Watercolor painting 9/5/22 -BLOOD/GORE WARNING-
© 2022 Oc2022
Critique welcomed!
It doesn't contain nudity, but it does show cuts and blood. Just thought I'd give a warning, so view at your own discretion. :)
I don't really have a name for this piece yet, but the idea for this painting popped into my head while I was listening to some music. I used watercolors on watercolor paper, and it took around 5 hours from the initial sketch to finishing the painting. For the hand I just posed my non dominant hand how I wanted it, then drew what I saw.
I'm quite happy with how it turned out, considering I mainly just focus on animals, but any critiques are welcome! :)
I don't know why it flipped the photo to landscape, but it's supposed to be looked at in portrait.
Rileyslavens
I really like your aproach to this and you have a great understanding of the forms of a hand. One thing Id suggest is doing some studies of hands and breaking it down purley into the shapes you see in front of you. Such as make a box from the hand with a rectangle jetting from it and a circle at its base for the thumb, then group the fingers togeather. Start off with shinny rectangles and build from there. There are great breakdowns online about how to break down the forms of a hand but overall your studies are coming along very nicley!
Oc2022
Thank you! I'll make sure to work on that! :)
One thing you may want to consider/try doing is exagerating the pose you see, in order to make the piece feel a bit more dynamic. The pose feels a bit lifeless/flat to me (of course, that may have been the intention...). But if you could define the joints a bit more, especially in the thumb, I think that might make the image a little more pleasing to the eye. Also exagerating the angle change between the wrist and the thumb would define the location of the wrist a bit more.
An intersting side note: If you look at the back of your hand, you'll notice the distance from the tip of your finger to your knuckle (mcp joint) is about twice the distance from the tip of your finger to the second knuckle (pip joint). In other words, the first bone on your finger is the same length as the second two bones put together. However, if you turn your hand over, you no longer see the knuckles, and you instead the fingers seem to begin at the point where the webbing between your fingers ends, which is about halfway between the first two knuckles of the finger.
Another thing you may want to consider is your shading. While I really like your use of tone, and you actually have a really good range with some deep solid shadows between some of the crevices of the fingers, your light source is a little bit ambiguous. If I look a the pinkie, it looks like it's coming from the right, while if I look at the wrist and the pointer finger, it looks a bit more like it's coming from the left. While this may simply be due to the environment you were in, good strong lighting can be an awesome way to make your painting really pop. I'm only saying this because it looks like you actually have some really good use of white space in the water and on the fingernail, which can be really hard to do with watercolors. I feel like there's a bit of missed potential you could get with some more dynamic lighting.
One other thing I wanted to mention, a lot of times the environment we are in can have a profound effect on our art, as well as our mental state, as demonstrated by your listening to a song inspiring you to create this piece. I'm not exactly sure how to say this, but... you can often use your inputs so to speak (the things you look at, listen to, watch, think about, etc) to adjust your art style, as well as your mental state. If your art style and mental state are where you want them, cool! If not, you may find it helpful to think about the kinds of inputs you could use to help you move towards where you want to be.
Again, awesome piece of artwork, I look forward to seeing more from you!
Stay creative,
--Siv
As far as the comment on mental state goes, I had a bit of an emotional overload a few days ago which ultimately led to this piece. I'm doing somewhat better now thanks to a friend of mine. He's helping me try to look more towards the positives, which is another thing I struggle with greatly. :)
Thank you again! Your critique was very helpful to me!