Sunset Shellos

Target: Shellos
Medium: Colored Pencils
[On DeviantArt]

Also, I believe this qualifies for the August theme!

 

Claimed! :eyes:

 

West Shellos! I used to much prefer its Eastern cousin, but after using a West Gastrodon in my Platinum Nuzlocke, the little slug has grown on me. You’ve put in a lot of effort here, so I’m going to try to go in a little more on this than I usually would for a Simple ‘mon.

First Impression.
Looking at this, my first thought is just wow. The colors, particularly the vibrant orange and teal in the lefthand side, are stunning, and Shellos really stands out against them without seeming out of place. The composition is a bit busy, but the cool colors and lack of particularly active angles make it all seem very calm and serene. This is a Shellos I can chill on the beach and watch a killer sunset with.

Form.
So, this is indeed West Shellos! It’s a blobby little pink beast, and it’s looking pretty dang good here. It’s smooth and sleek, even including the spikes in the back. I can tell you’ve put some thought into Shellos here, despite its simplicity. While its face is a bit flat on our right side, you’ve gone out of your way to show that its lips and eyes protrude somewhat outward, making its features real-looking instead of painted-on. Furthermore, you’ve shown that the hide on its back overlaps its legs by showing its back overlapping its white neck and eclipsing it completely until you reach its white legs. You’ve also shown that Shellos’s head overlaps its neck as it looks backward. The line on the back of its head is a subtle touch, but it’s very important in showing that Shellos is making an effort to turn its head rather than just having bizarre natural posture. Like I said, Shellos is a blobby Pokemon, but you’ve definitely put effort into making it look three-dimensional and somewhat plausible. I also like how you’ve taken care to show its legs and body through the water. This makes the water look realistic and clear, showing that Shellos doesn’t simply cease to exist where its body meets the water. There are really only a few critiques I could offer on Shellos’s shape here. In this picture, Shellos’s neck is a bit thin compared to its canon art. I would definitely thicken its neck, so that it doesn’t look so skinny in comparison to its body. Like I mentioned, I would make its lips and eyes protrude more, particularly the lips. The face doesn’t look terribly flat now, but bringing out Shellos’s facial features will help it look just a bit more plausible.

Your background is looking really good! The background is mostly vague so most of what it's doing is awesome colors, which I’ll get to later. However, there are some aspects of it that fit here. The major issue I have with your background is that it’s somewhat confusing. On Shellos’s right side, the water is smooth, with only the ripples catching the light. However, on its left, the water suddenly becomes quite choppy and intense, with a much busier and wavier texture. This does produce a good effect in balancing your composition, keeping the entire canvas active. However, it also confuses the viewer. The choppy waters are sudden, confusing, and jarring; adding several of the more jagged ripples to the water on the right side would really serve to mitigate this issue and make sure that the water looks consistent all the way through.

Other than that, I have no complaints about the background. While the sides of the water don’t blend together all that well, both sides look very good. The colorful ripples are nice, indicative of a calm sea twinkling under the colorful light of the sun. The ripples surrounding Shellos and the rock reinforce the mood of gentle calm, and they bend around the figures realistically with some nice wobble that shows the ever-shifting, changeable water as well as the volume of your figures. Speaking of the rocks, those look good, too! They’re a nice little detail to give Shellos something to interact with and break up a background that would otherwise risk being monotonous. The shapes look pretty good, too. They could stand to be a little more organic, with some curves but still maintaining jagged edges like in this picture; however, that’s something to think about for later pieces, in my opinion, as the rocks you have function well enough for this piece as-is. Very good work for the most part - keep an eye on your clarity and you’ll be good as gold.

Color and Value.
I talked pretty much exclusively about the colors in the first impressions section, and there’s a reason for it - there’s not a doubt in my mind that the colors are the strongest part of this piece. You have an incredibly striking blend of warm and cool colors, mixing a highly-saturated orange with a green-tinted, slightly duller blue so that the ripples in the background leap out and look even warmer to the viewer. The sky up above burns bright yellow, which justifies your strong, vibrant highlights. This yellow continues down into the deeper waves, giving them light and ensuring that you’re not just repeating the same orange pattern through your entire background. The transition from orange-and-blue to flecked green to deep blue (above Shellos, to our left, under Shellos) is so seamless that the viewer doesn’t notice it until looking back up at the waves. Overall, the color scheme’s combination of inviting warmth and refreshing coolness really draws the viewer in and provides a relaxing mood, even in the presence of such saturated colors.

