Mosque and roof tiles (technique & composition C&C)

[Snarky]

I did this screen for the last background blitz. To help me improve, it would be great to get some critiques. In particular, I'm unhappy with how the roof tiles look, and wonder if anyone knows how to make them look better. Color advice would also be appreciated.

[monkey0506]

I don't think I commented on this before, but I actually really like the concept presented here..it's pretty interesting.

Something I did notice though that although the background is representing a blending or merging of two separate cultures, there still seems to be some level of segregation. If you look only at the top half of the image with the roof showing you see primarily only the Arabic influences (except of course the two heads which are from the Viking portion being represented). The lower half of the image however shows no Arabic influences at all (that distinctly stand out and strike me as being Arabic anyway).

As I said, I like the concept you're working with, but I kind of feel that perhaps the unity of the two cultures could be improved.

I'm not really one with any room to give artistic advice, but there's my thoughts on the composition and layout of the image.

[Crimson Wizard]

Erm... actually it looks rather like variation of old-style slavic church...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kizhi

[InCreator]

Erm... actually it looks rather like variation of old-style slavic church...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kizhi

I agree. Mosques sound like buildings out of stone and clay, yet this one is what covered ancient Russia for centuries.

As for roof tiles... A building made of wood, why not make roof out of wood chips also?





But personally I think they look fine as they are. Only 3 things I would change is perspective of onion-roof, make uppermost gray roof look like others and remove that light-thing from door.

[Crimson Wizard]

Yeah, onion-roof looks like it is slid towards back

Oh, btw, the shadows look inconsistent. The shade from the porch has its border practically parallel horizontal line, while shades from other building cornersand shadow from the standing stone have different angles.

EDIT: since we mentioned real architecture, combining wood and golden cupola is rather uncommon. I am not specialist, but from what I know, gold was mainly used on stone churches, and wooden ones were made totally of wood.

[Jakerpot]

How many hours to do it?

[Snarky]

Thanks for the feedback, everyone.

If you look only at the top half of the image with the roof showing you see primarily only the Arabic influences (except of course the two heads which are from the Viking portion being represented). The lower half of the image however shows no Arabic influences at all (that distinctly stand out and strike me as being Arabic anyway).

You're right. Any ideas for what could go in the lower half to make it more Arabic?

Erm... actually it looks rather like variation of old-style slavic church...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kizhi

It's based on Norwegian stave churches (particularly this) and very loosely on a couple of mosques. It's not too surprising that a hypothetical mix of Middle Eastern and Scandinavian elements should start to look Russian.

I agree. Mosques sound like buildings out of stone and clay, yet this one is what covered ancient Russia for centuries.

EDIT: since we mentioned real architecture, combining wood and golden cupola is rather uncommon. I am not specialist, but from what I know, gold was mainly used on stone churches, and wooden ones were made totally of wood.

It was the idea of a wooden mosque that appealed to me. It seemed somewhat novel and interesting. I doubt the cupola is really made of gold, by the way.

As for roof tiles... A building made of wood, why not make roof out of wood chips also?

Actually, it's kind of meant to be. If you check out the church I linked, you'll see that the tiles are wooden. This was how it came out.

But personally I think they look fine as they are. Only 3 things I would change is perspective of onion-roof

Yeah, onion-roof looks like it is slid towards back

The background uses 3-point curvilinear perspective, because it's meant to be a scrolling screen that represents a pan down, and I wanted a strong feeling of looking up at the dome:



I could post an image showing how it's constructed if you want.

Oh, btw, the shadows look inconsistent. The shade from the porch has its border practically parallel horizontal line, while shades from other building cornersand shadow from the standing stone have different angles.

Yes, you're right. I half-assed/cheated the shadows since I could never decide exactly where the sun was supposed to be, and because the geometry is too complex for me to work it all out properly. At such a low angle of light, the shadows would be much longer, too. My sense was that it looks pretty convincing unless you study it carefully, so it's not really a problem. Would you disagree?

How many hours to do it?

Way too many. Counting all the time spent on discarded sketches, and the hours I spent futzing around in Google Sketchup trying (and failing) to build it as a model, at least 12 hours.

[Crimson Wizard]

Any ideas for what could go in the lower half to make it more Arabic?

Use curves and arcs instead of pointed roofs?

I doubt the cupola is really made of gold, by the way.

Yeah, now when you mention this I think it's made of caramel  

[Jakerpot]

You MUST show us the progress of one of your paintings. I wanted to know how do you do the lightning... 

[Snarky]

Sure. There's no great magic to it:



As you can see, a lot happens between the rough color sketch and the next step, but it's mainly a matter of adjusting the perspective, filling in all the surfaces (while splitting them into separate layers), and refining detail. Here are the guidelines I used to construct the building's perspective more formally after the initial sketch:



Then it's just a long process of drawing lots and lots of lines with finer and finer brushes, trying to define the shapes and surfaces by the way light falls on them. I pick colors from the PS swatches initially, and then as I find colors I like (using the color picker) I splat down a palette just outside of the borders of the image.

