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Artist's Comments
It is finished! I took a lot of pauses hehehe... I saw my movie ''The last samuraï'' and listening to his soundtrack trought painting hehehe. I guess the samuraï always interested me. First when I was a child, I loved the knights kind of philosophy and when I grew up, the oriental knights of Japan was more my thing. I guess it's the way that japanese culture is, because there is so much thing to learn in this culture. Sometimes I go on the internet tv's from Japan and watch them speak and do things. I even took Karate courses and been to one American Championship in New York in september 2006. I buy a lot of oriental music and I had a Bonzaï last year that died
It is for sure that one day I will go to Japan and take my time to understand their way of culture, new and old. In this painting from the tutorial of Hedong He of ImagineFX magazine, I wanted to give people hope and good values for the future. The true way of a samuraï is to serve for the best he can, because sometimes in life we are less energic and we have troubles with some things, so we reflect our way to our children. I think that we all need to do our best and give the next generations good values. Comments
Very nice, overall. A couple things, though. The shading is very white. Highlights are almost never white, and should be lighter, less satuated shades of the base colors. As for skin, there should be more red tones to represent the blood.
The other thing is composition. I can tell you put a lot of time into this, but he's kinda off centered. It would've gone a long way to make sure he was centered in the pic before finishing it. Overall very nice! And good thoughts in your comments. -- I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. ---- If you'd like an awesome drawing of your favorite character or avatar, Check This Out! |
Details
May 27
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Critiques
As far as critique goes; I'd say that the shading, while section-by-section is nice, is a little flat overall. The way you've got it now looks pretty much as though it's being lit directly from the front; which tends to produce rather monotonous results. It also seems to be colorless; remember that the colors in your piece are very dependent on the lighting situation, so while the object may be blue, it may not show as blue in different lighting.
A more dynamic approach would be to stick, say, a strong gold from the top right; that way you could put some sharp gold highlights on the armor and hair to add some color, and then throw most of the left side in to shadow to help portray a sort of mysterious nature. That way would also really define the shapes of the character, making his form read much more clearly.
Also, don't be afraid to add color to your work. While the power of digital art is easy to abuse; if used properly, you can make your work really dynamic by using gradient maps and blending modes and things like that to make it very colorful and atmospheric.
And, to better explain myself, here's a quick paintover showing what adding some more solid shading and lighting can do: [link]
But you've definitely got a good start here! The details are great! Keep it up!
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