Oh please - I adore your plaques. I need to make you some really cool calligraphy to swap for them so that I can finish out my four seasons dragons. I plan to save space for them in the new house. And given the quantity of SF/fantasy art I've collected, anything that gets wall space saved for it is being complimented.
It's not weasel spit, but no it didn't work. The biggest problem is that it's too busy. There's too much going on - five fish in two colors and five patterns, branches, leaves, waves... There's no sense of unification like the original sketch had. Also, the thing I love about your work is it's dimensionality, and this one is missing that. Even under water you should see the shape of the fish.
The last issue that I see with the composition is that you have a very static arrangement - that particular symmetry of the four fish set around one in the center - *particularly* with the four outside being white and the central one in red has made them even flatter. If you look at your original sketch, the arrangement of three in the same color scheme gives you a sense of the fish swirling around in the water. The five fish layout has no sense of movement.
Now that I've pointed all of that out - accept it as a lesson and move on. If you don't do these things and make mistakes, you don't grow as an artist. Ask me sometime about all the calligraphy pieces that didn't make it off of my drawing board. I've learned more from those than I did from the ones that came out perfectly. Accept the lesson, be grateful for it, and make something beautiful *because* of it.
Swing and a Miss
It's not weasel spit, but no it didn't work. The biggest problem is that it's too busy. There's too much going on - five fish in two colors and five patterns, branches, leaves, waves... There's no sense of unification like the original sketch had. Also, the thing I love about your work is it's dimensionality, and this one is missing that. Even under water you should see the shape of the fish.
The last issue that I see with the composition is that you have a very static arrangement - that particular symmetry of the four fish set around one in the center - *particularly* with the four outside being white and the central one in red has made them even flatter. If you look at your original sketch, the arrangement of three in the same color scheme gives you a sense of the fish swirling around in the water. The five fish layout has no sense of movement.
Now that I've pointed all of that out - accept it as a lesson and move on. If you don't do these things and make mistakes, you don't grow as an artist. Ask me sometime about all the calligraphy pieces that didn't make it off of my drawing board. I've learned more from those than I did from the ones that came out perfectly. Accept the lesson, be grateful for it, and make something beautiful *because* of it.
Eloise