Digi painting help

[Soa]

How can I make it look less cartoony?

 

 

I guess I'm calling out Unknownz if she's stil here.

I tried adding textures to give it variation in parts but it felt like it wasn't my work so I opted out of it.

[Sy_Accursed]

The way to make it less cartoony would be to draw it less cartoony basically.

 

It looks cartoon because you've draw what you THINK a tree looks like, but not what a tree ACTUALLY looks like; its a relatively common error in many budding artists of any kind. I'd suggest you go and really look at a tree, look at its shape, its texture, its patterns and then revise you're tree with aims to drawing it the way trees really are. Then it will begin to look more real.

 

Having said that however trees, especially bare trees, are notoriously hard to do well

[Soa]

That doesn't really help. I used a tree as a reference but how many trees have you seen that has tentacles for branches or muscle like trunk? Thanks anyway though.

 

What I was aiming for in terms of help was coloring and texture because as I was coloring it I knew that it was starting to look cartoonish but I don't really know any other way to color it.

 

What I did was did the basic base layer color, added the darks and gradually work up to the highlights.

[Pat_61]

Soa, you need to smudge it, make it not look as sharp....

 

 

I think

[Chuggy]

Try to add subtle details here and there. It may help.

[Skull]

I'd say the problem isn't in your coloring or texturing, but in the way the branches are drawn. They stay thick for too long, they don't split often enough and they curve too cleanly. I know there are trees that are like that, but an attempt to draw them is always going to look strange.

 

That being said, trees are my weakness, especially without leaves.

[Soa]

It's not really a tree. It's a tree mutant that has been exposed to some orange toxic chemical that turned it into a moist, slimy tentacle creature whereas the tentacles move around and such. :rolleyes:

[rangeor]

Add some dramatic lighting and contrast.

[Skull]

It's not really a tree. It's a tree mutant that has been exposed to some orange toxic chemical that turned it into a moist, slimy tentacle creature whereas the tentacles move around and such. :rolleyes:

In that case I think it's not going to get too much more realistic.

[unknowz]

When I first looked at it, it looked more like muscles to me rather than wood. Not that it's a bad thing though, unless you want it to look more like tree branches.

 

Obviously, the colors are too saturated in general if you were going for realism. A general rule of thumb is to have less saturated highlights and midtones along with saturated shadows.

Speaking about those, I think you could give it a bit more contrast so it looks more 3D, cause right now it's a bit flat. The fact that the orange goo stuff isn't shaded at all doesn't help either.

 

So yeah, here's what I would try :

 

Desaturate the whole thing, maybe make it a bit darker too.

Make the shadows more saturated and give them more contrast

Shade the goo stuff a bit. Liquids are tricky to shade, so you might want to get reference for that.

You could also apply texture to the whole thing. Doesn't have to be elaborate, you could just go find a picture of a rusted metal plate or something and overlay it over the tree to see if it looks good. (don't forget to make the pic grayscale before overlaying if you don't want it's color to bleed into your painting). Of course, doing that doesn't replace hand texturing, but you could always combine the two. I know you said you don't like slapping a texture that wasn't made by you on it, but in my opinion it could help give it more realism.

To give texture, you could also duplicate your painting, make the copy grayscale and use a noise filter such as Spread along with a layer mask on it. Then you can apply some noise only to the parts you want. It helps to give a more grittier look which can help with realism sometimes.

[LowFatMilk]

i think is looks fine the way it is :P

[Soa]

When I first looked at it, it looked more like muscles to me rather than wood. Not that it's a bad thing though, unless you want it to look more like tree branches.

 

Obviously, the colors are too saturated in general if you were going for realism. A general rule of thumb is to have less saturated highlights and midtones along with saturated shadows.

Speaking about those, I think you could give it a bit more contrast so it looks more 3D, cause right now it's a bit flat. The fact that the orange goo stuff isn't shaded at all doesn't help either.

 

So yeah, here's what I would try :

 

Desaturate the whole thing, maybe make it a bit darker too.

Make the shadows more saturated and give them more contrast

Shade the goo stuff a bit. Liquids are tricky to shade, so you might want to get reference for that.

You could also apply texture to the whole thing. Doesn't have to be elaborate, you could just go find a picture of a rusted metal plate or something and overlay it over the tree to see if it looks good. (don't forget to make the pic grayscale before overlaying if you don't want it's color to bleed into your painting). Of course, doing that doesn't replace hand texturing, but you could always combine the two. I know you said you don't like slapping a texture that wasn't made by you on it, but in my opinion it could help give it more realism.

To give texture, you could also duplicate your painting, make the copy grayscale and use a noise filter such as Spread along with a layer mask on it. Then you can apply some noise only to the parts you want. It helps to give a more grittier look which can help with realism sometimes.

 

I love you.