[choo]

Ladies and Gentlemen, here is the Wild Portrait FINALS thread.
Please post your final image here, along with the thumbnail template image. Please include your username on the thumbnail template, this is very important for the polling process!

Template found here: .PSD template
Please also make sure to attach your Final image with CGHUB’s attachment manager.

The winning entry will be added to the Anatomicae Banner, Anatomicae Gallery for all to see and it will be given a Medal for it!

Any and all participating artists who post their final image will receive an exit critique.

And the Winner is Anthis!!!


Thanks to all of you who participated, see you next round

[cyl1981]

That as far as I got up to, it been a great experience, thanx for all the inputs and the supports through out the event, keep well guys, looking forward to see you again in other events ~

[kittensoft]

Here's my final. It was indeed a challenge, I'm used to painting most of my characters in a much cartoonier/simpler style

[natzuurjk]

[pixel-chick]

here's my final, this was a fun topic, I look forward to participating in more of these competitions and learning more as I go along

[Anthis]

Inspiring topic! Original reference can be seen here. See you next round!

[JohnSilva]

Thanks for participating guys, here's mine.

[Blindrat]

Good entries, look forward to seeing everyone in the next round.

[choo]

The poll is up and live! Tell your friends to pop on by and put up their vote for who should win Anatomicae #12.

IF you participated, posted WIPs in the first thread, and have not yet submitted your image/thumbnail, you have a 24 hour grace period to submit your image starting from the time of this post. We had a few people floating around who submitted working images but have not yet offered their finals.

To everyone who participated in this Anatomicae challenge, thank you. The body of work for this particular challenge was fantastic.


Exit Critique:

Blindrat: This is my favorite image in terms of mood and expressiveness. You used your base image to great effect, and delivered up an anthromorphization that perfectly nails the world-wise persona of your human sitter.
The quality of your brushstrokes is what really makes this piece shine- I think you pegged the whole ''do a lot with a little'' methodology of painting, which shows a lot of confidence in both your source material and working image.

In most cases where a painter likes to go for textured brushes and a painterly look, you find yourself having to caution them against letting the textures get away from them, but you don't really get a sense of that here. The textured overlay in the background on the right is a -little- bit distracting with how it terminates with the strokes cutting the ear from the background, and read a bit ''samey'', but you get nothing of that in the figure. Either way I believe you came up with a very successful piece.

Anthis: The great thing about your piece is the physicality of the portrait, and I'm very very happy you decided to take that idea and run with it. I believe you were the most successful in creating a work true to its reference material (You could totally see this sitting in the house of a well-heeled frog-guy.)
The handling of the paint is wonderful. The creamy quality of the brushstrokes harkens back to Dutch portraiture, and you handled the applications of the lights in a great way.
As for the actual sitter, I think you did a great job balancing the refined and grotesque. You were relatively liberal in the anthromorphing of this creature, but it is entirely convincing.
You might enjoy going back into this piece and trying out a reflected light on the part of his face in shadow- or maybe even dropping it further back. The left eye seems spotlit by something where it would probably be much darker, but you could definitely drop a point in there to accent the eye and still make it look convincing.

Pixel-chick: I think your image was the most courageous in terms of subject and source material. The pairing is a very creative and you did well with it in a lot of ways- in terms of color, texture, and the physical believability of the character.
You preserved the rich coloration of the source material, which was a very bold choice but goes surprisingly well with the muted, tawny color of your sitter. The color freely plays across surfaces, and combined with the quality of the strokes it gives a definite pastel-on-paper look.
The treatment of the tunic, with those hints of brilliant yellow, is very good- especially the use of that texture brush that gives the look of silk brocade. You may find, however, that the image looks better when you remove those hard dark edges- When his cloths, hooves, and face are treated with such delicacy, those lines can be somewhat distracting. Lines in such a painterly piece should be used sparingly, or at least softened so that they are of the same general tone/color as the object they are outlining.

All in all this is one of my favorites, and thank you for submitting it!

Natzuurjk: This particular image is the most fun to interpret. I could see this as the author's photograph on the back of a book- and considering the very formal dress and that monocle, you went a very long way in depicting this particular fellow as a dapper gentleman.
You did well with your source material, and did a convincing job of painting the texture of his fur. Despite a somewhat flattened face and much mor pronounced chin, the structure of his face is convincing. Those brilliant blue eyes are, of course, the most striking part of this work.
The decision to go with that fuzzy backlighting was a bold decision. You may like to check out the work of Dave Rapoza- I often mention him and suggest him to other artists, but he is great at painting portraits with complex lighting scenes. He works a lot with those bright backlights like the one you've utilized in this painting.
With how well you depicted the face of your sitter, I would definitely suggest working more extensively with texture brushes.

