Cyborg finished, and crits

Comments and crit on my latest couple of pieces..

In some ways I think they look great, but then they're just really exercises in copying from a photograph with minimal changes. On Cyborg, I feel like it looked stronger in the early stages - more painterly with rough edges -- you could really see the hand of the artist. But somehow as I added in all the little highlights and finishing touches it all smoothed out until it ended up looking kind of generic - almost like a photograph. Ok, not entirely, but more than I really want for my work. I should have gone bolder on colors, darker on shadows. Harder on some edges. I also need to get some blues and greens in the flesh - the purples I:m using are just too warm - need to cool it off.

Ahhh, really  though, I guess I'm talking about how I want to progress from here. When I look at the painting, it does look pretty good really. One thing though that I wish I had approached differently - I mean it's freakin' Cris Cyborg -- and I made her look almost like a pinup!! At the time I had no idea who she was, it was the only picture I had ever seen of her, and it actually did make her look kind of cute. It was when I decided to include the tattoos I had to research who she was and look up better pics - then I found out what she's really like. Now I wish I had done her brutal and fierce. I think I'll do another one, maybe a few drawings too. Thanks to doing this painting I've learned about the gritty grimy world of womens' MMA fighting. I'm fascinated. Hell, Degas did the ballet - Lautrec did the circus and the nightclub scene - I think I might do the MMA world for a while. It'll really help with my learning the anatomy.

MOre in general - I think I need to switch away form the tablet now. It finally allowed me to paint successfully for the first time as far as I'm concerned - and I've developed this system (sketch, adjust it, value drawing in monochrome, then start working over it in color). Now it's time to do it in paint on canvas. I think the value drawing method is what's going to get me through - it's underpainting.

Also, I want to stop copying the exact shapes I see in a picture and instead strike lines to the bony landmarks. Need to refresh my memory on them a bit from the Hale books.