The Critic by Lionus (2003)

Everyone is a critic. :)

Pencil to Photoshop rendering.

I started this image out on the simplest of terms. Three characters on a white background with the dramatic focus on the mouse. But after I was given a tour of Lionus' house in a dream, I knew that I had to use it as the background. :)

In a "busy" picture, the greatest danger is in having the details, or the background, grab the viewers' attention from the story you are trying to tell. Once I put in the background with it's bright stripe of sunshine, the characters became secondary. Darkening down the background helped push it back into the background where it belonged.

Then there was the problem of the three characters being unequal in size and visual impact. With the background darker, the "painting" with its white background was able to pull the eye more towards it and away from Lionus being against the light of the window. However, Michael Mouse is a small character and didn't have very much visual gravity to him.

I gave Michael a little more visual "pull" by giving him brighter colored clothes. But Lionus' tall figure and the scene out the window behind him still had more pull and still made the picture unbalanced. I finally came upon the idea of the taboret with the pallet, jars, and brushes on it that balanced off the whole picture. To see what I mean, cover the taboret with your hand and see how your eye spends more time over on the left side of the picture.

Firestorm Six has been nice enough to do a number of excellent artworks with Max Lyon and Lionus in them, so I decided to repay his kind gifts with "The Critic".

You can catch Firestorm Six's artwork at his Catbox site (check out his Fur Park wallpaper!) and on VCL.
(Don't let him know that I am envious of some of the things he does with his artworks. :) )