gday, Love the pose and drama. Here I tried pushing the drama by using the caustics to highlight the face. My example may cause the colours to slightly blow out and over expose, but the idea is there. happy painting :)
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Mermay WIP
Artist's notes:
I made some small changes to her tail and I added the background. I struggled a lot with the lighting and shadows, since I've never done an illustration like this before. Any suggestion or advice is welcome. Thanks in advance
Comments 3
Grats on finishing a big piece like this! It's always an accomplishment and a step to becoming more skilled. I feel theres a few things which could improve it now which has to do with your rendering. Mostly of the arm and face. Best steps would be to just shade them as best you can then add the blue light later, following the shapes of the body. I didnt do caustic on the body, it was a bit too much i felt. Also adding some cast shadows from the armors help with depth, even tho i dont think technically it will have a cast shadow For the caustic effect you could do a new image and make a texture of the waves, with solid round brush. Put it in perspective over your image with a layerstyle, like linear dodge. Then blur it with gaussian blur.
Thank for the feedback, Jacqueline!! Your advice is very helpful. I'm trying to improve my rendering, specially the skin.As for the background, it is really difficult for me and I always struggle a lot with it. Thank you again.
i saw your earlier stage and I thought your rendering there was really good. Maybe adding an environment and lighting is just something to practice more. Maybe you have a favorite artist that also does environments, then you can check out how they do it, because theres also multiple ways to do it. I was taught that when starting just don't make it too difficult for yourself. Just pick 1 lightsource and then a bit of bounce for depth. Adding caustics can be relaly hard! Make sure that light and effects follow the shapes, I think that was the only thing where it went wrong. Also my anatomy is not the best, so it could be that I drew the arms a bit off
I just finished the illustration. I am very grateful to Jacqueline and Grant, and of course to this platform for being so helpful to artists
Hi Felipe, I think you have done a great job and it's looking really good. So it's hard to offer better advice. My thoughts are that the hips/ glutes look a bit over inflated and I feel the tail position could be more interesting, not hidden as much. That being said, you may be going for a much more stylized mermaid and what is the correct anatomy on a mythical creature anyway? Otherwise well done and keep going. It would be good to see in final form.
Hii Grant! Thank you for the feedback and your kind words. I really appreciate it.