The Critic by Lionus (2003)

Everyone is a critic. :)

I started out this image 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 such as this the greatest danger is in having the details, or the background, grab the viewers' attention from the story that you are trying to tell. For instance, once I put in the background with its 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 pulled the eye towards it and away from Lionus who was against the light of the window. And little Michael Mouse, a small character, did not have very much visual gravity to him.

To fix this 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 made the picture visually unbalanced. I finally came upon the idea of the taboret with the pallet, jars, and brushes on it that finally 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. :) )

Pencil to PhotoShop rendering.