So, I think I finished it - though I am open to any suggestions if something really needs to be fixed. I am really happy with how this piece came out and starting to feel like I could really do well in digital painting. This is my fourth one, but up till now, I felt really unsure and awkward with the new medium. This was the first that just felt really natural to paint.

@Thrace-Shirley-Mears - Thank you! I actually have been a fine art oil painter for well over a decade, and just in the last few months have tried learning digital painting - so it is nice to hear that my traditional work shows through in this piece.

@Steve-Young - Thanks! That should save me some frustration in the future.

@Carey-Bowden - Thank you! That is great to hear! I hadn't actually thought of putting this in a book. I am a traditional painter so I think I was just thinking about how it would look hanging on a wall. Though, I would really love to get into cover design - so I should really think about how text would fit with an image like this. Though I have no real knowledge of graphic design or typography...

@Naroth-Cow - Thank you! I really appreciate that

Oh my goodness! Thank you so much everyone for all the great, thought out feedback! What a wealth of ideas!

@Thrace-Shirley-Mears hmm maybe - something to show she has the ability to use magic...

@Peter-Jarvis that's an interesting idea. I was thinking more eel when I painted her tail... but changing her to look more shark-like might be enough to make her look less like dinner. I am glad some of it is working at least! I love painting water so that is encouraging.

@Leontine-Gaasenbeek Thank you! yeah - I was hoping to make her look very focused and predatory in her expression but not her appearance... so I think I have failed in that regard. I am definitely going to try and push her features more to try to make her look more fierce. Also, I didn't see it at first, but now I see what you mean - she looks like she is looking slightly out of the canvas - but the shark is looking at a complete profile line... And yeah, that front arm is driving me nuts! I can't quite get it to look right. And thank you for the kind words as well. This one is really love hate - I love certain things about it but despair of being unable to fix the subtleties that are ruining it.

@Katrina-Fowler I can definitely see what you are seeing - and it seems like a lot of other people are saying the same thing as well. lol - it's funny - the hands were really what started the whole painting. I saw a photo of a girl holding her hands that way and wanted to create a painting that told a story around that pose. I immediately thought casting a spell at something... and that is the part now that is fighting with the painting. I need to learn to not start with little pieces! That picture you posted is awesome, by the way! And yeah, I see what you mean about go big or stay home! You've giving me a lot to think about! Thank you!

@Naroth-Cow Thank you! That is really kind of you to say! Yeah, I feel like I chose a really bad narrative to try and illustrate here. I agree, that arm is not right. It needs more work. And yeah, I was hoping more teeth would be a good clue that she is not in the peril she seems to be. Thanks

@Javier-Diaz oh wow - thank you for that! I actually like the glowing eyes on here a lot more than I do on the shark! Also, the gesture of your line for her body is so graceful. I really like that. I am definitely going to try to experiment with that! Also - I think if I stick with the glowing effects, the added areas throughout the water you made - make a lot of sense as well. You have given me a lot to think about - thanks!

@Leontine-Gaasenbeek oh wow - that is so beautiful! I love it! Thanks for sharing it! No, I never heard of her before. Really cool! And thanks for the advice on method - I am very new to digital so I am always trying to learn how best to use the medium. Usually I just paint over what ever is there since I am used to oils and so that's my goto method - but I will try your method if I get stuck!

Ok - so sort of admitting defeat on this one and sort of forging ahead. The more I looked at it and the more feedback I got, it became clear that there were so many things I had to change to tell the narrative I was going for, that I might as well just paint it again. But, I really wasn't willing to scrap 100 hours of work to start over and I have had very little success in the past once I start repainting the figure and taking and adding things in the composition and then having to change the size of the image to compensate for the changes of comp. The last painting I tried that on, I got well over 300 hours in and am still not happy with it.

