I think mostly your image needs a little reframing to focus in on the action. I put the mermaid bigger so we can add more detail to her and the swimming guy closer as well. Shes looking up and previously the swimmer was hardly visible and too far away. For the rest its important to get the perspective right on the boat. You can also add atmospheric perspective and you go deeper in the water and have the waves more disturbed near the hull of the ship. Good job!
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Mermay - An Unexpected Visitor
Artist's notes:
Struggling a bit with rendering the forms without creating muddy colors or vague shapes. I’n using hard brushes whenever possible right now to force precision, but it’s hard!
Comments 5
Hey there! I love the narrative that you are telling in this piece! Awesome work! That being the case, if you had a way to emphasize the person in the water above even more (maybe a little larger) I think it would help the story telling even more. Something else with my interpretation of this piece is that I feel like you have a strong foreground story as well as the background, but the mid-ground feels a little empty. This could be an awesome opportunity to add something like a small school of fish (or other mid ground element) that really pushes the depth of your scene out as a large ocean scene.
Hey bud, Nice work here, man! This is turning out great! You could adjust the values a bit more. Right now the scene feels too bright, and realistically, deeper areas of the ocean wouldn’t be this illuminated. Darkening the scene a bit would also give you better control over the lighting and help guide the viewer toward the focal points, which are the mermaid and the silhouette of the person near the surface. Notice how by darkening both the background and the mermaid, the light stands out much more, and as a result, the mermaid becomes the focal point even more clearly. You could also reduce the amount of detail in the background rocks and treat them more as silhouettes. This would help reduce visual attention in that area while also reinforcing the sense of depth and establishing it clearly as the background of the illustration. I’d also suggest making the silhouette near the surface smaller. Right now it feels too large, and compared to the size of the mermaid, the person would practically be a giant if they dove into the ocean haha. Making the silhouette smaller would strengthen the feeling of distance between the mermaid and the surface. I’d also recommend simplifying the wave shapes a bit more and painting larger, more curved shapes so the waves maintain a stronger rhythm instead of feeling random. Hope this helps!
Great work. I think your perspective is spot on. really good.
Hi there, Firstly, awesome work. This is a really great scene with lots of strong story telling. When it come to the lighting, I would defiantly use it to emphasis what is the most important in the scene, with the focal points being the highest contrast areas. So a darker background behind quite a light mermaid for that contrast. This is quite a large scene so I would break it up into different areas and slowly work through them one by one to manage the overwhelm. E.g. Foreground and Mermaid area, mid-ground like the rocks, then the ship hull and surface water. Well done and best of luck. Keep going you got this!
Thanks Grant! I will keep that in mind. Like most beginner/intermediate painters I shy away from using dark values. I'll take this opportunity to lean into that more.