More work on WIP

[pasithea]

Sorry for spamming with another post. Just not quite sure I'm going in the right direction on this drawing.

Here's where I'm at after fiddling around tonight (with the sketch version for comparison beside it)



I tried shading in a compliment of purple on the automaton but it made her a bit too warm and lifelike for the mood I want, I think.


Obviously, there's still a lot to be done but.. I don't know I feel like I could be doing _something_ better in this piece but I can't figure out what that something is. Any thoughts?

Comments

[zeeth_kyrah]

I think I'd move the 37 over, to put more of the 3 behind her and expose the 7 better.

You might also try a yellowish hue instead of purple. Or actually, something slightly greenish, for a hint of verdigris. Maybe just as hilights?

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Are all these tangents deliberate? Nose just touching the corridor, nipple segmentation line right at the corridor intersection, 3 just kissing the shoulder flanges... If they're intentional, then cool, play them up more as you add detail; if not, either pull the composition apart a little to definitely open things up, or push it a little tighter to have definite overlap.

Also maybe some highlights in her. Sharp shiny specular ones?

The bg's lack of texture and her very textured nature pushes her out of the image. Throw down some abused-noise layers behind her and it should help unify it a lot.

Very nice, by the way!

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

I'm still playing with the position of the background stuff and haven't done any texturing on it yet. It's just a placeholder for colour at the moment so I know how basically how the automaton is going to look against the background. I'm playing with the tangents but I'm not sure I like them. On one hand, the tangents really heighten the contrast and the nose just leaving the number and and just touching the doorway is some sort of cryptic inmyhead 'machine-opening to new possibilities' kind of thing. On the other it feels like bad design, especially since I reshaped the breast and pulled it out of line with the nose, so I have to rethink that probably.


Highlights... Yeah. Definetely needs highlights. I just haven't gotten that far yet. Also, I'm wondering if I should make her out of more than one material (metal and plastic) or if I should keep her a single material as she is now. There's pluses and minuses to both. I was also thinking about taking some of the colour from the '37' and putting some kind of ID marks on her (and of course, I'll use it for some of the reflections) but I'm not sure if I want to make her feel that industrial. If she's marked the same as the corridors, it sort of traps her in that place and pulls away some of her possible sentience, making her more machine. Ont he other hand, design-wise, it'd look hot. Asthetic versus emotion.

Finally, I wonder if I'm not just pulling all this stuff out of my ass. I'm not sure how much of this I'd been thinking about on a conscious level while painting, and yet some of it was definetely bubbling away somewhere. I also find it fascinating to me that she's a totally different direction from all the little breakthroughs I've been having in the past month and yet nothing about her feels like an incredible breakthrough yet. She's more of an aberration at the moment, I think. Although she's definetely related to the cracked masks.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

It doesn't matter if you think about it while you're actually working. What matters is that you think about it, period - analyzing your work and pushing forwards. And your thoughts on one image don't have to go into it; they might come while looking at it after it's done, and just be something to keep in mind the next time you explore that sort of theme.

What if she was made of stone? The texturing as it is right now evokes that for me. Or stone with metal highlights, or something.

[chirik.livejournal.com]

I don't have the qualifications for a technical review, but I like the shading. I think the pointed nipples of the original actually looks better, though - it seems to fit in with the sharper edges elsewhere in the suit/body.