Need help with pirate painting gone wrong

frankenberger · Tue 06/02/2007 22:58:24

Hiya. I was wondering if anyone might be able to help me with this.

I've been working on a digital painting for some time now, but I'm crap at anatomy and male clothing and I can't get his body to look right...

EDIT: I haven't finished it yet, but I changed the style of clothing to make it a bit more interesting and adjusted some little details also. And I haven't bothered with the wrist ruffles yet, not sure if I really want any. Is it an improvement on the original?

new version

old version

Thanks for all the help!

ManicMatt · Tue 06/02/2007 23:22:42

Cool I really like the head!

I reckon his body is too small for his head, basically.

Unknown_Terror · Tue 06/02/2007 23:48:06

Yea the head is very good and yes the body is too small, it looks like he has no shoulders at the moment

esper · Wed 07/02/2007 00:06:22

This is just a quick paintover. I made my arm a little beefier than yours, but I grew up playing Street Fighter II where everyone had disproportionately large muscles. I don't think the size of the head/body is wrong, since this is more cartoony and doesn't seem to be intended for actual realistic human proportions and anatomy.

The main problem to my eye was simply the extension of his right (our left) shoulder. The other arm could also be brought in a bit closer, as right now it seems like it's sewn on similarly to Kermit the Frog's. (EDIT: I just pulled the ribs back a bit to fix this, but I'd already put my Wacom away so it was done with my laptop's touchpad). I also screwed around with the vest a bit so it's a little less of a wraparound.

EDIT AGAIN: I'm not going to try to fix this one, but... it seems like his right (our left) collar is sticking way too far out to the side, which is totally encompassing his shoulders.

frankenberger · Wed 07/02/2007 00:47:16

That's fantastic!

I've made some changes to the sketch, and I'll post a new version when I've done some of the colouring.

Thanks!

frankenberger · Wed 07/02/2007 03:45:08

I've uploaded the new version of the painting in the first post.

Apologies for the double post.

esper · Wed 07/02/2007 04:11:17

Nice. Much better. Now, you have just a little problem with the folds of your shirt on the right (our left) arm. The arm looks like we are looking at it from the back angle (as in, the elbow is pointing at us). You need to draw where the cloth of the shirt is getting caught up in the fold of his arm opposite his elbow.

Steel Drummer · Wed 07/02/2007 05:08:48

I see you copied the head out of an art book.

I remember getting a Fantasy Creatures (I forget the exact name of it) book from the library a while ago with that same head.

frankenberger · Wed 07/02/2007 09:18:28

I didn't "copy" the head, exactly. I think the book is called Drawing Fantasy Comics, and I was using one of the characters in the book as a basis for my preliminary sketch. The shape of the features, hair and posed direction of the head are similar, but this drawing is a caricature portrait of my brother.