Beauty magazine illustration - looking for critique
2yr
Natali Santini
Hi!
I am looking for critique on this illustration I did a while ago.
It is meant to be an illustration that could appear in a beauty magazine, with the focus being on presenting the vibrant eye shadow.
At firt I was planning to do the background dark. But I felt like it was ruining the feel I was going for so I changed it to gold. It was a bit tricky to avoid the face blending into the background afterwards though.
All critique is very appreciated!
2yr
@Liandro pinpointed the issue exactly. The hair is this strong, graphic, dark contrasting shape, and it dominates the image. My only other critique is that the eyes look a little close together, and the mouth is angled differently then the eyes and nose.
I do like the way you used a complimentary color for the background, it really makes the figure pop :)
Natali Santini
2yr
Thank you for your feedback!
2yr
Hey, @Natali Santini, I like it! It reminds me a bit of illustrations from the european Art Déco style, from around the 1920s. I love your choice on the golden background and I think you managed to nicely work its contrast with the face values.
There are a few other things, though, which I believe you could try working a bit further. For example, right now, it’s not the eye shadow that pops out the most to me, but the hairstyle - its size, shape and value constrast against the overall picture are making it strongly dominant, at least in my eye. If the goal is to highlight the eye shadow as the focal point, I’d experiment ways of playing down the hair some more, maybe by using lighter values on its shape, or perhaps by seeking other ways to reduce its dominance and emphasis in the overall composition.
Another thing that comes to my mind is that, right now, I feel as if the visual language of the illustration is somewhere inbetween realistic and stylized - the hair, brows, lashes and earring look more geometric and flat, while the head and facial features tend to a soft-rendering, more realistic approach. In my perception, this stylistic ambiguity softens the strength of the overall design a little bit, so I’d suggest picking one of these directions to take the illustration more emphatically (either even more realistic or, instead, fully stylized).
That’s my take anyway! Hope it helps.
If I could help you with anything, just let me know.
Other than that, nice job!
2yr
Hi @Liandro , thank you so much for your critique!
I was so focused on the vibrancy of the eye shadow I completely forgot about the hair being so dominant. :D Thank you for pointing that out!
I have a questions regarding the stylistic ambiguity.
I listened to a lecture by Bill Perkins on the New Masters Academy Youtube channel and there he talked about three elements that create a composition - line/texture, form/chiaroscuro and mass/notan.
He said that the combination of these in equal portions will create visual mud and the image won't read well. He also said that this triad works a bit like the triad of primaries in color.
So does it mean that to create an image with a strong design I have to choose one of these three elements to be the most dominant (so for example fully used in some areas or in combination with the other two in the majority of the image)? Kind of like picking the most vibrant color and then organizing other colors around it that lean more towards the neutrals?
Here are also three examples of drawing a sphere for demonstration from the video.
So is the third sphere on the right still form dominant? It is leaning more to having an equal mix of line, form and notan, but form seems still the strongest one to me.
Sorry for the long question but I am a little confused and not sure I understand this correctly.
Thank you once more, I really appreciate your help!
Show all replies (3)
I like the illustration but I'm not very familiar with the subject exactly. Do you have any examples of illustrations for beauty magazines? Maybe you have some examples of illustrators you admire?
2yr
Thank you! I really like Katharine Asher, Sunny Gu or Janka Kykalová (Janka Illustration). It was a cover for Fann magazine by Janka that was my huge inspiration for this illustration.