So, I have been wracking my brain where I want to go from here - and I decided that I wanted to find a way to make the image work visually with as much of the present painting 'intact' as I could and I was willing to let the narrative shift if it made the painting read better. So, this is what I came up with: I've changed her tail to have a more elegant curve as suggested. I've removed the shark behind her to make her look less doomed, I've added an eel protector. And I have committed to the red being actual blood instead of poor represented magic. Also, I've widened the canvas to give me room to try and align the line of sight a little better between the shark and the girl. Many of the changes and improvements I have made (other than the eel) have come from everyone's wonderful suggestions on here and I am really grateful to everyone. It really helped give me the information I needed to make a decision on what to do with this and how to. So - hopefully this reads better, even if not true to the original narrative:

also - I love painting eels

Hey, I'm Jeszika - I recently graduated from college with a degree in chemistry and the realization that there was no way I could stand to work in a lab for the rest of my life. I also realized that all those long hours and sleepless nights cramming for tests year after year, were hours I was not painting and writing. So, I decided I had to get over my idea that artists needed real jobs to support their art habit and learn to make a living at what I loved.

I have been a fine art oil painter for about a decade, but I intentionally tried to stay far away from illustration because as a child I was raised around very academic art views - that illustration was not 'art'. So I tried to purge my art of anything that could be considered illustrative so I could be an actual artist, even though as a child one of my main interests was scifi and fantasy illustrations.

In the last few months though, I had a sort of enlightenment - that there are thousands of artists making a good living at their trade - and a huge percentage of them are illustrators not fine artists. By returning to what I loved, I also would be part of an industry where artists can actually make a living as well. My goals are to do work that falls into 'imaginative realism' genre - though it seems I do have a style that shows through that isn't always perfectly realistic. But I am just starting and excited to see where I end up!

So, I have set out to teach myself to paint digitally, and to create a portfolio over the next year of scifi/fantasy illustrations. I have found that I am esp weak in proper planning of an image - thumbnails, sketches, value sketches etc and it costs me literally hundreds of hours in repainting and trying to fix problems halfway through the painting. I also feel very weak on perspective compared to my other skills as an artist - so I am excited to take the classes here at svs and improve on all these things over the next year!

Also for those interested - here is my deviant art: http://jeszika-le-viathan.deviantart.com/

As I mentioned in my introduction, I have done fine art oil painting for over a decade, but recently decided to switch to what I loved as a child - scifi/fantasy illustration. To that end, I started teaching myself digital painting a few months ago. My style isn't usually children's illustration (The only 2 children's illustration I have ever done were the 2 for third Thursday.) but I think there are a lot of lessons here that are still useful to me like design, perspective, color theory, lighting etc. - so please forgive that I am a little out of place and any and all feedback is always appreciated!

So this is my most recent digital painting - The Pied Piper - I think this is my fourth (?) one so far - as I tend to jump back and forth between projects. It is not quite finished, but I hope to have it finished by the end of the week. Mostly I still need to finish the lower part of the cloth golem and the sky is a mess still. But the lower half of the painting is pretty much done and the upper half of the golem is as well.

oh and here are some of my attempts to 'show' the narrative - there are a couple different ones that could be separated and deleted or enhanced - the shark teeth jewelry, the glowing blood, the glowing eye. (none of which are actually rendered - just blocked in)

@Leontine-Gaasenbeek oh wow - that is so beautiful! I love it! Thanks for sharing it! No, I never heard of her before. Really cool! And thanks for the advice on method - I am very new to digital so I am always trying to learn how best to use the medium. Usually I just paint over what ever is there since I am used to oils and so that's my goto method - but I will try your method if I get stuck!

Ok - so sort of admitting defeat on this one and sort of forging ahead. The more I looked at it and the more feedback I got, it became clear that there were so many things I had to change to tell the narrative I was going for, that I might as well just paint it again. But, I really wasn't willing to scrap 100 hours of work to start over and I have had very little success in the past once I start repainting the figure and taking and adding things in the composition and then having to change the size of the image to compensate for the changes of comp. The last painting I tried that on, I got well over 300 hours in and am still not happy with it.

