Cardmaster Digital Painting - FINISHED as of April 24th! Yay! Take a look ^_^

[Cardmaster]

Hey guys,
So I'm working on my final project for my drawing class here at USC; I decided to go with a digital painting.
This file is HUGE. I'm working at 3'x4', 300dpi, with a file size a little over a gig. (practically brings my computer to its knees every time I save, heh.)
Anyways. We had to try and explore some sort of theme, and I've been toying around with the idea of nature overtaking technology; y'know, kind of reversing the "normal" perception of nature being crushed by technology. It's still very much a work in progress; I've got another week to work on this before "printing day."
So, I'm trying really hard to improve my Photoshop painting skills, and I think I've made big progress with this one... what do you guys think?
FINAL
FOR HI-REZ CLICK HERE.


Thanks y'all.

-CM

[Carravaggio]

There is a lot I like in this image.

Its a huge step forward from your other stuff mate. Its very impressive to see your dedication to improving your skills.
The grass trees and hills look great, the shadowed grass in particular looks very effective.

The image has a lovely children's book illustration/gouche paint style to it. I think if this level of work and this style is a regular thing with you, you could even aim at that market with your skills. Children's book illustration is an important and highly skilled field. I don't know where you intend to take your art, but I could see this style working well in that field.


the choice of the orange/green contrast works well. It allows the robot to stand out from the background, while making it seem very hard and inorganic. Therefore in contrast the greenery seems all the more lush and fertile.

Using such a range of greens to depict the trees makes it very visually interesting and very busy, but avoids being too busy because of the blaring orange of the robot draining a lot of that detail with broad, flat expanses. Again this is nicely done. I particularly like the line of trees behind his/its head.

i have sent some more detailed constructive criticism via PM. let me know if you would like me to elaborate naything I have written there.
Great stuff and I look forward to an update :)

[Cardmaster]

First off, huge thanks to Carr for all of his comments and critiques.
I've posted an updated version now; what do you guys think? Anyone got any thoughts other than Carr? :P

[UnkoMan]

Well he certainly said a lot there. I dunno... what could I even say to be constructively criticistic.

How about this? I don't quite get all of the way the robot is sinking into the ground. Perspective seems a bit off on the side where it goes back there. The sky is also a bit plain, with no clouds in it or anything.

Umm.. I'm stretching here. I could mention the foreground trees looking like a bunch of round skirts placed on top of each other, but that's probably intentional. I do enjoy it, and definitely agree that it'd work for a children's story.

[Cardmaster]

Alrighty, I finished! I took it to the printer today, and it was sooo cool to see my work printed out at 3'x4'. I'm really happy with the final results.
The final is uploaded in my first post.
Gotta give a thank you to Carr and Unko for their help; especially Carr's awesome PM advice. ^_^

You can look at a higher-resolution version HERE.

Gotta confess, it was a little disheartening to get next to no comments of any kind (besides the two mentioned above) during this whole process though... It's always worrisome when no one has anything good or bad to say...

Anyways.. that's just me being slightly disappointed. Heh. Hope you guys like my work. :)

-CM

[MJB]

Be happy you received 2 comments for 1 drawing. I did 3 brand new drawings and I only received 2 comments total.

-MJB

[Alaric]

Wow! I really like that!

My favorite detail is the bird sitting on the robot.

(I would have comented sooner, but I haven't actually checked out the art forum in a while. I tend to go through phases of regularly checking different groups of forums- with certain forums, such as General, always being included- and somehow the art forum just hasn't been on my "list" recently. Glad I stopped by, though.)