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MysticWarriorDesign [2014-10-16 14:34:19 +0000 UTC]

Alright, my friend, here's the paintover .
Some additional details-
I painted out the lines, tried to unify the lighting a bit, and tweak a little anatomy.

ANATOMY- So, those wings need to be HUGE, this is the #1 problem with every harpy, angel, etc.  Wings are easily 3x the length of the body they're attached to, on each side, and they have long feathers on the end.  Her legs were longer than her body, which is too much for any creature- they're still long, but just not AS long.  In this pose, her butt is pulled back, raising her knees- I didn't raise her knees as I should have, kinda lending it to long bird legs, but normally, along with receding her butt, those knees should be higher.

LIGHTING- Alright, with such a bright white light coming straight down, the background was too dark, so I whitened it.  In doing this, I created a sort of global illumination/back-lighting, which I had to obey.  So, now everything is lit from directly above, and the edges have some rim-light.  Starting at the top- the wings are bright at the top, and a they round, get darker (this does two things: shows they are rounded properly, and draws our eye to the peak)- I've also faded the edges of the wings to disappear into the blinding light.  Her hair almost exactly copies the rounded shading technique.  Her face is a bit more shadowed, and casts a shadow down on her collar.  Her armpits are dark, but her chest is bright all the way across, evenly.  At the rounded edge of her ribs, it gets instantly dark- because of her posture, everything below the ribs is actually a downward facing plane, under her torso, so it's shaded dark.  When her legs bend and come up, they're still under shadow until a certain point, then you see the light suddenly cut back in.  I didn't do much with the feet because there wasn't much there, but I added a little rim-lighting.  Oh, and I darkened her hair/tail thing because there'd be like no light in there on that side of it, and it helps the body stand out better.  It could probably benefit from some glow through, but no biggie, it serves its purpose of making contrast for the body.

ADDITIONAL- I made the feathers blend in with the white background.  They would be mostly lit, and be hard to distinguish in such bright light.  I also used the smudge tool to blur them a little, because the lines were too apparent on them.  The lines are painted out of pretty much everything but her eyes- anime eyes just kinda are what they are.  The last MAJOR thing I try to do with every picture is go to "ADJUST LEVELS",  which brings up a histogram showing how dark and light the picture is.  After I was done with it, it had some dark value, but was 80% light, so I dragged the left arrow to the right, which rebalanced the picture to have more darkness in it.  Now it has more balanced contrast, and looks awesome! 

*(My red lines kinda point to some of these areas, but you'll also see a REALLY HELPFUL trick I do to wrap my head around the lighting of a piece- I make a sphere, and apply the lighting in the scene to it.  If there's multiple light sources, I do multiple spheres, then combine them into one.  Now, I have a guide/map for how to light anything in the scene!  Granted, it's trickier than that, and you really need to understand the lighting you are applying, but it's a tool that really helps keep you focused, at least!)

All in all, I really like the picture!!  It has an awesome balance of form and lighting to play with, which gives it great dark and light sections, contrast, stuff for the eye to look at and play in.  It's pretty great!  Hopefully this has all helped you- definitely let me know, alright?  (Also, download and save the file- who knows when I'll delete it, I clean up regularly.)

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MysticWarriorDesign [2014-10-16 13:00:56 +0000 UTC]

Ohhh, this is very nice!!
That soft chalk look is a cool texture which does wonders for the picture (that's my biggest weakness- texture)!  And you sharpen the details in the center, to focus on her, which is a smart and well used technique!

So, there are a few little issues- and they're learning curves that come with finding your style, and learning how to work with light.
1) Yeah the lighting is a little off.  I'm not hyper analyzing it, but where I quickly notice an issue is her chest, versus her belly & legs.  So, her face is fully lit, as though from straight on, parallel to the plane of her face- but then we get some stark changes in light on her nearby edges- you have top lighting on the collar & shoulders (it rounds over the top, like from directly above, and would light behind her, too), which is supported by shadows below the peak of the collar, and under just about every other form on her body.  So, that clashes.  But there's in-continuity in the lighting on her body- if you have top lighting, you need to get more shaded as you go down.  Right now, it sort of mixes front lighting at times.  I get it- I recognize these things from my own work- lighting sucks, and takes a lifetime to get right, because, honestly, it's all about observing real life, A TON.  And as budding fantasy artists, we usually don't look at reality too much.

2) You have two styles here.  I FREAKING LOVE EACH OF THEM, and am totally jealous of the chalk work, but you can't combine styles.  It's just wrong- doesn't work.  So, either line the entire thing, or chalk the entire thing.  Given that you were blending elements, like ignoring her feet, etc, I'd say chalk it, and lose the hard lines.  It's scary, yeah, especially because you need to have damn near flawless understanding of what you are doing, but you've shown enough here that I think you can do it!

I'm going to do a quick paintover and send it to you, so you can see something about the lighting.... gimme a few.

(Eh, and yeah, nipples are 'mature' filter.  But I don't give half a crap, I've seen worse unfiltered.)

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GradyLWIlliams [2014-10-10 01:21:27 +0000 UTC]

glad I could try to help.

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syarel [2014-10-07 13:39:01 +0000 UTC]

Favourited, done!

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