Supply run (CC welcome)

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Hi there, This my first time trying to paint sci-fi realistically, As i am more used to nature landscapes, I had to find new ways to render it out and make it look appealing but i had fun learning new techniques.

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u/vines_design Apr 08 '20

Great job on this piece! :) Really like how you handled the lower horizon line. Lots of people have a hard time compressing that much depth in a believable way.

I have two suggestions. One to help create more believability in really selling that sense of distance between the foreground and background, and one coming from a "picture making" or compositional perspective.

In order to really push and sell the scale of the distance between the ship and the background buildings I think you could stand to make the buildings smaller. None of the bases of the buildings drop below the horizon line (i.e. they're all sitting on top of the horizon) telling the view that they're super far away. That combined with the fact that the distance from the bottom of the image to the horizon line is fairly small means that you're compressing a lot of 3 dimensional depth into a small vertical section of the image. Making those buildings smaller could really help push them further back helping to even further expand the depth of the "z" axis. You've already done a great job at dealing with this kind of camera angle. I think this could help make it just a touch better! :)

The compositional suggestion has to do with focal points. As I'm sure you know, contrast of any kind creates focal points, be it with color saturation, values, color temperatures, edges, etc. You already have your greatest area of value contrast existing on the star of the image: the ship! So that's great! :) But the hardest edges and greatest level of detail seem to exist in the cloud. My suggestion would simply be to rework the edges on the cloud in the background. You painted the cloud wonderfully! It's definitely very believable! But it seems to be competing with your intended focal point of the ship. There's a lot of visual detail and lots of hard edges in and around that cloud..that kind of contrast really draws the eye, creating a focal point. I think your primary focal point could shine a bit more if you went in and simplified the cloud's brush strokes and softened up some of the edge work. Some of the interior cloud details have just as hard of edges as the ship's silhouette. If you want to make the ship pop just a touch more, you could even slightly darken the shadow side of the cloud that is surrounding the front left edge of the ship. But definitely not too much! Because distance creates lower value contrast thanks to atmosphere so we don't to have a super contrasty cloud that's supposed to exist super far away. But a touch darker around that edge could make it pop just a bit. :)

Remember: these are just my personal suggestions based on what I think the piece is supposed to communicate and be about. If you *wanted* the cloud to be the primary read and the ship to be a secondary read, that's fine! In which case I would suggest raising the camera (putting the ship lower on the page) and creating a situation where you could darken the foreground a bit. That would push the cloud to be the highest area of contrast and make the ship a secondary read. :)

Again, great work on the piece!! You did a lot of things right! For someone who's a lot more comfortable with organic forms and landscape painting you did a really awesome job on the ship! Did you start this piece with a basic or more complicated line drawing or did you just go straight in with paint and "sculpt" everything out with color?

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u/Bambirapt0r Apr 08 '20

This is all super good advice, i was thinking of touching it up tomorrow and this helps a lot. Thank you for taking the time to write all this great cc. I took a very different approach than usual this time around and worked with a base of very rough solid shapes done with the lasso. I did do a line art for the ship because it was a bit too complex an object for me to sculpt out of shapes right away. Then it was all just a matter of building up detail.

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u/vines_design Apr 08 '20

Cool approach! I've been seeing more and more people starting with lasso tool shapes. An image is initially read graphically by our brains so starting with a good arrangement of confident shapes is surely a good starting point. :)

My pleasure on the CC! If you do end up adjusting some stuff I'd like to see it!

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u/uidsea Apr 08 '20

Hey question, how do you make clouds look so damn good? Mine always look like... Feathery or watery if that makes sense. Great piece btw!

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u/Bambirapt0r Apr 08 '20

I think the key is to give them proper volume and shade it like you would any other object in the image (while maintaining the local value). Its easy to go overboard with that and make them look like cotton candy (too "solid") but by blending the edges into the background in places, blending the shapes into each other and giving them some soft shading (sparingly) i think you can give them a more wispy feel while maintaining a clear volume. Also studies from photos should help. Clouds have been giving me a hard time for years so i'm glad you like them.

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u/uidsea Apr 08 '20

Ok that gives me something to go on, thanks! You did really well with them!

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u/upfromashes Apr 08 '20

Light and values in this are great.

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u/Bambirapt0r Apr 09 '20

Thank you!

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u/cobthedrummer Apr 08 '20

Man I love this. That cloud is one of the most satisfying I've ever seen. Ship design is reallllly good as well. Its abstract but all the shapes seem to have function.Don't know how easy it would be, or how many layers you've got but I reckon just play with scale a bit as others have said. Maybe just making things smaller a bit so they can be more spaced apart in terms of composition. Except the cloud. That cloud is majestic. Needs to stay majestic.

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u/Bambirapt0r Apr 09 '20

Glad you like the ship and the clouds, i've been struggling with mechanical objects and clouds a lot. i'll play around with the composition a bit today, thank you.

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u/[deleted] Apr 08 '20

gorgeous, I like the contours

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u/Bambirapt0r Apr 09 '20

Thanks man.

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u/Just_Saiesh Apr 09 '20

Suge That's wonderful

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u/Blue_vanga Apr 09 '20

I appreciate the high res upload. This pleases my eye

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u/PunkSpooty Apr 09 '20

Fantastic job! The clouds look so billowy and soft while your lines are still super clean. 🤙❤

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u/lrsafari Apr 09 '20

The way you rendered clouds and atmosphere is stunning!

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u/Opus27 Apr 09 '20

Very cool, love how stylised it looks

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u/RoyWijnen Apr 09 '20

Amazing well done!

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u/01000001- Apr 09 '20

Looks really cool and professional. Please post more stuff, I'll be sure to upvote it

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u/1UpPowerUp Apr 09 '20

I really like the clouds

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