Help. I need some advise about fixing this one. I would prefer to not need to redo it entirely. This is an illustration for a book my husband will be self publishing. The character in front is coming of age with a ceremony and it is nightfall with bright bonfires all around. I think it is 9 characters in the shot which is a lot I know. Anyways, I'm struggling with trying to figure out how to render the lighting and characters so it doesn't look like a busy mess. I saw the latest Fix Your Art and am wondering if I am making them all have too many details? I'm stuck and am unsure what to do. Thank you for reading this!
@Heather-Foxwood The whites are what stand out to me as the most eye-catching and distracting overall. perhaps carefully adding very mild, light grays or blues on all subjects that have bright whites and are not the focus, would tone them down a little bit. That is my first instinct. Just an idea.
@MerryMary great idea. Should I make the far background more one tone and less to see? When it is in the book it will be cropped quite a bit so will mostly be characters. However I am painting a bit more on the sides top and bottom so the images have more versatility and so I don't run into bleed issues.
@Heather-Foxwood I'm not sure what you mean by "less to see", but I think the highlights have a lot of contrast to the darker tones and are just calling for attention in the background. If they are just toned down a bit I think they won't be combating so much with the focus. So I don't necessarily think you need to get rid of anything but yes mabe keep the colors closer in tone with less contrast in the background. Our eyes naturally want to look at places with higher contrast if there are too many things that have a similar amount of contrasting tones sometimes they all start calling for attention from our eye... I'm not an expert though and just learning still, so that is just my personal take!
Also I wanted to say I do really like your painting. It kind of reminds me of Redwall 
@Heather-Foxwood you could also make the colors directly behind the group a bit darker kind of like that spot up in the trees. That would help all those characters to stand out a bit more from what's behind them since the gray tone directly behind them now is somewhat close to the shadows on their armor.
I don't think the characters in the back need to be completely blocked out but if you were to bleed them a bit more into the background so the front character stands out that would probably work and give them less detail to compete with the main focus. It's a tricky thing to do and I think it can be pretty tricky with watercolors. I also think you need to not be afraid to go darker in the background to emphasize that the light source is coming from those foreground flames. It will push the background back further and add depth.
Maybe do a value study of the image first and break each section down into a value and go from there. I'm no expert tho, haha.
Some images that came to mind right off were some Brothers Hildebrandt illustrations. Now obviously these are different and a different medium. But I think looking through some illustrations that are similar, with light sources that are similar could help.
It's a beautiful picture and the characters seem lovely! 🥰
I agree about making the background a lot darker. It'll definitely make the characters more clear and will bring them forward. The two main characters on the left (the old one and the one right behind) sort of blend in to one another. In fact they all blend together a bit. I'll do a little editing on procreate to see what happens if I darken and desaturate some areas and lighten and add saturation to the main character...
I've also brought the main character down a little, though I know you don't want to redraw! I just wanted to see if it would separate him more.
You could lessen the details in the background and background characters by taking out some of the linework and lessening the contrast and saturation.
I think having 4 light sources surrounding them has given you quite a challenge as it makes for less contrast and fewer clear shadows. Could you take a few fires away, or does that go against the story?
Best wishes for the book!