Something I planned but never got around to was banks of dramatic cumulus clouds against the sky.

[InCreator]

You're right. Any ideas for what could go in the lower half to make it more Arabic?

Build it out of sand and cow/camel dung (kidding... then again, not really)

Also, minarets. Add one or make tower look more like one (no onion roof, long and pointy)
Ain't minaret most important thing about a mosque where calls to prayer are made?

Even small ones have one.



And your roof turned out VERY much like cobblestone covered with loads of clay. It looks good though...
To make it wooden, much more noise, contrast and detail is needed.

Also, typical arabic roof is flat I think, because of the climate alot of life goes on on the roof. Not on mosques probably, but I don't think they'd build one building totally unlike rest of the architecture because practical viewpoint

Also also, the tip of the doors and windows is important. Follow onion tip shape.

Also also also, I'd desaturate this wood heavily. Even growing trees aren't this reddish brown.

[Snarky]

OK, thanks for the views on the architecture. A minaret would be nice; I just couldn't figure out how to fit it in. Did you read the original post? It explains more of the context in which this screen would exist.

Also also also, I'd desaturate this wood heavily. Even growing trees aren't this reddish brown.

Ah, at first I thought you were talking about the forest in the background, but I take it you mean the wood the building is constructed of. That makes more sense. I'm sure wood could be stained to this color, but I agree that the exterior at least would probably be much more faded.

Does anyone else have any feedback on the technique or composition?

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Something about the overall piece feels a bit off-putting to me;  I'm not sure whether it's how the mosque seems to hover on the hill rather than being part of the whole (the lack of grass rising up around the sides of the building lends to this feeling) or if it's the angle itself, where the mountains and trees are falling away from the mosque with no supporting details in the sky.  I suppose if the mosque is meant to be purely a somber focal point it works to draw you to it, but I can't help but feel like the sky and surroundings are poorly defined by comparison, almost like seeing a highly detailed object photoshopped into a low-detail background.  The mosque itself is visually interesting and some of the details are quite nice with interesting use of shadow, but then you have areas like the crescent moon that seem hastily made with the outline left more or less sketchy and no attention paid to it.

Bottom line is I really like where you're going with this piece but I don't think you've actually arrived at your destination yet.  More attention to the aesthetic areas of the structure (crescent moon, animal carvings, tiling, making the filigree design wrap around the building instead of just being on the front) by way of upping the detail/contrast and varying shapes (going back and altering random tile shapes/angles to account for wear and manual construction) as well as more detail to the outlying area (grass rising up around the edges of the structure, desaturating the grass in lit areas with a color shift towards yellow, ie, not so much focused green), perhaps a bit of focus blur around the nearest rock?  The sheer level of detail on the rocks is probably what hurts the rest of the scenery the most, so it's probably a matter of whether you want the entire piece to look detailed and pleasing or whether the mosque should be detailed with the scenery a bit washed out to maintain it as the sole focal point of the piece?  If you desire the former, desaturating and livening up the grass with random weeds, wildflower patches and/or dead patches will help make the grass part of the presentation rather than something flat that I'd rather not look at (if you understand me).  

I think you've chosen a pretty challenging perspective to work with and I like where you're going with this; hopefully a few of my suggestions will steer you towards improvement!

[Snarky]

Thanks ProgZmax. You've put your finger on many of the flaws I was most dissatisfied with in the image, particularly the way the building doesn't seem to be solidly planted in the ground, and the fairly rudimentary backdrop.

In general I have a problem creating a consistent style: I think I have a way of doing wood OK and a way of doing stone OK and ways of doing landscapes and forests and grass OK-ish (no good ways of doing metal or roof tiles or earth, clearly), but they don't always go together as well as they should. (The rocks stand out, but they aren't actually all that detailed, it's just a bit of spatter noise on top that gives them texture.) Some things come out sharp and some things come out smudged. Some things look pencilly, some things look crayony, some things look paintbrushy, and some things look photoshop-filtery.

If I find the time, I'll work on making the ground more interesting, and maybe redoing the landscape on the left and adding some clouds like I originally intended. I could fix up some strategic details too, like the sickle, but I actually kind of like the sketchy forest.

All the detail work sucks up immense amounts of time for me (the TODOs listed above could easily take three-four hours). I was originally planning to scale it down to half the resolution so I wouldn't have to worry too much about it, but in the end I was too fond of some of the finer bits of parts like the carvings and the rock.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

All the detail work sucks up immense amounts of time for me

This is why I usually confine my background art to 320x240 (640x480 at most).  I don't have the time or patience to work on anything more ambitious.  I suspect with a tablet it's a bit less of a pain, but since I don't have one I try to keep things simple .

I tried resizing the image to 320x400 and doing some color reduction for 8-bit and aside from the sky texture the result looked quite good, so that might be a potential alternative.

[la_bouteille]

In my opinion the gras is much too green, but this may be just a personal matter of taste...

Great work!