Most of the initial critique I recieved on my “finished” image suggested that the colors looked flat. Unfortunately I don’t have time in the immediate future to work on this piece – however I whipped up a revised version to show how I might adjust the colors in the future.

(click the thumbnail below to view the full-size image)

I wrote in a comment that I would actually use vibrant colors now that I think about it – I must have forgotten that part…

EDIT 2007-05-28: Initially I interpreted the critique of “colors looking flat” as a problm with my choise of colors but I realized later that what people meant was that it was the grey-values which were flat. The problem was the contrast. Not the colors themselfs. (allthough the colors were a bit iffy too) The solution was not as straght forward as just “bumping up the contrast” however.

This was actually supposed to be final at this point, however based on the critique I recieved I decided to keep this painting in WIP-limbo.

(click the thumbnails below to view the close-up detail images)

Testing a solution for the background. This is the design I’ve had in mind since the concept stage. However, I will spend the next few days trying out different things to see if I can come up with something better. I tweaked the contrast of the snakes at this point. I may have to tweak the contrast on the body as well before this is done. Next up is color and texture for the wall.

(click the thumbnails below to view the full-size images)

My progress so far. All I need to do now is finish the cloth (skirt?) and maybe do some minor adjustments here and there. After that I start on the background.

(click the thumbnail below to view the full-size image)

I think the tentacles came out a bit too dark – but I still have room to adjust the grey-levels of the “head-snakes” to balance it up nicely.

Progress on this piece has been slow due to college. I finally decided to follow the same style for the tentacles as for the snakes on her head. So now it’s just grunt work from here… I’m trying to get a few hundred scales drawn every night. The image below (which is only showing the layer I’m working on) shows my progress right now.

(click the thumbnail below to view the full-size image)

I recieved a question about how I created the scales on the snakes. Asking what “method” I was using. All I can say is that unfortunately there are no shortcuts or “magic” behind it.

I create the scales by first drawing guide-lines in a separate layer which marks the “spine” of the snake. I then just draw the outlines of the scales – all the time paying attention to the angle of the surface I’m drawing. (to make the scales look 3-dimensional) Finally I block in the dark areas around the scales. The process is extremly simple, but painstakingly slow. This gives the result which can be seen in the above image. For the snakes on the head I skipped the 3rd step since the scales were so small.