Color Study No. 1: Bubble Blues

Spoiler: Spoilered bec its HUGE

Title: Color Study No. 1: Bubble Blues
Target: Poliwag
Rank: Simple (35PTS +)
The first of a series of monochromatic sketches I've been doing. Blue's my favorite color, so I had fun doing this.

 

Claimed!

 

tfw u finally get to curate a morru work ; u ;

You've created a lovely monochromatic piece, and I love this experimental color quest you've set out on! It's an awesome, common thing to do, almost like an artist's rite of passage in a way!

I'll start like I usually do, with Pokemon anatomy on the Poliwrath. You've captured Poliwrath pretty well for such a strangely-proportioned creature. You've also done pretty well with insinuating the curve of its feet downward with the way it's floating in the water. You've got a sufficiently grumpy look on its face, fitting for a Poliwrath. I want to point out a couple of things. The first is a bit nitpicky--usually the swirl of a Poliwrath comes closer tot he bottom. One of the others is its striking arm. It's striking out across its body. If we look at its original Ken Sugimori artwork here, we see that Poliwrath's arms start right at the bottom of its eye bumps--it has essentially no shoulders and definitely no neck. It also has pretty long arms--about as long as its body when stretched out, it seems. With this length and this starting point in mind, your Poliwrath's arm would actually sit much higher, and stretch pretty far across its body!

The other thing I wanted to point out is more of a perspective issue. We seem to be viewing the Pokemon with our eyes about level with its body, but we see a bit of the top side of the Poliwrath's fist. I point this out because of the way that humanoid beings usually punch. The Poliwrath is looking up, so we can assume that it's also punching slightly upward, but we usually tilt the top of our fists inward toward our bodies, not outward, unless we're doing an uppercut. The motion of the arm here seems to insinuate a punch, and not an uppercut, which makes being able to see the curled finger/top of the fist a little awkward here.

Moving onto your Poliwag, that thing is damn cute. It's a very simple Pokemon and you've portrayed it well here. The only nitpick I could see is that the thin part inside the tail is usually longer, but other than that, it looks fine. You've got the eyes placed correctly on its head for the perspective we're viewing it at, and the rings swirl nicely with that perspective.

Your shading here is subtle, but nice. You're hinting at a light source that's coming from the upper right through a bit of highlights on the Poliwrath's forwardmost leg and through the deeper shadows on its right (our left) side. You shaded these fairly well, though I would have liked to see some sort of cast shadow from them in the water, or even on top of parts of the Poliwag. The Poliwag also seems to be missing some shading--if the roundness of Poliwrath's body is making that deep of shadow on its side, Poliwag should share that same shadow!

Your treatment of the background is pretty nice here for a monochromatic work. The swirling scribbles give it a nice, underwater-y texture that's interesting to look at. I think one of the things I would have liked to see out of it, though, is a suggestion of the light source. Brightening the top right and darkening the bottom left would have really added a more dynamic feel to this dynamic duo.

An important thing to discuss with monochromatic works is also contrast. I think you did really well in this area. The whites break up the space you've created nicely, and while you've used darker outlines to set your figures apart from the background, it's not too heavy or distracting. The shading works quite well to help with that contrast, also. I almost wish that you'd darkened some of the deeper shadows closer to the black you have on the swirls--that level of deep, rich contrast would have been great to see as long as you kept it with mostly cool tones.

Overall, this is pretty clean and well-done for a monochromatic study. I'll happily award you a 40/35, Poliwag captured! ​

 

Thanks for the curation K'! All good points you bring up there. I do plead guilty to the off-ness that is Poliwrath's punching arm; I sketched the pose too quickly and I think I changed my mind halfway through and it showed. Claiming my lil ol pond wiggler!