Thanks for taking the time to reply and critique @Kevin-Longueil. Really appreciate your feed back.

I know what you mean about the background. I've since viewed the image on my phone and can see it's much darker compared to my computer screen.

That's a good point about the dwarf's pose. In my initial sketches I'd had him finding gold and holding it up to the light. The eggs read better than the gold but I kept the pose. Your pose does work much better.

Thank you for doing the paint over. It has really helped me to visualise your points.

Hi guys.

For this month's competition I went for the moment before things get very toasty for this wandering dwarf. I was trying to push the separation of the foreground and background characters. Using cool lighter colours and lighting for the foreground and darker warmer colours for the background. I wanted to try and push the dragon back as far into the shadow as possible so that it would almost be a second read with the inner mouth glow signalling that something lay in the gloom.

The things I'm not currently sure about are whether the dwarf pops out too much that he doesn't like he's in the same room as the dragon. The more I look at it the more i feel he should have stronger shadows.

Thanks,
Daniel

Hi @Heather-Bouteneff, thanks for the feedback. The initial idea was summer but with creepy trees. I've quickly changed the clothing slightly to get closer to what you were saying.

Thanks for the help

Finally got chance to come back to this. Any one got any thoughts on where this is going? I really struggle with knowing when a piece is finished.

Thanks

Hi @hannahmccaffery. Thank you for the feedback. I tried to apply what you were saying about the values (using a drawing app on my phone so it's a bit rough). I was actually pretty surprised to find the face in the tree not reading at all in the black and white version.

I absolutely don't mind you pointing these things out How are these versions reading?

Thanks

Hi all.

Ive always struggled with having a set process to follow for creating images. After watching a whole bunch of the svs tutorials I can really say that the idea of thumbnails > line drawing > value drawing > adding colours > painting in details is really working for me.

With this piece I'm at the point where I'm about to start tightening up the edges and adding details. Before I go any further I'd love to get a critique. Are the values, colours, lighting, and story telling working for you guys?

Thanks
Daniel

Hi @Heather-Bouteneff looks like the values of the hedge, ground and animals are pretty close. I've turned your image black and white to demonstrate what I mean.

I took your drawing and quickly darkened the bushes and floor (with my finger on my phone so it's a bit messy). The characters aren't quite as lost within the hedge.

The focal point is the exchange of the apple between the two human characters. I'd suggest upping the contrast even more around them by lightening the sky around their heads maybe. Maybe even drop that top of the hedge down a bit so the figures are silhouetted against the sky. The line of the top of the hedge is touching the girls hand which slightly obscures the action of her throwing the apple.

Hope that helps

Wow, fantastic. Well done!

Hi @andersoncarman. Welcome to the forum!

@djly thanks for the feedback

@andersoncarman thank you very much for taking the time to write such a detailed critique. That's exactly what I was looking for from this post. I'm absolutely going to take all of your points on board. I hadn't even considered most of the things you'd listed but the bottom jaw had felt off from the beginning.