They've been showing a lot of Bob Ross during lockdown in UK. I wasn't consciously aiming for a Ross style piece, but I think he'd approve of this approach nonetheless! I'm calling this "Joy of Bongo". It's even got a happy little tree, and countless "happy accidents"! Lol.

I did get a bit carried away and smashed my stylus to pieces when I beat the devil out of it.

Thanks to all those that helped in the forums, much appreciated!

My Take on Isolation - A shipwrecked Pirate Rat (or Pi-Rat - ahem) who in his madness and boredom has built himself a little social scene. Now, however, he cant help feeling his new coconut friends are having a better time than he is!

He said he was closed!

Ultimately does it really matter? Its just a bit of fun. Everyone has the opportunity to use this forum to get a ton of feedback, so who really cares who wins the contest? The judges give their opinions, take 'em or leave 'em.

@Kiddo This advice is spot on. Nothing I can add about the theory, but I would say that your straight lines are all over the place, just use a ruler, make your life 100 times easier. And sharpen your pencil, your drawing will be so much more accurate. Sounds basic but you'll be amazed how much difference just that will make.

Hi all, just looking for a bit of advice on how to colour greyscale images. Its a night scene, so im thinking blues, creamy moonlight, plus warm light from torch of the characters. I know i still need to do a fair bit of rendering/texturing, but this has took ages already, doing about an hour a night, and i dont want to go any further and then have to basically repaint the whole thing again in colour. On reflection im not sure painting in greyscale is a good idea, i just dont know enough about colour yet to dive right in. If you have advice/critiques on any other aspects please be brutal, im not precious and i need help! Much obliged!

@ArtofAleksey No mate, rank amateur. Just an enthusiastic hobbyist. Im 39 now, too many obligations to be thinking of careers in character design or comics or anything. I just love the art, cheesy as it sounds. Ill see where it takes me, if I get good enough to get a freelance gig doing something one day, awesome. If not, no worries. Publish a couple of vanity projects and give em out as Christmas presents!

Hi mate, I thought one way to make em stand a bit more might be to place most of the image in shadow and then ramp up the light on the birds in the foreground.

@AdeelZubair You thought about doing a youtube channel? Your lego art sounds like the sort of thing that would go down a storm on there, talk about what you made, show builds in timelapse etc, must be loads of enthusiasts on there that would be into that. Would get you a bit of profile, never know, might lead to something. Even you just have it ticking away in the background while you work toward something else.

@Eelwick Hi, i think you could improve the sense of depth with better values. The background is alright, but the tress and grass in the midground ate the same as in the forground. The trunk in the midground has some blacks on it, in truth you rarely see actual blacks in nature at all, and in illustrations they just create big flat spaces, the say nothing about form. If you lighten the midground a bit it will help create distance and that overlapping bird will stand out more. Also in a forest, you would expect a bit of atmospheric perspective, maybe softly airbrush in a subtle bit of fog over the midground, this should also help the foreground elements stand out.

@Diane-Kond I think this is great, very clever! You immediately see the next crazy way he hitches a lift back home, just with two characters and a blank white background. Very fine work!

@Alvaro-Morales Thinking about it, I think you should move the light entirely. What you've got here is like a midday shot, sun right above the characters. Its generally regarded as the least desirable lighting scenario, as there are very little shadows and its hard to create form. If you move it to the front right, more of a late afternoon position, you can get generate a bit more interest.

The best video i've found on the internet (No disrespect to SVS, they have awesome quality vids too) which demonstrates light and colour is one by Marco Bucci, its on Youtube, just type "interview with Marco Bucci" it lasts 45 mins and will change the way you paint instantly.

@Alvaro-Morales hi. I feel like you could develop this picture with a better use of light. The light source is above and slightly behind the monster, so there should be some light on his head and shoulders, at the minute he is all one value. The same applies throught the image, everything at the minute looks quite flat. Take the base colour, warm it up and make it lighter, then paint it on every plane facing the sky. Put some cooler shadows in every plane facing the floor, then throw some really dark accents into the deepest crevices where the light cant get in. It'll really bring it to life.

@TooTicky possibly Ep23, how to be a good art student. Could be wrong though.

@BreannaB Personally i think the muted colours work much better. The fact they they are all closer to grey gives the piece some sense of unity. The saturated colours in option 2 are so far away from grey that is no unity at all, each colour has equal importance the main focus, the bear, might as well not even be there. If you wanted to use more saturated colours, id keep them from closely related families. As youve got a lot of green already, choose some lilacs, creams and blues, but stay away from reds. Green and red create a sense of conflict, whereas this should feel peaceful.

Also, the soft edged flower attracts too much attention, as everything else has a hard edge. Looks a bit out of place.

I think the values could be grouped better.
The bear might read better if it had a much lighter coloured group of leaves behind him, hes the same value as the leaves as it is and gets a bit lost. A good rule of thumb is light over dark, and dark over light.

Hope this helps!

@K-Flagg cheers mate! Got a bit lost in my values, and it turns out painting foliage takes a very long time!! But yeah, learnt a lot with this one pretty happy with it.

They've been showing a lot of Bob Ross during lockdown in UK. I wasn't consciously aiming for a Ross style piece, but I think he'd approve of this approach nonetheless! I'm calling this "Joy of Bongo". It's even got a happy little tree, and countless "happy accidents"! Lol.

I did get a bit carried away and smashed my stylus to pieces when I beat the devil out of it.

Thanks to all those that helped in the forums, much appreciated!