Probably get rid of that white gradient and blur your stock layer a little; won't be half bad.
True this.
Also, go and learn a little bit of formal art sense, mainly composition and color theory. Signature making, at our level, is going to be almost purely composition and color theory.
Read
this post first off. Then read this page and watch the video
here.
There is more info than you could ever want on the internet about composition and color theory, go use a little of it!
I'll try to critique this piece (you should read my critique before and after you read through the information I gave you):
You have three focal points on this picture. Here they are:
The letters also draw the eye slightly. Now, taking the rule of thirds into consideration, you should have created your focal points where the thirds lines intersect, and you want the focal points to be something that the eye would want to look at. Your large white lightings and large white lines aren't really at all attractive to the eye, and just distract from the face of that dude. You also have too many lines that are going straight up and down, or near straight up and down, and do nothing but distract the eye and clutter the image.
Your use of color is okay, but you have too much white and not enough blue. Blue is the primary color in your picture, and yellow is your compliment. The yellow is too similar to white to be used like you used them, and they just drown out your picture. You should have used much, much more blue, and much less yellow.
One thing you need to know is that you can manipulate and control where the eye goes when you create an image. Once you realize and learn to do this, being able to do so becomes invaluable.
Sadly, I don't study art anymore as I'm in DP for CS
Making art is for people who want to. No law or social maxim out there bans people without professional artistic experience from drawing.
Obviously. But most people who do are professional. Frankly, the skill required to make fine digitally created art is considerable. There aren't many amateur artists capable of creating their own art. Plus, most fine arts undergo rigorous sketching and over-sketching. Most amateurs do not have the patience nor the time to do this.
Bedazed is right. Nobody here has the artistic ability or the motivation to create high-level art. The closest people to doing so are the few that posted up some decent art in the media/art/lit forums. I don't know of anyone else around this site that even studied art in a semi-formal and rigorous manner like I did -if you have and you are reading this then you should show your art, like, right now. I love seeing peoples' art.
None.
.
Mostly smudge, blur then linear, sharpen and repeat. The thingy around the Balrog is pen tool.
