In the light of the night...

Or... something like that. I would have been smart to write down a few of the titles I was thinking of while I was working on this piece. Probably one of the more in depth pieces I've managed to do in quite a long while. This took about a week and a half to complete. I didn't really want to show any work in progress because even though I really appreciate crits and critique, I wanted to really gauge my own level. I wanted to note where my skills lie in their own right and see where I stand. How do you know what to improve if you never know where you stand? I wanted a solid, completed piece for people to critique me on, because sometimes a WIP, the line seems to blur between what is the idea you want to convey and what idea others want you to convey- even though a good critic will concentrate on the facts of the piece, not necessarily the subject matter.

Well- here is my werecat, loosely based on my character as well as my character in Oblivion. That game really inspired this piece to come to life. I first worked in Open Canvas and soon got frustrated with the lack of sure power of the program. I believe I wanted to move the sketch over and couldn't figure out how to do so without rotating the whole canvas - which I found a useless capability. I dragged it over to Photoshop and turned it into quite the project. Originally just a line drawing, the linework I created in OC was not satisfactory. So I turned it into a lineless piece and I like it much better for it.

Seeing a smaller version makes me realise that the character is a bit bright and I could possibly push color contrast and just regular contrast more in the piece. The light from the front of the character is a bit bright. The piece does not overall have a lot of dark contrast. I guess I got a bit intimidated when all the darker colors I was choosing were near the lower left (black) corner, making me hesitant to choose it. I guess the lights are too light and the darks are a bit too dark. Aw well. Live and learn. I did learn a lot from this piece. Hope you enjoy.