Help fixing painting appreciated
4yr
Tobias Höglund
I did a preliminary sketch which I thought worked, but the painting does not feel appealing to me. It could be going to color or something else, I just can't put my finger on why it does not work.
I know it lacks storytelling, the idea was just to be decorative. Maybe that's the problem...any suggestions appreciated.
I think the level of rendering and your technique work in general. The problem is in the composition, the disposition of shapes, It needs more variation: Different sizes and angles for the heads. Different levels of detail and contrast. For example, you could soften the water´s edge to lighten the contrast between it and the background.
So, I think there's some really good feedback here already, and you should only pick a few of them to work on at a time.
I have two points though.
Each element reads fairly well on it's own, but you are missing reflected lights to bind it all together and feel like it's all in the same place. For example, the blue of the water would shine up on the underside of the fox, so I would add some blue in there and some orange from the fox onto the water.
If you have something really colorful, you can try sitting next to a window and holding up the colorful thing next to the shadow side of the skin of your knee, this should illustrate what I mean :))
The second point is about the construction/perspective of the fox's head. Since the ear to our right is closer to the viewer it makes it easier to read if it is larger than the one on the left, so I would make it larger or make the left one a bit smaller.
All that said, I think you did a pretty good job with a complex composition
@Tobias Höglund a few ideas to ponder- would it increase in appeal if the viewer could see full body of rabbit and others in action instead of static heads? From my initial impression, it appears more Dali surrealist in tone than decorative, as it has quite a lot of symbolism which viewer needs to puzzle out for themselves. It definitely has the factor to draw a viewer back in trying to figure out its meaning like Dali. Very well executed technique by the way!
For me it's the heads. The 3 heads look almost exactly the same except for the "skin." Same size, same orientation (only mirrored in the rabbit), same expression. A lot of your silhouttes are very smooth and hard edged as well, which makes the heads look taxidermied (a solution would be to vignette them and give them more active poses than vacant stares if you don't want them to feel like severed heads) It also feels very segmented between the top half and the bottom half, and doesn't really flow, despite the water. Maybe a more unified color palette could help tie it together, like if everything were bluer...but I don't know much about color yet
Maybe move the light around to the side or back? Right now it comes from the same point as the viewer, so there aren't many shadows so contrast is low.
I think it works as composition. But I have two thoughts that might help to bring it even further.
Both are about leading the viewers eye. Right now you only have forms that lead the eye, actually one big form that flows from the bottom to the upper left. So no matter where I start my eyes get guided out of the frame and 'falls off' there. Also all animals look out of the frame. Now that might be intended because it seems like a consequent pattern throughout the illustration, but I think I need soemthing to hold on to.
Also right now all elements feel equal, there is neither a point that has way more detail, nor is there a lighting, that tells me what the main attraction is supposed to be.
so in short everything in the image tells me look somewhere else.
These are only my own practices to analyze, so please remember I can be completely wrong or it is exactly what you wanted to achieve.
I think it is really beautifully drawn and I also like the surreal, disorientated atmosphere, I would love you to keep that.