Michal's little gallery

Uhhh, that's spooky!
Those fog ghosts are brilliant.
Moon, clouds, wolf....brrrrr spooky. So cool executed.

If there is something I am uncertain about, a tiny little critc, than it would be the birds eyes.
If poor bird would have inverted skytracker as eyes, they would leave clear defined circles on the ground. (they could be somewhere in Nirvana though)
Or one beam could hit a poor soul close to where your signature is?
But to be honest, over all, they turn this cool painting a bit into marvel direction for my taste, aren't they? Stealing a bit POEtry?
Just thinking, because this painting is worth to think about.

Thanks for sharing Lemi.

[Taron]

I absolutely love the ghosts! They are proper spooky!
The raven gives me a little trouble, because he's generally symmetric, but off-center itself. If his direction or his target felt a bit more diagonal, it would already help, pulling the whole gorgeous picture together. His eyes appear to have beams, but those beams feel like a problem with the paper or an eraser accident of sorts. I would have left those out. I love the glowing eyes, though, they're fantastic!
I know how hard it is to paint birds, especially while in flight, but it could be kick ass to have the raven in a more dramatic asymmetrical pose, like shortly before taking a dive or so.
The shading of black feathers or black anything, really, is really challenging. I think, you've given it a good go already. I could imagine a more defined highlight might help? On the other hand, studying crows in the dark ( ) may help. Maybe indoors, like some stuffed versions? It's a fantastic challenge that, again, makes me want to resume the "Sketch Topics" thread!
Maybe something like "Black feathers" or so... could still be very liberally interpreted.

All in all, though, SUPER mean scenery in brilliantly moody light that still manages to reveal enough to arrive at this elegant tribute! (The city scape in your modified versions is nice, too! Just the "Nevermore", eh...not necessary at all. Please, don't put me on "fonts" just yet! )

Oh, thank you guys for you comments!

Frankly to say I have little bit problem with the beams too (and my wife too ). If I have time I will remove them soon. Regarding raven geometry.. it should be correct, I will upload the original reference photo for info. But inproper highlights can cause the troubles to perceive all geometry in the right way. Certainly, there is substantial room for improvement, however! Studying ravens and crows in dark, yeah, this could be very good challenge!

City shape, hmm, it should be the sea Definitely, I will have to be more precise and more clear! Nevermore is not necessary, I agree. My first idea was to place this text on paper that is being hold by the raven but I didn´t like my results..

I am not satisfied with the one thing on that picture. I wanted to produce little bit depressed atmosphere and that's why I placed the raven almost in the center (gold center). But I am not so lucky now with it and I am thinking about to place the raven more higher or better to cut higher part of the picture and add more ground..

[Taron]

Oh, I'm not worried about the proportions of the raven, they seem just fine. It's just the pose at that placement on the image, you know. That symmetrical could only really work in the center, but that may hurt the overall composition. Therefore a more complex pose that goes with the flow of the image would really give it a great deal more strength.

Check out some of those:
Crow images on google

OH, I really thought you had a cityscape in the background, haha, you know, kind of like Los Angeles... felt right somehow?!

You have such atmosphere here Michal. Perfect for Poe!

Thank you Tartan!

And thank you Taron for clarification! I understand now what you meant
I have tried to enhance my result and to add more lights to the city scape Maybe New York now? No, Pacific, ha..

Full version here: http://www.lemivision.cz/gallery/albums ... Raven3.jpg

And here is only raven..

it's got nice positive and negative space

Yes, thank you, that was my aim. My first idea was to reflect current "world global peace situation" and then I was thinking about the Raven poem. Unfortunately thoughts about living in everlasting peace are very naive. History is repeating and people don´t change so much..
So my pictures above maybe show something like "monsters are waiting outside".. So my thinking is nowadays "Can I read newspaper or not and what can I do with the negative information?"..

Charlie Chaplin final speech in The Great Dictator:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcvjoWOwnn4

Hmm, maybe I will have to paint something more positive

Great job on raven, ghosts and landscape
Black raven representation is challenging in night mode