Gouache forest painting
3mo
Account deleted
Hello, I am new to posting my art online but would like some objective feedback.
For context, I am a begginer and have been doing studies of landscapes in goache for a few months and wanted to try combining a few reference images together in my own composition.
I have included my thumbnails and one of my reference images, my goal was for the effect to be similar to a Disney animated background, like snow white. I wanted this to be a dense forest with a low canopy and mossy floor.
My main questions are:
- I had alot of issues with the colours, especially the tree trunks and the background, I tried to implement things like ambient light but I think that I am missing something.
- I don't know how to show the perspective of the branch coming toward or away from the camera. I have learnt some perspective but found it hard to show in paint, should I have constructed the sketch more? Or is it a lack of gouache skill?
-I wanted this to be a dense forest, but have I made the background too dark?
Thank you so much to anyone who can help me, I really appreciate your time.
Hi, coming from an amateur, I honestly think the colours are very nice are the painting looks fairly appealing in general.
I think the things that is "missing" is contrast, I actually believe you made the background (not the brightly lit mid ground) not dark enough and made the tree in the foreground too dark. The thumbnail sketch looks much better in this aspect. Contrast would make the tree in the forefront "pop".
As for the perspective, maybe make the branches going further back slightly blurrier and blend in the background a bit more and the frontward branches more clean and contrasting to the background. I do not have much experience with gouache however so I don't know any techniques that could help you achieve this, so I suggest looking into this yourself.
Regarding the dense forest issue, I think that might be related to the composition and how you placed your subjects, the tree in the front takes up a lot of space attention, thus making it the main subject. In an animated movie background, the main subjects are usually the characters in the scene, so the center piece of the background should be a space where the characters can exist in, the trees surrounding them. The reference image fits this pretty well.
This is just my opinion, I'm just saying what I believe would help you so,
I hope this helps and good luck on your art journey.