Your unity is pretty dang outstanding. Shellos definitely stands out against the gray and blue, and even the orange to a lesser extent. However, the spread of yellow through the rest of your piece combined with Shellos’s yellow pattern brings things together, as does the slight splash of pink in the upper left of the work. However, I think the biggest unifying factor here is the highlights. Both the rocks and Shellos are clearly under bright, yellow-orange light. I will say that compared to Shellos, the highlights on the rock look a bit dull - almost the same value as the unlit rock. Aside from this, however, your highlights are excellent, conveying a clear, consistent, and bright light source that blends Shellos into its environment. The very-bright highlights also convey that Shellos is a slick, slimy little creature that’s still damp with super-shiny ocean water, which is a really nice touch.

My opinion on the shadows are a little more mixed, though definitely still positive. My main concern is that there’s not a lot of shadow. While a slightly lower contrast is good for a calmer composition, the lack of strong shadow on Shellos’s body makes it harder to beat the background out when it comes to getting the viewer’s attention. I personally recommend deepening the shadows you have on Shellos and adding shading to areas such as its neck and bizarre head protrusions. A bit of a blue-green tint would also be helpful for this, contrasting against the bright orange highlights for some nice temperature shading, so that Shellos looks as engulfed in the blue waters as it does in the orange sunlight. The eye highlights also conflict with the light source - the light comes from behind Shellos, but the highlights appear as though Shellos is being lit from an entirely different side. The eye highlights are technically a feature of Shellos’s design, but it looks like its eyes alone are highlighted unusually, which is a bit jarring. Moving them so that they are lit from the same angle would correct this issue quite handily. The shadows on the rock are also a bit inconsistent, with the near rock being shaded darkly where light, from the current angle, should be shining directly on it.

That said, you did some pretty cool stuff with your shadows. Your shading on Shellos is pretty spot-on, though it could stand to be a bit more vibrant. Furthermore, you did a Really Cool Thing: you acknowledged the cast shadows. Shellos’s spikes not only cast shadows on its back, they cast shadows that follow the other spikes. This is a really solid shading technique that shows a good grasp of shadow, light, and form. Overall, your hues and highlights are excellent; you could use just a bit more consistency and boldness on your shadows to keep up with it.

Technique.
Not a whole ton to cover on this end of things. You did an insanely good job with colored pencils. The whole paper is covered, with all of the areas but the intentional white entirely filled with color. Your blending is on point; where your shading is gradated, the gradients are smooth and even. There’s a soft feel to this piece overall, but it’s not so fuzzy that it’s indistinct. All of the objects are well-defined, with the waves blending beautifully altogether. You clearly know your way around a colored pencil, Elrond, and I tip my hat to you.

You’ve also used some outlines here; because there’s more than just a few stray outlines, they blend in nicely as for the most part they’re not overly thick or dark. The head protrusions have some slightly wobbly, thicker outlines; I would make sure to keep areas like that clean. This is, admittedly, a minor nitpick, though, as the rest of your outlines mesh excellently with your piece. Like I said, when it comes to colored pencils, you have your act together.

Conclusion.
Not gonna bother delaying the inevitable conclusion - Shellos is captured. This is the sort of effort I’d expect to see at honest tries for the Medium or even Hard ranks, let alone a Simple sea slug. I love the effort you put into this work; it really shows. Besides adding a bit of temperature shading and clarifying the background, there’s very few major changes that I would recommend for this work. Going forward, I suggest being just a bit bolder with your shading so as to keep up with your strong highlights, keeping an eye on your lighting consistency, and ensuring that you’ve got a clear picture. For now, hang onto your strong colors, mastery of colored pencils, and understanding of form and volume. And enjoy your slug!

Last I checked, Shellos is a Water-type Pokemon, and one of August’s themes was in fact Water-types. Given Shellos’s Simple status, this all means you’ve earned $2,000. Remember to apply the extra bux to your Legend Tracker as well.

 

Thanks! Claiming my $2,000!