Awesome, but I'm not quite sure the water color needed to be changed. Swamps are monotonous and bland, and sometimes you gotta go against better judgement and do things wrong, and I think here the green monotone helped convey the tone of a swamp better. Not to mention the new colors are way too tropical.
I quite like the reeds you have, but they give me a WIP vibe, as if they're not finished. I think it's the lack of finer control over the black outline that makes it look a bit scribbly and contrasts wildly to the smooth finish of the tree. Your leaves(in the water) could also use some work as they have pretty poor clustering, and their shapes could be refined much better. The new flower has a much better perspective, but I feel it lacks the more appealing volume/shape of the old red leaves(where they seemed to kind of curve out of the center).
I messed around with a few things here:
Namely just some leaf shapes, fixing up the outline of the reeds a bit and I also felt having the black ascend in a gradient up the leaves as shadows is much more appealing than just cutting off at the bottom. It might also be worth looking into making the reeds a
little bit shorter so the shadow doesn't just cut off(which was really bugging me). It might also be worth investing some tiles to properly shadow the bottom of the trees.
I also really don't like the brown stuff on the bottom-right, which I'm guessing are branches or something. You've improved a
ton since you made them. Just get rid of them and try something new, maybe logs or just new branches sticking out. I just don't find them appealing at all and detract from the piece.
09-18-2012, 06:57 PM
Linear Mode
