@um9s

Peindre

For someone who doesn't do full illustrations this is a really strong piece! I think knowing when to move on from a painting is also good instinct. I think what would make your piece even stronger is planning out your composition. There are certain tricks you can use to enhance the sense of danger when drawing a character fighting a monster. One of them is to place the horizon line low on the page and have the camera angled up at the monster which makes it feel large and intimidating. However I still tried to make changes to fix your current composition. I divided your painting into thirds and placed the focal points(The monster and the hero) on the spots where the lines intersect. This is a very basic thing you can keep in mind for all of your paintings in the future! I like that you used the creatures body to frame things and focus attention on the fight so i just pushed that further by having it also frame the character. I also arched the creatures body so it wasn't leading off the page and instead leading back toward down and toward the center to guide the eye where we want it. I noticed that you even had the clouds angled in such a way to also lead the eye there which can work but you have to be careful to make sure they still look organic. I think your clouds are little to drawn in straight lines/follow a straight path. In the future, try to stagger these shapes and having varying shapes of big, medium, and small. You also understand that your foreground elements should be a darker value which is good. But you forgot to make your background a lighter value too. This might be because you wanted your mountains to be separate from the sky, but actually blending the background elements into the sky can be an easy way to push things further back in perspective! I think as long as you're more conscious of layering your dark, medium, and light values on top of each other and placing them in the right places to create contrast at your focal points it will really help your art. To summarise: Plan out your composition using thumbnails before starting a piece and think about what you want to convey. Make sure the places of highest contrast are the places you want the viewer to look. And to continue challenging yourself with these crazy illustrations!

This is really interesting, it's definitely dynamic and the scene tells an interesting story. In terms of composition, I can see what you're going for and it's nice, but I think the moon and the creature's mask/face are competing as the main focal point, with the person dissolving sort of being lost in it all. Of course, I don't know the entire story you've thought of behind this piece, but it seems like the moon isn't really adding much apart from atmosphere while pulling away from the story between the two characters. I'd consider a different composition that puts less focus on the moon. Maybe it could be partially obscured by clouds, or simply smaller with the figures more central to the frame. As it stands, the figures are quite side-on like a fighting game. That's good for clarity but does limit dynamism a bit. It could be worth experimenting with different layouts with the creature or the person much closer to us with the other further away, as if one is moving into the frame instead of the more passive role both seem to be taking here. I’ve done an extremely rough edit just to give an idea of what it would look like if the person was more of the focal point. You mentioned you hate the colours, I do agree they are a bit monochromatic, so it could be made a bit more interesting with a complimentary accent. In my draw-over, I've added some yellow to the moon to see if you think that might be a direction to go in. All in all, this is really cool and I hope you find some of what I’ve suggested useful! Keep it up!