Digital Painting

This is my first attempt at a digital painting. I never really attepted one before, because with traditional painting, though I thought I could colour/shade well, I always thought my drawing was weak. None the less, we were required to do a painting for my Graphic Design class, worth 25% of out term mark.

To be honest, It turned out much betterthen I expected, having never tried one of these before. Anyways, It's definate portfolio material, so if you ntice anything, point it out. +)

:: l i n k ::

It looks good, but I can't help but notice, did you overpaint this? Meaning did you paint it over an existing picture? It looks really like you did. If you didn't, of course, then hats off to you.

Um, I don't really have any critiques, aside from the fact that the tree and the snow behind the bear seem to have been done with some kind of filters. Chrome, perhaps? I'd try to steer clear of this for future paintings. You'll find that with the right combination of brushes you'll really be able to capture the look of the treebark better than any stock filter can.

What kind of portfolio are you considering making this a part of? One for college admission, or for personal reference to potential clients?

If for college, I'd encourage you to add more realistic pieces, and much much more drawing, rather than creative pieces such as this. For a fine arts degree, the school wants to see that you know the mechanics of art moreso than you know various media. They assume that you will learn all that there.

All in all, keep up the good work.

That's a picture that comes with photoshop (6 for sure...maybe CS). It kinda looks like you liquified it, chromed it, and painted over it.

At any rate, with what you have there the bear needs to get its outer edge blurred, and the backround slightly blurred because its too sharp there. Its the first thing I noticed.

@Pganguly:
I didn't over paint the picture. I had a reference, but it's 134 layers of fills and brushes. The tree I admit, I stated slacking off with. After spending so much time on it, and a very near due date when I started, I left some parts ans flat paint bucket fills. I finished ealier then I expected, so I've got some time to add some more details to the bottom of the tree.

The assignment criteria allowd two selections, of the bear and the tree, I'm not aware of "standard" accepted practices, but drawing/painting isn't really my thing, so I took what I was given, I'm sure it made proportioning a lot easier. But again, I'm not a drawer.

As for the portfolio, it's just a freelance portfolio. My area of focus is webdesign, but every now and then I like to do something with art, but my perferred medium is stylized vectoring. But I approached this the same way I would a vector project, excpet I used the brush/paint bucket instead of the pen tool. I'm just thinking of including it to show I'm not limited to just websites. It's more to show i'm somewhat artistically inclined and to shoe I've got some knowledge of the program.

@Galaphile:
It would make sense it's a sample photo from Photoshop. It's an assignment for my class entitled Elements of Graphic Design - right now we're covering photoshop. Makes sense to me. The original photo I took home is here if you'd really like to look at it.

I have a vauge idea of what it is, but truthfully, I have no idea how to "chrome" something. I've never tried it before.

@ Linknisity:
Thanks for the reminder. I said before, I'm not very deep into the art aspects, and I complete forgot about the blurring. It's even mentioned in the assignemtn criteria. I'll do some touching up on those spots.

it seems like the bear is lacking some shoulder, but when i looked at the original, it doesn't have much of a shoulder there either. the difference i guess is that in the original, the lower part of the bear is darker, the shadow helps to define the bent elbow and lengthen the arm. in your painting, the arm seems a bit short and looks kind of awkward.

Its a picture that he is making into a new peice of work with brushes and effects. Its real life physics, how does he need to change any of it if he shades it right?

sorry, was that a question directed at me? i don't understand what you're saying, linknisity.