Oooh I love critiquing!!!
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First off, overall I love the piece! The horse seems to fit in well with the scene and you did an incredible job on lighting.
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First thoughts:
- horse is a little blurry.
Be sure to find quality/sharp stock images, and work on a large canvas size to try to keep things as crisp as possible. A piece can be the most amazing in every aspect but if it's blurry, unfortunately it can't be appreciated to the fullest.
- stock choice
It works quite well actually! You chose a good horse and background lighting combo, and you sized the horse correcty to fit the background. However, in my personal opinion (everyone's tastes are different!) I would like to have the horse a little larger in the frame.
- horse details
Like gem said, I would definitely bring out the eye! I personally repaint mine, so I add a brown oval and shade it, then a black oval iris, and then a dot for a white highlight. My eye technique is fairly simple lol.
- shadows
I personally like how dark your shadows are, I like to have mine pretty distinct as well, especially on the face. This type of grey is hard because the darker grey patches can be mistaken as shadows/mess up how you want the horse to look. If you look at how the bushes are, theyre more backlit than you made the horse, so I would personally darken the tail/bum a bit in the center to show that. (I only noticed this on the second glance).
- hair
I like how you've done the hair! It looks gorgeous and I love the strands and details. I think the tail looks a bit stiff, but that just comes with practice so I don't think it's much to worry about. I think you used the original stock hair for the mane? That or you did a super realistic job lol. I think adding a little bit of highlights to the ends could've helped, but if it's part of the OG stock then I don't know how you'd go about that.
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Overall this piece is gorgeous and I'm so excited to see more of your art in the future! Welcome back to the art realm!
Snow and Sleet Mix, Clearing at Night
