Tessa Geniets

Mastering contrasts, animal portraits in black and white (digital painting)

You really did a good job, fur isn't easy, and you picked an image that's quite hard to do as well because the fur separates quite a bit on the chest. I'm happy that this course could help you out! I also have a written course on my website/FB group, it's free and separated from this one. But as your struggle is specifically fur, it still might help you out.You can either find it by subscribing to <a href="http://www.lifetolegend.com" rel="nofollow noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">www.lifetolegend.com</a> (and find the password for the treasure trove in your mail) or become a member of <a href="http://www.facebook.com/groups/lifetolegend" rel="nofollow noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">www.facebook.com/groups/lifetolegend</a> (It's the second one behind this link as soon as you joined, you can't see it before I think: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/LtLOriginalTutorial/?__gid__=187892823307069)" rel="nofollow noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">www.facebook.com/hashtag/LtLOriginalTutorial/?__gid__=187892823307069</a>  ) I hope this helps! And keep up the good work! I think that in your case it's worth it to keep drawing in black and white to tackle the fur fully. It will keep you from getting distracted by things like color. You only have to focus on your strokes and contrasts that way.Keep up the good work, you will get where you want to be for sure!

PS: If you still can't find it when you decide to join the group, just send me a message or drop one in the group thread and I link it to you.

Thank you so much,  I've found it and downloaded it, that’s really helpful. I’ve also just tried to join your facebook group but it says I've already submitted a request, I think I may have done this some time ago, would love to join as its character and creature design that I would ultimately really love to be able to do.

Just checking back with you, how are you managing?

Hi Tessa, apologies I’ve only just seem this.  Thank you for checking.  I’m still really struggling with fur, but to be honest I’ve not put enough practice in.  I’ve uploaded the latest piece that I’ve worked on but I feel it’s not really improving, if anything I think the first cat I did while following your course is better

Further update and I think I’m improving again.  Reworked the last piece uploaded, and am happier with it now, I still feel I have a long way to go, but I think there’s improvement.

Hey Debbie,

I think that especially your contrast improved a lot, I like how the fur blends together. Especially on the last one I don't really see a big fur-related problem. It's really well done actually. If anything, you could try to turn the forms a bit more, and have a good look at where the lighting is coming from. The forms on your last one are significantly better than the second last, but you messed up with the lighting on the little cute hat. The whole artwork indicates that light is coming from the top left, but with the hat it's coming from the right. Did you flip it? I think it would also help to add a bit of form shadow on the lower side of the whites of the hat, and a cast shadow from the hat on the kittens head.
You could also push the lighting on the bucket (?) a bit further by adding a bit of a highlight vertically on the left side of it, close to the edge but not on the edge as the edge is turning away from us. It wouldn't reflect light at us to see that brightly.

I think you can really take the last one to the next level by putting the same dedication you put into the eyes and whiskers, also around the ears, nose, and mouth. Add a bit of shadow in the ears and let the fur that's in front of it catching more light contrast with the darker inside of the ears. The edges of the eyeball, the nose and mouth can be done with hard edges to make the kitten pop a bit more. I don't really mean a hard brush like the one you used for the wire, just clearer edges, less blended.

I feel like you're still searching a bit and it's easier for you to take the safe route and blend everything you're not too confident about, is that right? If that's the case, you're usually just one step away from making it pop by adding a bit more details with harder edges. 

A couple of other tips, they're not part of the course, but I think they will come in handy for you: Try to lower the color saturation of the little hat and the lights. Your piece is fairly gray, by adding gray to the lights and hat they won't pull the attention away from the kitten, which is supposed to be the focal point (at least I think so).

And I see that you're using color dodge to brighten up the lights, is this right? Although these lights are very colorful, I think (but this is just an opinion) that this piece in particular, for the same reason as the hat, would do better if you added white light to the core (you can do so with linear dodge - add in Photoshop).  to desaturate the colors a bit and let the kitten dominate.

I see you already use reflected light on the bucket, and I really like the particles and depth of the snow, the kitten is absolutely adorable! I think that anyone would be happy to get this as a Christmas card!

