Ali's Sketchbook & Improvement

Looking good, but watch the contrast between the cloud and the left side of her head. It looks to me like you're losing the 'pop' there and her face is staring to recede into the background a bit. Maybe darken the cloud a little, and is there some paintover there from your cloud spilling onto the face? Might be worth checking.

Great work so far Aislynne. So I hope it's alright with you but I did a paintover of your latest piece to show you some things you might consider fixing.

So first off the lighting you have is sunlight, at least that's what the image implies, however you are giving the character diffused lighting, which is why you have such soft transitioning shadows on her. Sunlight is always going to be direct light, so sharp shadows and lighting.

Also I increased the contrast between light and shadow which originally is part of the reason some of your values were looking a little washed out. Your shadows were too light. Also the colors in your shadow were very greyish green I'm assuming to match the sky. It's good you know that warm light = cool shadows therefore thats why you have desaturated shadows, however you have to consider what the shadow is on. It's on skin which has a general base color of some variation or orange. You need to mix a darker desaturated orange with a dark desaturated color of what your sky is, this will generally give you the color the skin would be naturally and it should look good if the values are correct. The shadow I used was a desaturated yellow.

And the last thing I did was change the arm band on her arm to curve around the bicep to help imply foreshortening. That's what that arm really lacks. The side of her body is coming towards us slightly, but the arm is flat. Simply implying it's direction by changing that arm band to curve more adds the illusion of depth, you could even go further and increase the size of the hand and have it slightly more in front of the forearm.

I hope I could help and that this was alright with you if not I'm very sorry <3

Especially the lighting on the dress.

Really lovely image.
Only suggestion that I might add is that that mountain coming up to the tip of the arrow seems a bit distracting. Not really sure about this. Otherwise, looking forward to the finished work.

It's a really beautiful picture, with a beautiful palette and strong composition. And you've gotten some excellent advice on how to take it to the next level. You're really on track. Can't wait to see how it turns out!

It is looking good Ali and will look even better with Forrest's pointers. Sorry Forrest I used some of your paint over because you did a really good job. I didn't use the whole image because it feels weird using someone else's paint over then adding to there image. Just doesn't feel right, and the only thing that still stood out to me that seems awkward is the way the cape is blowing to the opposite side to much when the hair and other side of the cape are being blown the other way. I used my mouse to do this so forgive me if it's a little messy. I think it would also be cool to add some subsurface scattering on the inside of the cape to show it's a little translucent since your light source seems bright.