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EleMont — My First Dragon
#dragon
Published: 2015-02-23 22:55:02 +0000 UTC; Views: 680; Favourites: 19; Downloads: 0
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Description
Hmm, might be too dark...Related content
Comments: 11
Yeah, I think you have pretty decent painting skills actually. There's solid form and a nice use of texture. Unfortunately, your grasp of anatomy doesn't match that and it brings the piece down.
Go take a look at the skeletons of quadrupled animals. Even bulkier creatures like horses, bears or cattle, have the same kind of basic structure. Look at the space between the end of the ribcage and the beginning of the pelvis. Because the ribcage is more static than the rest of the spine, that's literally the only part of the spine that could move up and down and to the sides. It's the part of the spine that bends, that allows the animal to make turns, ect. But your dragon is basically only a ribcage and a pelvis. It would not be able to turn properly and taking flight would be neigh impossible, and it would have to move kinda like a ball with legs. Very awkwardly and kinda silly... not what you seem to have aimed for with the 'powerful and compact majestic dragon' thing.
Furthermore, his head and neck is too big for his body. The neck and head look more heavy than the actual body. If he tried to extend his head, he would probably topple forward because the weight shifted.
And of course there is the 'other half' that's missing - the other horn, the other wing, ect.
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Heya,
It is a tad too dark. The details are a bit muddy so I can't make much out of it. I'll leave the previous critiques on painting - I will instead look at the design and say that that dragon would not be able to strike or straighten its neck with so large a scale. Most dragons I've seen their belly scales are modelled after snakes and long lizards. Contrary to popular belief, these scales are not hard. At least not as hard as a stiff fingernail. Animals like a animals like a crocodile will have much tougher skin and scales, but you will also see that their underbelly scales become more intricate. Dragons scale is superstrong, so arranging them the way you have looks impractical.
Think about how the animal moves, how an area of its body would wear its skin. How they interlock, not just layer. Something to research.
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^ This person had a really awkward way of starting off a critique~
Anyways, as per usual your painting is great, but your anatomy on dragons is pretty off and all over the place.
At the same time though, they are mythical creatures and you can pretty much rock any decent anatomy either way.
And are you missing a wing?
Anyways, try looking at some dragon anatomy books or resources, there are actually lots and lots and lots out there that have pieced together how dragon limbs work together with the wings and shoulders and legs and stuff.
Like an example of weird anatomy, the dragons neck is shooting back really far from the chest and belly that you established.
My thoughts are kind of all over the place having a hard time explaining, but maybe it helped out?
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sigh element1988 why did it have to be you..I've seen your critique on other member stuff and it got me thinking "this guy knows what he's talking about' -_-.' (disclaimer) in no way am i an expert or a professional artist I'm self taught and i could be wrong .....that motion blur on the edge of the tail then suddenly its clear looks wrong the size of it looks kinda weird to me as well (might be to dark to see)..and his top left leg looks like its pushing outwards, not really connected to the rest of his body). and does this dragon have one wing? and if I'm facing the dragon it looks like the lighting is coming from the top right it would be cool to put some subsurface scattering around the holes in his wing and have some light shine through those bad boys and a few of the holes could have shown his tail.i kinda fell like his tail just disappears and reappear i don't really get that since that its curling. a few overcast shadow missing here and there like i said could be wrong.. i try not to critique artists that are better than me but since you put it in the critique section i guess you want some critique on it and not the "oh it looks fantastic good job" so i tried my best to accommodate you.
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the front leg in the background compared to the one in the foreground is weird the, proportion that is, and it looks like the leg is moving away from the rest of the body.. it just looks like its not suppose to be their. and to show that tail is further away you could Paint with lighter values and less contrast =, or make the colors cooler to show that is more into the background. I've actually never seen anyone use blur to show distant i need to get out more
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Well its not so much to show distance as it is to show that the object is at a different depth, like the way a camera focuses on an object and the backgrounds goes blurry.
I had an idea for that arm but I guess I didn't show it very well.
I'm starting to think there might be too much wrong with this to be worth fixing. Might just start again.
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Distance blur doesn't really work that way in real life, though. It is only cameras that will capture that type of illusion, you won't see it if you use your eyes to look at something in front of you. If you want to use the effect, then go ahead and do so - there are definitely good places where that type of thing can be very useful and very effective. However, for pieces like this, you have to make up your mind about what the viewer is actually looking at. Art, after all, is very much about opening up doors to other realities. In this reality, is the viewer looking at a real life dragon... or merely the photograph of one? There's a world of a difference, and very much worth taking into consideration when you want to make a believable piece. I personally aim to avoid photograph effects unless I specifically want it to be a believable photograph.
If the dragon is indeed supposed to be 'physically there' to the viewer/'camera man', then use your own observation skills to research the effect of distance/out of focus points. You'd probably find that it is more believable to simply avoid painting in the details of such places, making colors mix with the environment a bit more, blend colors into one another, ect, ect. Use your peripheral vision to study stuff and you'll nail this in no time, I'm sure. 
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Haha OMG I forgot the other wing XD I knew I was forgetting something lol
The motion blur thing isn't actually motion blur, I was trying to make it look like the tail was going away and slightly out of focus, but now that you brought it up I do notice a drastic change from sharp to blurry on the tail.
Not really sure what you mean with the leg thing, which one is the top left? you mean the one closest to the camera? or the one in the background?
The light shining through the holes is an interesting idea... Hmm I did try a few different versions with subsurface scattering but ended up dulling it down because it distracted too much attention away from the face. Maybe I dulled it a little too much.
I lost the lighting in this like half way through.. It doesn't really make sense, your right XD I ended up just saying fuck it, give it the works. Adding rim lights and all that.
OK, Ive took some notes and will try to fix it up. Its gunna be rough tho, coz photoshop isn't playing nice with this file. Everytime I try to save a Jpeg I get an "not enough memory to save" error. God my computer is such a P.O.S... Cant even save a file XD
TY for taking the time to crit me honestly, it helped
P.s I'm self taught too
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