I’ve been giving digital painting another shot over the past few weeks. I’ve noticed that the beginning of a painting usually goes relatively well, but eventually I reach a point where I have no idea how to move forward. Either the painting starts getting worse, I can’t make the design feel interesting, or I simply can’t push it beyond the very rough concept stage (pic related).I’ve been trying to improve my values and my sense of scale, since I’m fascinated by artists who are able to portray enormous structures in a really convincing and atmospheric way.I’d really appreciate any advice or critique. Is there something specific I should be practising, or am I approaching the process in the wrong way? Or should I just give up painting altogether?
>>8001189Not an expert on digital painting but to me it seems like you have to draw more. Drawing is the foundation of painting. If your drawing sucks then you also can't paint well on top of it.Look at Tsutomu Nihei and how he draws mega structures. He deliberately draws details in the distance and starts drawing very small there. Your painting looks too blurry since you didn't really draw small details. It's more like concept art not really a finished painting.
>>8001190Yeah, thats exactly my problem, it looks blurry and unrefined. So just go back to drawing? Go for fundamentals like perspective and intricate detailing?I‘ve added one of my drawings for reference. I never really tried megastructures in drawing tho.
>>8001192That looks pretty good already. You definitely can draw. I guess when painting such huge structures it just becomes intimidating to really go into details that's why it ended up looking like this. Probably takes a while if you really want to refine somethign like that.Your painting still looks good tho. If you don#t want to spend the time on it you also can leave it like this. But yea the blurr is the thing I noticed the most.
This is already really cool. Just get a smaller brush and zoom in on one thing at a time, and you should be able find a rhythm.
>>8001197Thanks. Maybe I just have ADHD and keep losing focus
>>8001196Thanks. Would you prefer it if it was mor crisp/cleaner? I was thinking a little fogginess might help the scale.
>>8001204>Would you prefer it if it was mor crisp/cleaner? I was thinking a little fogginess might help the scale.Yea it definitely would look better with more refinement. You also can push things in the background and add atmosphere to it when it's drawn detailed, especially in digital. It just has to still be in contrast with the focus of the image, meaning if you draw the distance more detailed then you definitely also have to draw the focus (I guess in this image it's the holes in the ship) more detailed.Also adding a bit of texture brushes could have been a nice addition.
>>8001189you can be more bold with your brush strokes and give it an impressionist twist
>>8001189Blog bitte
>>8001189large illustrations are always a chore I find. You feel a much stronger creative impulse when you still can change the composition around, when you reach the stage of detailing it's inevitably going to get tediouswhat I do is zoom on a part of the painting and detail there, so my brain doesn't think "the whole painting is detailed enough for this canvas size, look if I squint my eyes it's ok..."fortunately I think it's also a filter, most painters will get bored and move on without actually finishing any large scale painting because of this, and getting through will set you apart the untermensh crowdnot that I succed at it
>>8001189Try to decide what the approach for your illustration will be in terms of linework and painting. There's usually a bridge between those and some artists try to keep some identity of lineart and brushwork while others lean fully into letting the form and values do the work without any lineart, there's also the "I'll let lineart do the job and have the paint sit under" like a watercolor wash.I think the simplest exercise is cropping a background from actual animation that deals with a subject like yours (with a technique that interests you), and try to replicate it. Something that will become apparent is that you have plenty of options to approach it because there is an infinite amount of brushes, while it's true that you can achieve a lot with default brushes, I think taking the time to decide what brush you'll be using for likely hundreds of hours is a decent investment of your time, it's not a hard fix but it makes you comfortable with the idea of painting in digital, you get to choose your tools and process, but to have a sense for it you need to test it, small exercises allow you to see this more clearly, then you can confidently replicate those results in longer, finished projects.Also be careful of using atmospheric perspective at the expense of structure, you can still have sharp edges in the distance, what you're trying to depict is depth, so while blurring edges is fine you can achieve that effect with simply reducing contrast, that way you can tell apart what is the sky, a ship or a rock formation.Also check Will Weston drawing for composition course, it deals with some of the foreground/mid/bg problems you usually find in these kind of illustrations and how you deal with distance basically, among many other design concepts. You can find it in course(dot)club.
>>8001189post the refs you used. It looks like a cool perspective concept but freehanded to the point that everything is out of perspective. It’s easy to think that kind of thing doesn’t matter but it does
>>8001189spend half an hour in photoshop fixing the colors everywhere, then paint over againthis is just what I have seen others do, I havent completed an illustration in a long time.
>>8001429Hab keinen :(
>>8001517Hey man thanks a ton for your input. Thats some really good advice. I think my lineart ist way stronger than my painting which is why I usually lean more towards doing linework first or filling in details with lines. I didn‘t want this to be a crutch tho which is why I opted to do paintings without any lineart whatsoever, just values and color. I really admire artists that do this well the most. I will check out your resources, Thanks again
>>8001547I did use a layer which i constructed perspective lines on, but at some point I hid it to see if I could do it without guidance lines. As for reference i just looked at a bunch of photos of stranded shipwrecks and went on the megalophobia subreddit to finds cases of extreme perspeciive, I will try enabling my perspective lines again and then fixing the painting. >>8001468Yes, losing focus describes it pretty well. Sometimes I‘m even burnt out from a painting just by the thought of having to continue working on it.>>8001338I get what you mean and theres tons of artist that have these purposefil brushstrokes that carry lots of intent. Whenever i try to do that it just looks wrong tho. Which is a problem with values and line/stroke control i think. So really i just need to paint more?
>>8001429Here is another one of my drawings
>>8001189You should check out the art in Scorn the videogame, I am getting those kinda vibes from ur painting. They do megastructures really well. Also check out Zdzislaw Beksinski
>>8001668have you seen wayne barlowe's hell ? your work reminds me of him
