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'After the storm' digital painting - looking for critiques
3yr
Kamil Pszczółkowski
Hello, recently I've finished this piece and would love to see some opinions about it. The biggest issues for me here were general composition of the piece and getting good feeling with these clouds. Let me know about anything you think I can improve.
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Yiming Wu
3yr
Great colour and very nice atmosphere! I think you captured the vibrancy of the sky and cloud pretty well! The only thing I can think of is maybe the image is a bit busy. Maybe because there are too many contrasty elements? Mainly if that big chunk of stone behind the clouds could have more atmospheric colour shift I think the structure would read better, and if ypu want to emphasize the tree, try reducing the contrast in the clouds? I did a quick paint over... You could take a look at Alex Andreev's work https://alexandreev.com/collections/metronomicon very surreal looking. He captures simple as well as busy scenes, maybe it's because of the visual structure. Sometimes it just reads better. Maybe you could try using colour to differentiate things, like if you make the whole atmosphere yellow-ish, and make the tree very vibrant purple? I'm not good at coming up with a nice colour scheme though... Still you did a great job on this fantastical piece :D
Kamil Pszczółkowski
Thank you very much for this informative and useful response. Your overpaint helps me clearly see the issues you pointed out and surely I'm going to work on that. Wow Alex Andreev's work looks totally amazing and I can clearly learn a lot from his works. I'm glad you recommended him. His art is very inspiring.
Dan B
3yr
Great scene, I like the colours and lighting. For suggestions, I think the monolithic shape in the background stands out a bit. I would either split it down into multiple platforms receding into the distance (could lead the eye towards the tree) or just reduce its size a bit. I'd also think about adding something to reference the storm more by having them only in one area (i.e. off to the right, if I remember correctly compositionally an image's 'story' is read left to right, so the storm has passed). At the moment they mostly just look like clouds in shadow and nothing looks wet. Perhaps some distant lightning or appearance of rain falling or something, if the idea is actually to capture the storm in the image itself. I'm no pro so use appropriate grains of salt here :)
Kamil Pszczółkowski
These are some really good points, thank you very much for very useful critique. I'm definitely going to work on that rock shape - your idea with using it's shape to better navigate the viewers eye over the picture is very solid. Your advices about the storm are great too - after you pointed this out I can clearly see the issue with that. I'll try to play around with it during my redraw.
Lincoln Phung
Hi Kamil, I really like it - especially the clouds, they seem to have a lot of thick overwhelming volume. For me as a viewer I think of your focal point as the floating island with the tree on it, subject matter wise it stands out amongst the clouds and rocks, the hue contrasts there, there's value contrast there, all great things! As a suggestion to make that area stand out even more if you want it to, is to simplify other areas. I find myself a bit distracted by the foreground rock islands, particularly the one on the bottom right. There's a lot of texture detail there that I think distracts from the focal point, when it seems like it would be more in shadow. Another thing that might help would be to suggest more depth through value, making the foreground elements more dark - if that's what you want to do. Again, these are all suggestions - can't wait to see more from you.
John Guy
3yr
I was thinking the same thing with the detail, you beat me to it. I took it into photoshop and did a quick blur pass on the areas where I think the detail could be simplified.
Sarah Anna
3yr
Wow. That is so wonderful. I really like it.
Kamil Pszczółkowski
I'm very happy you like it, thank you very much :).
Account deleted
Hi Kamil, I love your artwork. The clouds looks great and your color mood is fantastic. I have some tips, how you could improve your piece. At first, the perspective from your tree feels off. Your horizon line is on the bottom. Your Rock in the distance is to present. You could desaturate it a little bit. At least: Your scene looks lifeless. Tell us a story. Add some humans or animals to the scene. I'm look forward to your finished piece ;)
Kamil Pszczółkowski
Thank you very much for these tips, I'll surely try to implement them on my redraw. Your overpaint is very useful, I'll correct the perspective for sure. I'll also work more on atmospheric perspective and try to implement more prominent story points.
Arielle Ronin
Dude your drawing is splendid. Very beautiful! I think you could work out the highlights in the tree a little bit more. Especially on the leaves you can go a lot more brighter (like on the clouds) and on the grass on the ground around the tree. I think a lot more hightlights in the tree would give the picture an awesome kick and beautiful contrast. Also it would pin the view more to the tree which in my opinion is the core part of the drawing. Keep up the wonderful work!
Kamil Pszczółkowski
I'm extremely happy you like it :). Thank you for the tips, I'll surely try to push the highlights on the tree better/experiment more with this idea.
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