Sorry for the quality of the picture, this was as good as I could do right now. Fenrir, the huge wolf, eats Odin whole as Valhalla is destroyed in the background by falling meteors or fireballs or something epic like that. In the final I'm thinking Fenrir will be tones of red, pretty much the entire pice will be in a reddish hue. Snow will be falling, people will be running out on the gates of Valhallah. It's gonna be fun.
Hey Owen!!!
ReplyDeleteOkay first off, this may sound rough, but I would ideally like you to change a lot of stuff. I've done a drawover that addresses a lot of the issues I have. I don't want you to get discouraged by it. In my mentorship Rebecca has been doing these awesome drawovers on everyones work, changing stuff drastically, and we love them. I'm trying to take a cue from her when I do my own drawovers... I call it the Rebecca Treatment. Hahaha.
http://www.albaillustration.com/blogfiles/owen-drawover-ea.jpg
Anyway, I think you can make this image way more awesome. Right now its kind of lifeless and there's too much open space. I think you're painting it too big, and it will be easier to draw and paint a little smaller. Everything in the image is small and dainty looking. You need to blowup the KAPOW! of the image. Valhalla is too centered, and you can blow up the wolf and make him more furry with bigger paws. Also the trail of hair down his back was offcentered. Not sure what's going on with the other arm (without seeing reference), but if you puff up his mane you can disguise the area better so people won't question it.
Odin is just not doing it for me. He's too stiff and straight, and I'd like some foreshortening or something. He creates a line from the wolf snout straight off the page. If you make him sitting up struggling the angle will help bring the eye back in.
In the drawing, you can keep the wolf and just fix what you need to fix, and just crop the image in and make it a smaller painting. Nothin wrong with smaller paintings! Trace Valhalla and transfer it to wherever you decide to put it.
Anyway, I'm sorry if it looks like a lot, but I really feel you can push this and make it a really cool piece with a lot of narrative, atmosphere, and action. With an image that has so much space around the important stuff, your eye just kind of gets lost in the void.
I think Lis addressed pretty much all of the major compositional/anatomical issues. I definitely agree that cropping in closer/enlarging Fenrir will make for a MUCH more powerful piece, and will also play to your attention to detail and skill with painting textures.
ReplyDeleteThe composition is really vertical, so Lis's idea to just move Valhalla over to the side is a nice easy solution to create a more dynamic image.
My last thought, and you can take it or leave it, is that I'd almost rather see the moment just BEFORE Fenrir eats Odin. I think it's more powerful conceptually, and builds more tension and anticipation, to show something on the verge, rather than in the middle of an attack. To have Fenrir looming over Odin, and you just know this guy is doomed, is way more terrifying.
Either way, I know you're going to do a killer job painting that wolf, so definitely consider having him fill the foreground with all of his bristling, snarling deadliness.