The hobbit by francoclun on DeviantArt (original) (raw)

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Franco, I read a couple of the critiques for this picture and thought I would add a bit. Firstly, I don't consider this drawing 'photorealism', so I think it shouldn't be judged as such. It is quite obviously a drawing (as most of your work appears to be), and it has a representational style, that is; it is intended to be recognised as the subject it is depicting. But, it is 'illustrative' - you have used pencil and allowed the pencil strokes to be seen on the finished art. I'm going to make up a word for it: 'Pencilery'. <img src="e.deviantart.net/emoticons/w/w…" width="15" height="15" alt="" data-embed-type="emoticon" data-embed-id="387" title=" (Wink)"/>

Secondly, there is a problem that we can have when using photos as the sole reference for our artwork, and that is that photos don't always tell the truth. Photos capture the reflection of light on a three dimensional subject and record it as a two dimensional image. Photos are prone to optical illusions, that is; our eyes are tricked into perceiving something in a certain way when it isn't like that in life. One thing that bothered me about this reference photo (when it looked at it via googling The Hobbit) is that there is an almost meaningless square shape next to the face of the large dwarf facing Bilbo (I should know his name, I loved the film) - if I had been using this pic for my reference I would have had to know what this object was (I'm guessing it's a pipe, or an ear trumpet) and then include my personal expression of this object as an additional part of the artwork. My job would be to not just imitate, but to properly interpret the object in the photo in order to make it fit into the drawing. As it stands, I can't see any difference in the object in the photo and your drawing of it in your artwork: it remains a black, square-ish shape that I can't properly decipher.

Lastly, to help the depth of your drawing it would have been useful to 'knock back' the tone on James Nesbit's dwarf (again, should know his name!), making it a shade darker to draw the eye back to Bilbo as the central - and closer - figure. That's definitely an illustrative trick to direct the viewers' gaze and reduce jumpiness in the artwork. You have done a great job of centralising Bilbo with the crispy contrast of his light shirt against the darkness of the dwarves next to him - love it!

I hope that makes sense - I'm writing this on the fly and I truly adore your work.