So, I have been wracking my brain where I want to go from here - and I decided that I wanted to find a way to make the image work visually with as much of the present painting 'intact' as I could and I was willing to let the narrative shift if it made the painting read better. So, this is what I came up with: I've changed her tail to have a more elegant curve as suggested. I've removed the shark behind her to make her look less doomed, I've added an eel protector. And I have committed to the red being actual blood instead of poor represented magic. Also, I've widened the canvas to give me room to try and align the line of sight a little better between the shark and the girl. Many of the changes and improvements I have made (other than the eel) have come from everyone's wonderful suggestions on here and I am really grateful to everyone. It really helped give me the information I needed to make a decision on what to do with this and how to. So - hopefully this reads better, even if not true to the original narrative:

also - I love painting eels

@Lynn-Larson - yeah - a lot of people agree with you that the hands should be flipped to be palm up! In my mind I was thinking she was pushing the spell out of her hands - but I can also see the idea that she would be pantomiming the action she would be trying to create... I think changing the color of the spell is a really interesting idea. I had initially chosen red because thematically I felt it fit really well with the sharks - like that was the obvious color for a spell to catch sharks... but maybe the automatic assumption that what ever looks to be bleeding is going to be dinner is just to overpowering for the scene.. I wonder if I changed it to look less red close to her arm but have it turn red as it got near the shark.... hmmm. I am going muse over this for a while! Yeah - it seems her facial expression is really not reading well either. It's maddening - this painting feels so close and so far away at the same time. Thank you for all the feedback - very thought provoking!

@Steve-Young Thank you! Yeah - I can see now that her line of sight is not really reading well to be facing the shark exactly. It's weird - it looked just right to me before but now it definitely looks off. I see what you are saying about adding another in - I can definitely visualize it. Funny thing is I have actually enlarged the shark a few times because he kept reading as too small and unthreatening compared to her in my mind... now I have the opposite problem. I am going to play around with these ideas and see what turns up!

Thank you so much to everyone - for giving me such thoughtful feedback and advice. It is really helpful to keep me pushing forward instead of getting frustrated and giving up! I felt like I was going in circles in my head but now I feel like I have a lot of ideas to play with!

Oh my goodness! Thank you so much everyone for all the great, thought out feedback! What a wealth of ideas!

@Thrace-Shirley-Mears hmm maybe - something to show she has the ability to use magic...

@Peter-Jarvis that's an interesting idea. I was thinking more eel when I painted her tail... but changing her to look more shark-like might be enough to make her look less like dinner. I am glad some of it is working at least! I love painting water so that is encouraging.

@Leontine-Gaasenbeek Thank you! yeah - I was hoping to make her look very focused and predatory in her expression but not her appearance... so I think I have failed in that regard. I am definitely going to try and push her features more to try to make her look more fierce. Also, I didn't see it at first, but now I see what you mean - she looks like she is looking slightly out of the canvas - but the shark is looking at a complete profile line... And yeah, that front arm is driving me nuts! I can't quite get it to look right. And thank you for the kind words as well. This one is really love hate - I love certain things about it but despair of being unable to fix the subtleties that are ruining it.

@Katrina-Fowler I can definitely see what you are seeing - and it seems like a lot of other people are saying the same thing as well. lol - it's funny - the hands were really what started the whole painting. I saw a photo of a girl holding her hands that way and wanted to create a painting that told a story around that pose. I immediately thought casting a spell at something... and that is the part now that is fighting with the painting. I need to learn to not start with little pieces! That picture you posted is awesome, by the way! And yeah, I see what you mean about go big or stay home! You've giving me a lot to think about! Thank you!

@Naroth-Cow Thank you! That is really kind of you to say! Yeah, I feel like I chose a really bad narrative to try and illustrate here. I agree, that arm is not right. It needs more work. And yeah, I was hoping more teeth would be a good clue that she is not in the peril she seems to be. Thanks

@Javier-Diaz oh wow - thank you for that! I actually like the glowing eyes on here a lot more than I do on the shark! Also, the gesture of your line for her body is so graceful. I really like that. I am definitely going to try to experiment with that! Also - I think if I stick with the glowing effects, the added areas throughout the water you made - make a lot of sense as well. You have given me a lot to think about - thanks!

@Thrace-Shirley-Mears hmm that's an interesting point. In my mind I had thought to have her leaning forward, like she was focusing and pushing the spell towards the shark... but I can see how it could read as more hunched down and arms raised defensively.. I wonder if I were to raise her chin up and out more if that would make her look more confident, maybe even arrogant?

oh and here are some of my attempts to 'show' the narrative - there are a couple different ones that could be separated and deleted or enhanced - the shark teeth jewelry, the glowing blood, the glowing eye. (none of which are actually rendered - just blocked in)

I have been doing this piece for a contest, and posted it a few days ago to get feedback. Pretty much every person looked at it and said, I should make her look more afraid and the shark look more scary. So I replied that my intention was actually to create this double take on the image - where at first glance you see a tiny mermaid girl and a looming shark - but that the girl was actually in control and was intentionally luring the shark in and wasn't scared at all.

