Help and critique.
3yr
Antti Kallinen
Hi, im doing a dog painting for a friend. It started ok, did some studies and so on. Now after painting it bigger i kinda went in a different direction and the painting feels really off.
Its still early WIP but the values and colors can be seen. I think the yellow light side is mayby off color, or the values of the painting are off.
Please, give me your insight/ critique.
The photo was taken with a phone, ill take a better one later.
Heres a photo with a real camera. I did some small adjustments, havent had the time to paint because of work. Doesnt feel so off now, just incomplete and amateurish :) Too candy colored but i can only blame myself.
@Antii Kallinen Hi. I think there might be sometging wrong with the color temperature in the face. Since that part of the fur is quite low in value it should appear more like the color of the light, more yellow. I van see that you have done that a little biton the side, sort of as a rim light, but i feel like it is not perfectly consistent with the colors and values we can see on the body. Tge pectoral muscles of the dog, for an exemple, look fairly light and warm. And since they look like tgey are more or less at the same angle as the front part of the snout, this part should be light and warm as well (possibly warmer since it extends farther into the light) same thing with the eyebrows. The painting also has a lot of very dark values that you might want to consider toning down a little bit to keep them in only key areas. Picking a cold, greyish blue such as prussian blue for most of the shadows (in the trees area on the left for an exemple) and keeping the black for key areas only might help. Hope my explanations are clear and you manage to fix the issues :)
Thank you. Yes, the reference for the dog has the lighting as seen, and i agree the snout area feels weird.
In the photo the sun is coming from a very low angle and little bit behind the dog. I could change it but the reference looked cool so thats why ive stuck with it.
I also made a small monsterclay model for checking the light.
The dog breed is german shorthaired pointer. The coloration is mainly grey,white and some reddish brown.
More opinions please, these really help me see it better :)
@Antti Kallinen Hi! The way I was able to see some of the offputting mistakes in your painting was by looking at the small preview before klicking on the Picture! That is something that can allways help with finding issues in Paintings. One of the things is the brigt grey on the dogs face that sticks out a bit too much. Maybe the furr really is that bright in the Photo but it really draws a lot of attetntion. The other is maybe a composition poblem. The Dog basically splits the image in half because on the left side of the backround you have a bright colorfull green and on the right side a much darkger and greyer green. Again Maybe that is accurate to the photo but I think that makes it look a little wierd.
No I think the colors are good! And generally I think the composition is fine if you were going for that look. Then I would only nag on the cheek value!
Yes the fur is white on the cheeks so its blue grey here but the value might be too bright.
The compositional problem i cannot change and it is also somewhat intended but i will try to change the background and see if it helps. It was also originally intended to use the windmill principle of bright on bright,bright on dark, dark on bright and dark on dark. Too bad i put the dog too much in the center.
What about the colors, are they off to you?
