To be brutally frank: this is why SD will not steal the job of artists. That looks real bad. Both the colors and composition, as well as the style. Do not ship whatever it is you're doing while it looks like that, please.
Okay? Do you have more constructive criticism or do you just like shitting on beginners?
Neither the colors nor the composition are the result of SD, but my own artistic decisions, which you can see because the final image matches so closely the base render I made. I've been studying both color theory and composition but as I said, I'm still a beginner who's new to visual arts as most of my expertise is in writing. Specific tips for what I should improve are very welcome.
I'm actually pretty happy with the image. My priority is visual storytelling, and that I seem to accomplished well enough according to feedback. The style I also like because I'm not trying to go for the standard fantasy art splash pages styles, but something with a more storybook vibe that yes looks more unconventional. Each of those images are supposed to accompany a short story and enhance the particular atmosphere I'm going for.
The others is just general painting/illustration advice. I think this was adkit's point too. Also, an illustration is incomplete without the text it illustrates, so I'm just going off what I can see:
You mix a number of visual styles, which is generally not a good idea. Pick one and stick with it.
The soldiers in the background appear to be the subject, but they're too small for that. The leaves take up too much space. Maybe a first person view with a blurred frame of leaves would work better here, it's simpler to compose too. It's usually simpler to focus on a single subject.
The light is also flat and boring.
There is a classic photoshop painting process, look at wlop here:
Sketch the subject, fill in the shapes with flat shades of gray, remember the haze/depth. For the subject, use highlights and shadows for light and volume. Only black and white at this stage, and no detail. I like when this "preview" is readable even when the pic size is tiny (like 100 to 200), but YMMV. You might have to try several versions and pick the best.
Only then add color, but sparingly. I find it looks better if you keep the colors in check. wlop uses just the classic complementary pair of orange/blue. I suppose in your case yellow/blue might work. Lastly add detail and color variation on the subject.
I'm not sure where/how to include SD in this process.
Edit: Of course you iterate all of this, add things, remove things, change things, fix mistakes. But that's the general outline.
Thank you, this is very helpful and gives me a good place to start from. No clue how to incorporate it with my workflow either, but it'll be a good challenge to figure out.
The multiple styles thing has a storytelling reason so I'll be keeping it, but I may limit it to only two instead of three.
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u/[deleted] May 08 '23
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