I thought I could do this with her facial expression and the posture of her hands looking like she was casting a spell. But even after I posted that answer, everyone has said that they still don't see the narrative I was going for. So I have spent the last week brainstorming, sketching, thinking and eventually feeling just lost on how to fix it.

I would like to avoid repainting her or the shark as I really do like the way the painting is rendered so far and the composition doesn't leave room for any large additions. So in my mind, that leaves small props and visual clues. Some things I have considered: shark teeth jewelry, glowing red blood magic, glowing blow magic around blood, glowing eye of shark to match magic glow, and glowing knife/hook shaped magic. It bothers me that the only things I can think of are glowing things, as I wanted it to look somewhat realistic and yet how do you paint magic realistically?! other than to just show the effect...

So, I have tried painting in some of these to hopefully stumble on one I like - and yet everything I try I don't like. I feel like it ends up looking more like game art rather than classical painting... any feedback/advice/critique/suggestion/idea would be super helpful right now as I am just spinning my wheels at this point!

@Naroth-Cow Your painting came out beautifully! and your tutorial was very interesting and got my brain thinking about ways I could use some of those effects - so thanks

@Ben-Rudnicki142 @Craig-Babin and @DanetteDraws Thank you! I really appreciate all the positive feedback!

@Kimberli-Johnson Thank you! That is so encouraging to hear! To be fair, I have been an oil painter for well over ten years, and I just decided to begin learning digital a few months ago - so I have a lot of experience that helped the process

@Maile-McCarthy Wow - thank you so much!

@Lee-White Thank you so much for taking the time to give feedback and do a paint over and everything! I really appreciate the time and willingness to help! For this piece, my initial plan was actually to have the wheat around the girl lit up by fireflies in a more teal range - so I think it is interesting that you added a blue green glow to this. But as I painted it, I actually really fell in love with the more austere cold desaturated colors. Because the piece is about the death of a child, or the loss of a child, I felt like it fit much more with the mood I felt when painting it. Also, my goal as an artist is to really focus on realism, but also be a scifi/fantasy painter - so the intensity of those colors loses some of that realism I really tried to create with this image (though I don't know how well I succeeded at it).

But I went back into it tonight, and I did try to add some mist and some fireflies into it, and everything I did felt like it moved farther away from my direction and mood. Also, I know I do have a tendency to be biased against bright colors - esp. if they are on the warm end of the spectrum, so that might be part of the problem as well lol. Either way, thanks for looking over it and offering feedback! It made me really think about the choices I made and why.

@Javier-Diaz Thanks for the feedback as well. Yeah, I tried tonight to add some more stuff like that in, and I just kept mourning the loss of the stark cold feeling I had to the piece before. It's funny, I had initially wanted to do that as well, but the piece kind of came alive to me emotionally and went in another direction.

So I went back in tonight and tried working on all the suggestions I received, and even though I didn't add more glowing or mist effects to it, I did add more detail to the dress which I thought might help tie it together better. And thanks again to everyone who left feedback or advice. It is so encouraging to not just get the silent internet in reply!

So, I think I finished it - though I am open to any suggestions if something really needs to be fixed. I am really happy with how this piece came out and starting to feel like I could really do well in digital painting. This is my fourth one, but up till now, I felt really unsure and awkward with the new medium. This was the first that just felt really natural to paint.

@Thrace-Shirley-Mears - Thank you! I actually have been a fine art oil painter for well over a decade, and just in the last few months have tried learning digital painting - so it is nice to hear that my traditional work shows through in this piece.

@Steve-Young - Thanks! That should save me some frustration in the future.

@Carey-Bowden - Thank you! That is great to hear! I hadn't actually thought of putting this in a book. I am a traditional painter so I think I was just thinking about how it would look hanging on a wall. Though, I would really love to get into cover design - so I should really think about how text would fit with an image like this. Though I have no real knowledge of graphic design or typography...

@Naroth-Cow - Thank you! I really appreciate that

still haven't painted the sky - lol - not sure how to edit typos on here.