. First, as Ian said, you need to make things warmer. There's no clear main light source, and the light from a candle is not too strong to light the monk character, for example. It will be stronger on the characters that are closer to them. The values are the same in the whole illustration; that's the reason there's no depth and atmosphere. Even when it's an interior, there should be a clear separation between the background, midground and foreground. I decided to leave the bartender and the other guys at the bg by lighting (reducing the value range, avoiding strong shadows) that area since they're not quite important (I mean, they are not the focal point), and I made the door smaller to create a bit more depth or better separation between it and the characters. On the other hand, I added a blue light from outside, just to add a bit more contrast. I also painted a rim light on the characters to make them stand out. As I mentioned before, I lit the characters that are closer to the candles; I didn't do this, but you can reduce the value of the lizard guy. I shaded under the table since the light does not affect that area. On the other hand, maybe some candles on the table would be great to light the other characters (I added one, but you can play with it). Lastly, the barrel can be the element of the fg, so I left it darker (the overlapping between the barrel and the bench feels odd). Generally speaking, look for references of interior of a tavern and analyze the lighting in there, so you can use that reference to work on the interior. The lighting of an interior is hard to control, so always use references! Hope this helps!

Okay, the biggest thing here is the perspective, everything seems slanted, like the table looks tilted toward us, draw the top as a cylinder, should appear more flat, generally your convergence with the scene as you go further back is slightly too extreme. I brought down the entirety of the back left corner with the bar and that helped (although also raised the center pillar foundation and lowered the far bar top). There’s a tangent, the circled thing, where the line of the circle on the shield meets the line on the character’s head and confuses depth, and lastly on Discord you mention you wanted cozy, well all your colors/lighting lean cool toned, like harsh white with the candles, so I’d add more yellowish and orangey colors that are warmer, example here I threw an orange over the entire thing with a soft light blending layer.