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#cute #digitalpainting #friendship #moomins #moomintroll #secretsanta #snufkin #secretsantagift
Published: 2017-12-24 20:30:06 +0000 UTC; Views: 663; Favourites: 24; Downloads: 2
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It's about time I did something like this, and the Moomin Secret Santa event hosted by schusseltier gave me the opportunity to, as the person I gifted this to requested a ‘gentle and tender moment with Snufkin and Moomin'. I was quite pleased with how this turned out, although I still have to get used to this fully painted style.Related content
Comments: 9
Aww, this is sweet! I like the blue and green color scheme
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So my color training is almost entirely in oil paint, which means I've got a very traditional approach to doing this sort of thing, rather than something more adapted to digital media. I do think you should consider trying it even if you decide to take a different approach in the end.
The big change is adding an underpainting layer (basically, set the canvas color to something that isn't white, and not too saturated), which sets the tone for whether your image is going to be warm or cool. It does end up not standing out as well on a digital piece, but what it does is force you to think about both your highlights and shadows, instead of simply letting the white canvas show through.
If you've looked at images in forests, shadows don't really cast in the shape of the leaves, they create a generally dappled effect that I think you could achieve by using the brush you used for the upper right hand corner. To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of using the preset brushes to create foliage effects (I think the end result ends up being very unrealistic because they don't wrap around the other shapes), so I'm a little biased here.
I can't say I'm that familiar with the Moomintrolls - I've only read the first book - but I do think you got a good handle on the overall mood with respect to the gentle/tender bit.
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Sorry it took me a while to reply, but yeah, I have thought about it, and applied it to some of my recent works by doing a dark base layer and adding in progressively lighter tones from there, and I can see the difference in those. I tried to replicate the process I used for my initial watercolour sketch (adding lights and going darker from there), and as you said, the white background does show through.
In all honesty, the foliage effect was lazy. I wasn't sure about how to shape the shadows in a way that was controlled instead of automated with the brush, and I didn't either bother wrapping the leaves around the subject. That would've been easy to fix had I used a liquify/warp tool.
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I really like the saturation of color in this piece. Gives it a warm and inviting feel. The way the characters are nestled together works really well to create a very cute piece.
The human's left hand (on the left of the picture...guess that'd be his right) seems a little smaller than the other. The way the fingers attach into the palm and then into the wrist seems strange too.
The foliage shadows don't seem to wrap around their bodies in certain places. I attempted to demonstrate here:
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Hello there! You have been visited by a Critique Ninja! We stealthily roam the site, looking to leave thoughtful and useful criticism, as per the spirit of CRITmas . Mind if I just hop on to business, then? Just swooping in and out again - that is the Ninja way...!
First things first: oh my god that little blue thing is still cute as hell. And so is his buddy! I have but a few suggestions; let's go over them:
First thing I noticed was the shadows of the foilage looking 'off' in places, and I realise this is because they are individual brushstrokes at partial opacity. This has the unwanted side-effect of some parts, where the strokes overlapped, being darker, which in turn makes it look like there are two (or more) light sources, which of course is nonsense in an outdoor setting where the only light is the sun.
I think you can solve this by keeping your foilage-shadow on a separate layer, filling it completely, and using a mask to decide where goes light and where goes shade. It's easy to correct / change the colour of / try things out with, and if it all goes sideways, you can simply throw away the layer and try again without hurting the picture underneath!
The other thing I think needs attention is direction of light / place of shadows on your characters. It doesn't hurt to add a little 'light bulb doodle' in the corner of your canvas where you think the light should come from when you sketch in your elements, to help you keep light direction consistent. As it is, I spot a shadow on the top side of our little blue friend's arm, and one on the underside of his green pal. The light under the hand seems to suggest the light is shining down from the top, and the light on Blue's face and body suggests it comes from the right, shining nearly horizontal.
Since it's still a nice picture no matter how you look at it, I'd say keep it as-is, and maybe only implement the things I mentioned in your next projects.
I hope my critique wasn't too harsh. Have a nice New Year!
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Oh, hello little ninja. Are you filling in for the CRITmas fairy this year? Anything, thanks for being kind enough to write a critique on this.
Yeah, the foliage part was just one layer at first, but then I duplicated it and reduced the opacity to make one side lighter then transition into the darker parts of the left. I didn't realise it had the side effect of creating an implausible lighting source outdoors.
I did do a little value sketch to indicate where the lights and darks were, which you'll see at the bottom. Some of the details changed, but the light was supposed to be shining from the top right, which casts a shadow from Moomin's arm and Snufkin's underside. I agree that it's inconsistent though, and I should've put more thought into the rest of Moomin's body. I think I should've put most of the highlights on his head and have the rest of the body in midtones.
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