Wow, thank you so much Tessa for the invaluable feedback, it really is appreciated.  I really do over blend.  I keep adding harder edges and then being unsure about them I add a little gaussian blur.  The hat I did flip and totally forgot to change the lighting on it.

I do really struggle with contrast, this piece started out with a high contrast base, but over the time working on it, the contrast has decreased a lot.  This is obviously a big weakness in my art work, and and area I need to drastically work on, I’ve tried to increase the contrast a bit and add darker and lighter area’s in, but I’m really struggling as it just seems to appear muddy the more I try to work on it and I ended up changing the shape of the cat somehow while working on it lol.  I’ve followed your suggestions, and made a number of changes to the piece, and it’s definitely made the image a lot stronger, but I still don’t feel a 100% there yet and that I’m implementing them correctly.  I think I’m going to start fresh with a new piece, focusing on just the animal again, so that I don’t have all the other distractions.  Thank you again for the feedback, it’s helped tremendously.  I’ve uploaded my last edit, but I’m putting this piece to sleep for a while now, and may revisit when I am more confident that I can get the basics down first.

I really struggled with this one, I find fur so difficult to paint, must have watched millions of tutorials now and this is my first finished piece, really enjoyed this course and although I'm not 100% happy with this, I'm really pleased with my progress. I used an image I found on google as my reference, as you can see my cat looks a lot fluffier then the original, however the progress from where l was before taking this course (I felt l was never going to improve) to now has really inspired me to keep going.
.<img srcset="https://static.skillshare.com/uploads/project/db0cae094cc264db713f3b59c9a9b94e/989fc0e4.jpeg 600w, https://static.skillshare.com/uploads/project/db0cae094cc264db713f3b59c9a9b94e/989fc0e4.jpeg 1000w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 600px, 100vw" src="https://static.skillshare.com/uploads/project/db0cae094cc264db713f3b59c9a9b94e/989fc0e4.jpeg" loading="lazy" alt="Cat - image 1 - student project"> Reference Image
<img srcset="https://static.skillshare.com/uploads/project/db0cae094cc264db713f3b59c9a9b94e/64618496.jpeg 600w, https://static.skillshare.com/uploads/project/db0cae094cc264db713f3b59c9a9b94e/64618496.jpeg 1000w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 600px, 100vw" src="https://static.skillshare.com/uploads/project/db0cae094cc264db713f3b59c9a9b94e/64618496.jpeg" loading="lazy" alt="Cat - image 2 - student project">
  <img srcset="https://static.skillshare.com/uploads/project/db0cae094cc264db713f3b59c9a9b94e/be7144a4.jpeg 600w, https://static.skillshare.com/uploads/project/db0cae094cc264db713f3b59c9a9b94e/be7144a4.jpeg 1000w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 600px, 100vw" src="https://static.skillshare.com/uploads/project/db0cae094cc264db713f3b59c9a9b94e/be7144a4.jpeg" loading="lazy" alt="Cat - image 3 - student project">
<img srcset="https://static.skillshare.com/uploads/project/db0cae094cc264db713f3b59c9a9b94e/c407baa7.jpeg 600w, https://static.skillshare.com/uploads/project/db0cae094cc264db713f3b59c9a9b94e/c407baa7.jpeg 1000w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 600px, 100vw" src="https://static.skillshare.com/uploads/project/db0cae094cc264db713f3b59c9a9b94e/c407baa7.jpeg" loading="lazy" alt="Cat - image 4 - student project">
<img srcset="https://static.skillshare.com/uploads/project/db0cae094cc264db713f3b59c9a9b94e/639c6590.jpeg 600w, https://static.skillshare.com/uploads/project/db0cae094cc264db713f3b59c9a9b94e/639c6590.jpeg 1000w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 600px, 100vw" src="https://static.skillshare.com/uploads/project/db0cae094cc264db713f3b59c9a9b94e/639c6590.jpeg" loading="lazy" alt="Cat - image 5 - student project">

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