Ink Fairy Critique

seelliott

Hi Everyone.

I enjoyed everyone's ink pieces so much and the winners really did a great job.

I do not usually work in an ink style so it was nice to experiment and I tried to limit myself to line over doing washes of tone which was probably not a good idea considering the feedback! I thought this was a limit from the prompt and was unsure if it would get rejected as it was digital and did not look enough like ink.

This is the piece I came up with:
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In order to learn I would love some honest feedback on it.

I thought about what might need fixing and these are my ideas:

*Composition seems to narrow maybe widen it and give the characters more room on the right.
*More values to be added by cross hatching or adding flat tone? Maybe more suggestion of the seabed?
*Enhancing story telling. I am not sure how to do this but is it clear that she is underwater and harvesting ink from a squid?
*Character design. I wonder if Ellie is too boring and needed a bit more work? Do her eyes look strange? I wonder if her swimsuit is too busy?
*Maybe Ellie should be more hidden? I wonder if she needs pushing back more into the background. Anyone have any ideas on how to do that if it is all kept black?
*I struggled a lot with the size relationship between the two as the fairy is small and in the foreground and Ellie is large and in the background. Does it work with there current sizes?

Any suggestions are helpful.

VeronicaMui

It’s a cute image! I love your coral, so pretty! And I really like the stars in the in from the squid.

The things that I notice are:

Ellie doesn’t look farther away, she just looks higher up on the page, which feels uncomfortable composition-wise. I would try making your lines thinner on Ellie and her surrounding elements to push her back.
It didn’t read to me that the fairy was harvesting ink, it read more as dumping the ink on the octopus. I’m not sure how to address this.
The spots on Ellies swimsuit didn’t bother me at all!

seelliott

Thank you for the feedback @VeronicaMui. That is really helpful. Not sure how to fix the harvesting ink part.. I will have a think maybe something that makes it feel like the ink is moving upwards.