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fshi — Underneath a sky of rust
Published: 2011-05-12 10:52:35 +0000 UTC; Views: 2054; Favourites: 84; Downloads: 0
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Description
This is a portrait of who is an amazing and beautiful person worthy of all your love!This started out as a photo-manipulation but so much has been done to it that I'd class it more as a photo-painting now. It's taken me quite a long time to do this, and it's far from perfect but I wanted to try and improve my ability to paint people, while keeping some things expressive. A part of my problem is I find it hard to let go of things and bring some chaos into a picture, but here and there are lines slowly wooshing away.
She started out oddly enough as a bit of a shaman, with great big feathers everywhere. However as time went on the feathers started to fall away and the cogs slowly replaced them. In the end, she became a lovely steampunk lady, underneath a sky of rust.
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Comments: 9
Not bad at all! The biggest crit I have is what I say to most people: Go paint more people (I say it to me too). The more you do, the easier this is going to get.
Here's some simple bits of advice: Warm skin tone? Cooler shadows. Don't be afraid to make it subtle, either. There are a lot of nuances to a skin tone, you'll have to experiment to find happy mediums. I think you pushed the skin contrasts a lil far, but what can I say - I often do that too 
I like the hat, but there's still some difference between what was placed there from brushes or preexisting shapes and brush work. Do studies on bridging that gap. Is one too clean? Make it less clean. Is one too loose? Tighten it up. It's a dance of brush work with the end goal being near seamless integration.
Great sky! I love it. A lil more star variation may be good though. Group some, go tiiiiny, etc.
That said, the biggest thing you can do is just more. Repetition to drill in the shapes. Do fast studies, slow studies, on paper, on the computer, whatever you can.
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Wow, Fish, I continue to be pleasantly surprised by how much you have improved from when I first stumbled upon your gallery many years ago. Your offbeat terminology still manages to coax a grin from me, also- the description of lines slowly whooshing away seems just right. And the birds! The birds look more convincing than flying mustaches! XP Some of the things I most appreciate/am humbled by, are the clouds- and transition to night sky... and her skin-tone. Your skin-tone shadow-work is something not easy to achieve and something you've done quite wonderfully.
On the peculiar topic of Steampunk- a couple months ago I read a book called 'Boneshaker'. Fun, but my favorite literature that may be called 'Steampunk' is a book called 'Perdito Street Station' by China Meiville. Also, some interesting music you may want to check out is the band Abney Park; the only truly 'Steampunk' band I know of. (hint: Youtube) And while there, check out these amazing videos: [link] and [link] and (though you've probably seen/heard it before) [link]
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love it, love it, love it. everything about this kicks ass, love, well done. the sky, and her shoulder are my still my favourite bits! xx
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Sweet monkey flying Jesus of potato land, this is one of the most beautiful portraits I have ever seen, This, is, amazing 
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Hehe thank you ever so much, I'm glad you like it! I think it took me long enough to finish and it's one of those that I think isn't really finished, but I could have kept on going forever so had to call it somewhere.
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