Reply To: crits wanted for painting

[silentheart00]

Hello, and welcome to the community!

There’s going to be a fair amount of critiquing up ahead, but don’t worry, I’ll try to be as helpful as I can.

• You’ve got a nice style so far, but maybe a bit loose right now.  Since this is a WIP, I’m not too worried about it being very loose.
• You’re also using whites to get tints and blacks to get shades, and that’s okay.  You’re still learning.  However, what happens when you apply that to hue and saturation is it makes everything feel flat, a little… lifeless, perhaps?  Take a look at the Color Course, especially section 4 where it talks about hue shifting.  Powerful juju hue shifting is.
• I like your colors.  They’re nice.  I’m horrible at picking out color schemes, though, but things feel somewhat harmonious.  Can’t really describe why, though.
• Now, for the thing you’re most concerned about: shadows.  Shadows will always point in the opposite direction of the light source.  Think about it.  What’s happening when a form is in front of a light?  The form is blocking some of that light, right?  Set up a scene, take your hand, or random items, and place them under a 1 point light source like a lamp.  Turn on the lamp and turn off all the other lights.  What’s happening?  What can you observe how light is interacting with the objects?  Move the objects closer to the light.  What happens?  Move them farther.  What happens?  Move them up from the surface.  What happens then?  Move them closer to a surface.  Experiment.  Draw from life.  Really observe what is happening there.  There’s a really great book called Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter by James Gurney that will take you through all possible lighting scenarios as well as dig into a bit of the science why light interacts with the objects in the way it does.  It’s grounded in traditional art, but the theories behind it are still applicable to everything.

It’s a good start, but you can definitely push yourself farther.  Keep going!