Fire Faerie

I'm not a big fan of painting on Bristol board, I must admit I'm curious how much the paper surface is interfering with the painting quality. I could never blend at all on Bristol without the surface pilling up--though I do love Bristol for pen & ink. Try illustration board some time. It has the super smooth surface of Bristol, but with a tougher painting surface. Some areas of your painting are very smooth--almost too smooth--while other areas are more rough and grainy (compare her belly to the hand next to it, for example). I'd prefer to see the whole painting either smooth or rough. Are you adding the warm brown and the white lines with pencils? That might be the problem.

It would also help if you used lighter pencils (so that we don't see any pencils in the final painting) or go totally the other way and have a bold outline all through the painting. Right now, her hand and her nose have an thick, gray outline, but the rest of her has either no line or a thin delicate one. (I prefer the thin delicate or no lines, personally, but that's just a matter of taste).

You've chosen a very tricky pose, and I applaud you for that. Overall, you pulled it off, and she does look very lovely. Her shoulder anatomy is particularly well done. Her left breast (er, our left) needs a little work though. It looks saggy--which is partly because of the way she's posed. I think that can be fixed by adding some shading to the underside of her breast (where the fabric is) and to her cleavage.

I like the general design of the painting a lot. The fabric shows a lot of movement. The free-floating whispy bits are lovely, and well designed. I'd like to see the fabric following her curves a little more, where it crosses her body. I think this can mostly be done with re-working some of the shading and highlights. It's almost like the fabric isn't lit by the same light as her body. It should show yellow rim-lighting around the outer edges of her body (like where it is falling off her hip, and where it's going over her leg).

I like the way that her hair is turning to flames. The colors you've chosen really go a long way to make this a stunning, high-impact painting. On a store shelf, it would draw your eye, definitely. I like how you've used warm colors, and would love to see you go all the way with that (ie, no gray, only browns).

You may have done this on purpose, since it's a t-shirt design, but I'd like to see either more white in the figure or no white in the background. A yellow or orange background would be nice, a black background would really kick up the colors.

Overall, this is a very lovely painting, very well done. I've made a lot of comments/suggestions, but they are relatively small changes to the overall look of the piece. The overall first impression of the painting is VERY strong. If I wore hot chick t-shirts, this is one I would buy. You have a lot of tallent, and I look forward to seeing you refine your techniques!!