I really like the brushwork on for the mountains! The direction of the light source is a little confusing to me, but otherwise I do love the colors you were able to tease together for the sunset and think they're really well done. Thanks for sharing yourself and your art!
Light is SUPER tough, but it can be the difference between awesome and extraordinary! I think taking down the intensity of the bright colors of the water on the left to add maybe a hint of reflection and a mild glow to the treetops on both sides would have taken the piece to another level! In that case it would have given a clear view that the sun had dipped just below the right mountain peak maybe 30 minutes prior.
I know this sounds critical but I want to stress that I still really like it!
I know you're embellishing quite a bit, but honestly you're not far off. The 60° estimate is actually pretty close if we're using the center of the painting as the polar center of the coordinate frame.
I'm gonna say that it depends. Are you self-taught? Then you're doing great, keep going!
Serious critique and suggestions:
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The work you're doing is pretty basic, fairly competent. You're getting a rough feel for what you're depicting, but not really finishing the impression. The color is okay, but the water and sky feel flat. It's an idea of a mountain landscape, but not yet fully fleshed out in form or feeling. It's more a quick sketch than a finished piece. This isn't meant to be cruel or mean; if you're a relative novice, then this is fantastic work, and you should be proud of your progress.
My suggestion is to take some drawing classes at your local CC, really learn to look at and see things, and then try to reproduce them on paper. Start with still lives, and work up to life drawing. (The schools I've been to had drawing I & II as prerequisites for painting classes; both were 3 credit studio classes. They end up being a little cheaper if you're auditing rather than working towards a degree.) One of the things that you pay for when you take college level art classes is brutally honest criticism, with the intent of helping you find ways to improve and be more true to your subject, and to your vision of that subject. That's hard to replicate outside of school, since friends and family usually aren't going to really critique work for fear of hurting a relationship. (I had one teacher--German--that ended up making about a quarter of her students cry at one time or another because she was so blunt in her critiques.)
And hey!, you can ignore everything I've said, and keep painting the way you want to because it makes you happy, and that's okay! It's absolutely fine to do a thing just because you enjoy doing it! You don't have to be an expert in order to enjoy doing something.
For myself, it's taken me over a decade to get back into trying to make anything since I burned out so hard at art school. I'm slow, but I'm gradually working on patterning new apparel pieces. I might even have something finished by the end of the year. School pushed me to make fashion that was artistic, and I've realized that my own aesthetic is more utilitarian; I'm never going to need a mood board to create work.
I’m self taught- besides a few YouTube tutorials here and there, I like trying to figure things out.
I really enjoy creating. I’ve never been good at drawing and only half good at painting. But I’m realising not everything I have to create needs to be good- sometimes it’s about the process.
Burn out is so real. It’s important to enjoy what you’re doing.
I create for me- so I don’t care if my paintings aren’t all there. I enjoyed painting, and I’m proud of myself for sitting down and doing it.
Thank you for your advice- it comes from a good place.
I totally agree. I loved drawing and designing before I went to school. Now I don't. I'm much, much better at it than I was, but I'm also apathetic about it. I think that being happy with what you're doing, and getting joy out of the process, is more important than any kind of technical prowess.
She was a beautiful 7-plus pound rainbow trout that I caught from a fairly small creek beside my house, on a little ultralight setup I had as a teenager. (Very light line, very small baits. Very under-strength for a fish that size. ) Hands down the best fight I've ever had with a fish my whole damn life. Unbeknownst to me it was during the off-season.. (A two-week span at the end of winter when trout were off limits at the time.) My Dad flipped out when I came home carrying that monster! Being off-season, I couldn't get her certified of course. But I'll never forget the long, delicate struggle with getting that fish landed! It was fucking thrilling! Most active, acrobatic fish I've ever tangled with. Guess I've been chasing that battle ever since. I've caught bigger and many many more, since then, but nothing compares to the fight she gave me that cold winter day on that little rig.
Bob kinda wanted the beginner to be proud of being able to relatively recreate what he was doing with a severely truncated set of tools... good critique. Pretty fuckin close, for a painter, eh,
Bob Ross is definitely what I saw too. I can spot 3 of his techniques. The feather brush pine branches, the scraper tool for mountain side snow and the blending techniques in the sky and water