First off, thanks to all the people who gave me their honest opinions on the last thing I posted. I don't just mean the compliments, but the tips and criticisms, they help me to get better at this.
So taking some advice from a commenter to try watercolours, Here's my latest piece. I'll admit that I'm not entirely enamoured with it, but for a first attempt at panting/watercolour I don't immediately hate it. Still, I'd love to get some honest feedback on it so I can try to improve.
Overall for me, painting is scary, I'm constantly worried I'll misbrush something and fuck it up, but as I went on I started to enjoy it and feel good just finally doing it, regardless of how it turned out. I've done bit and pieces with spray paint on canvas before but usually only stencils, which can be fun, but isn't as exciting as watercolours are to me now (I sound so dull).
Enough of my life story, let me know what you think! (Even if you hate it!)
First: better than I'll ever be. Nice job. Second: the white at the lower right corner annoyed me at first, but I couldn't figure out why, then I settled into it. Third: I think it struck me as off because this work is a study in perspective focused on the cabin. There's no foreground and the background vanishes to infinity. The cabin, then, suffers from an undue focus and the perspective is imperfect. You did a great job of drawing the eye to the cabin, but the perspective and orthogonality are just off enough to jar. Worthy of note : this perspective study has been presented to us through warped perspective, which is probably magnifying its (minor) faults. The next one, I reckon, will be spectacular.
Thanks! Yeah it took me until I finished to spot the error in perspective on the cabin. I went at it freehand when I should have lined it out with a straight edge beforehand. The background I was attempting to gradually fade from the darker blue to lighter near the bottom (with the intention of painting in clouds on the bottom left, but lack of experience with watercolours soiled that plan!
If you put your hand over the mountains, then the blue near the cabin looks like it's a lake, though it's not clear whether the lake is far below and the cabin is on a cliff or if the lake comes right up to the cabin. Of course, it's not a lake at all (unless you're going for surrealism in making a lake blend with the mountains), so perhaps either making the mountains a different color, or adding texture to the big empty blue area would have set it off better. Either that, or the mountains are really the tops of waves, and the cabin is about to go under o_O
Initially it was clouds on the bottom left, and a gradual fade from the darker blue to a lighter one, but my lack of experience ruined that plan and it became solid blue. You're not the first person to point it out it looks like a wave about to crash :) I think I painted the mountains a touch too high, closer to the middle of the canvas might have helped with the perspective.
That's actually quite good, especially if you don't do this often. The only thing that catches my eye as being a little off at first glance is those 90 overly squared chunks on that central peak, which could probably bear some softening. But that's if this isn't a color of a photo or whatever that has those in it that stark.
No direct reference photos but just working from memory on things I've seen before. I'm still getting the hang of blending and consistent solid colours with watercolours. Thanks for the feedback!