[choo]

JohnSilva: I think you did a very good job on this, and the amount of effort that when it it shows. From the rendering of his coat to the texturing of his face, most everything in this piece is well-rendered and nice to look at, even as an individual part of the image. Infact, that's what struck me most about this- despite being a very simple composition with relatively few elements, the way each item is rendered provides enough visual interest that I preferred considering each part of the image just as interesting as taking in the whole.

That having been said, one thing that struck me is the color isolation of each particular part. The shadows on the jacket, vest, cravat, and hair are just a darker tone of the object's local color- Have you considered working in your shadows on a single, individual layer, to unify the color of the shadows? I know that Jason Chan mentions it several times where his tutorials crop up- if you haven't checked out his Black Widow ImagineFX tutorial online, check it out. I think the two of you have similar painting styles and he has a lot to say on the subject of unifying elements with light and shadow.

Either way, I am very fond of this picture. Great job :3


Cyl1981: I am very happy to see that you took the brief and absolutely ran with it. The combination of your sitter and the portraiture style you chose is an excellent combination. Considering this style, it was really interesting to see a digital take on a look that is so much about the physical application of paint- this Rembrandt-ish, Vermeer-ish style is so great in terms of depicting the brilliance of light, and I think you did a very good job in that regard.

It's the subtle thing about this image that make it good, like the faint pixelation that mimicks raises and flecks of paint on the side of the sitter's face, or those white-hot flecks on his armament. All in all I think hand's down yours is the most dignified and regal of the sitters, and a very worthy fantasy portfolio piece.
One thing that is a little bit distracting is the slight opacity of brushstrokes that make up his mane- you worked hard at getting that opaque, paint-on-the-canvas look, so that little hint of digital breaks the mystique just slightly. You may prefer the look, but perhaps at some point you should try going back in and painting those thick tufts opaquely, Rembrandt style )

Kittensoft: You made some pretty bold choices in this work in terms of how you wanted to treat the humanizing of the sitter! I applaud you for being one of a few who decided to tackle the arms/torso of your subject.
You did a nice job of incorporating your reference portrait- the fuzzy hand is especially well painted. As for his face I think you were successful in characterizing his personality, and picked a perfect animal to meld with your human sitter. It's also nice to see that you maintained that ''Victorian/old school vignette'' look that the original photograph had, even as you introduced color.

All things considered you picked a very ambitious pose and sitter (rendering those kinds of jackets can be tough because they dont really offer up a lot of folds). Comparing this to your Mars picture (apples and oranges, I know), it feels like you were more comfortable with nuanced brushstrokes and differing opacities this time around. I could be wrong, but there looks to be a change in how you approached painting each. Whether or not you feel like this is an improvement over your last piece, I definitely think its a good sign
Have you ever tried working from dark to light? Even if you just give it a try once, I think you might gain a new perspective on rendering objects like clothes/fur/whatever if you started in dark tones and worked to your lights. If you're interested I could send you some tutorials of people who work in this method

[Anthis]

Thanks for the critical comments choo! I read the ones for the other entries as well and they are quite informative.

As for your remarks on my piece - You're actually quite right about the lighting on the eye. I wanted to have some nice cast shadows like in the source material, and to have him fade into the background. Which I think it quite typical in these portraits. I still had to show the eye though, so I tried to cheat there with a small non-existent light source. But I think it's biting me in the ass now... haha. You gave it some good thought though, I should be able to improve this.

Looking forward to a new topic. This activity could use some more... activity, and deserves some more attention!

[choo]

Anthis- If you do decide to go back in and work on the image some more, please feel free to PM me with a link to your updated image and I will crit it a second time around ) Usually I find a lot more to burble about in a second crit, for better or for worse :S

[jgordinho]

i totally lost this..i was on top of thi topic and lost it...i'm very disapointed i supose icant put mine in?
PS:nevermind its too late

[cyl1981]

Choo, thanx so much for the advices, I will keep improving, and bring more persuasive pieces as I progress : )

[Anthis]

Choo - That's very kind, haha. I may do some revisions later on, but I'm working on some of the other challenges at the moment. Some great topics have been popping up everywhere. Looking forward to the new Anatomicae round too!