Non-CoH Art, But Looking for Opinions
By
Amerikatt,
Posted on: 2009-09-07 05:38 in Multi-Media Fan Creations
I think that it's a good piece overall, and you get extra points for having a kitty in there. 
The kitchen is a bit smallish, and I'm sure it's just perspective, but the island looks like it could be blocking access to the refrigerator. The fruit bowl also looks like it takes up most of the island.
I like the light cross-hatching and the curtains blowing inward to show a breeze.
Maybe a few more shadows?
Good job, sweetie!
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The wall with the stove looks great. Stove & sink and well done and the curtain look good as well. The opposite wall has a few things which look... off. The wall looks especially thick (but maybe it just is), much thicker than your standard interior wall. The perspective on the side of the clock and top of the trash receptacle look slightly off. I'm not sure I can pinpoint exactly how they'd need to be fixed. The lines on the light swith plate seems a tiny bit off as well.
Actually, looking again... I've got it. The doorway either seems especially low or the center island seems especially high since they're both in roughly the plane. The island is correct compared to the stove/sink but is exceptionally large compared to the doorway. I try to picture myself standing to the left of the island, the top of it about waist level to me (as my own kitchen island is), then turning 180 and walking through the door. I'd smack my face into the lintel
The refridgerator is correct compare to the doorway but, since the doorway looks wrong against the island, it makes the fridge look small as well. Again, if I'm at the blender (at about waist level), my chin is over the top of the fridge.
If I block out the left wall with my hand, it looks damn near perfect. If I block out the rest of the room and just look at the left wall, it's close to perfect (aside from the other minor things). Together, that left wall seems "smaller" than the rest of the room.
I am, of course, being exceptionally critical since I don't think you're just asking to hear how great it looks. Too late to do so now but lowering the island may have fixed the balance enough between the left and right sides that it'd all fit better.
At first glance it looks great. At a closer look, as mentioned, you do start seeing sizing/perspective problems.
Cute kitty... But is it huge or is the garbage pail that tiny? The cats farther away from us than the can but is still about 3/4ths the size of it. Most kitchen garbage cans I have seen are much larger than cats.
Again as mentioned, once you start comparing size of fridge versus other things, it's a midget fridge. The bowl of fruit must be huge to take up almost the entire center island.
All in all, I think each individual piece is great (for a sketch of this type) but combined there are definite sizing problems. Also, it does seem to be a very tiny kitchen overall... Such things exist though so I can't blame that on you.
Thinking about it, it almost seems to me as if you started the sketch on whichever piece and made it too big to make the whole of the rest of the kitchen fit in so, consciously or not, the rest kind of got squeezed in.
Thanks for the critiques!
I do need to mention that the wall thickness and scale of the door, fridge, island, and window were all scales and placements that were pre-spec'ed by the assignment. Don't ask me why the walls are a foot thick and its a 7' door for a 10' ceiling... I also thought it was weird. It was stupid hard to work in that freaking island with how small a room was given...
If I either didn't have to do the island or didn't have to do counters and cabinets, I would have been much happier.
The garbage can also seems a hair off to me, probably because I free-handed it. It IS supposed to be one of the smaller stylin' metallic cylinder ones (its what I have in my kitchen), and is smaller than most kitchen garbage cans.
And I agree... I think there could be more contrast with the shadows. I think I was a little timid with it.
Normal fridges are about 6 feet high (180cm) and the door 7 feet (210cm) which is normal, and looks fine on it's own.
But when i look to the bench area, kitches isle, sink and stove. They almost reach up to half the room. which would mean they're almost 4-4.5 feet high (120-135cm), which is at least a foot too much, and this causes the fridge and door to look really small in the room as whole.
The bits and pieces look awesome, and i love the kitten, but the height on the bench/isle/sink/stove is too far up imo.
I agree, and you're right, the fridge was spec'ed to 6 feet. The island had to be 4', so I kind of went with that for the counters and all, since most kitchen islands I've seen seem to be the same height as the counters. If I had my druthers, I would have had them at 3.5 feet.
i think everyone here has really hit on the issues. I'm not an artist but I work with interior designers and set designers all day and I will say this is better than a lot of them do.
If maybe the door were a bit wider or the island a bit narrower depth wise then it may help out. Right now the island takes up so much space that everything else feels like you worked around that. ( I see now that was pre-specd - odd). Also typical doorways are 7' and ceilings are usually 9'-10' here in TX. Someone mentioned the fridge door looks like it will hit the island. I don't see that, based on the floor tiles it will just clear. I say this is a large New York kitchen.
Over all I think it's great. It is a Gazillion times better than what I could do.
I know I'm not used to 10' ceilings in my apartment! As BW pointed out on my dA, I think the big thing is the cabinets are too large. Not thinking that the ceiling is a couple feet higher than mine at home, I made them go too far up. They throw stuff off for the rest of the scene. I should have thought that part through a little better.
The overall perspective is really good, I can see the grid you used to lay it out. I also like the slight curve you gave to the verticals, very nice job on that. Although, not everything has the same curve, such as the refrigerator being rigid straight against a slightly bending wall, so keep an eye out for that on the next piece you do. Also I really like the curtain, you have a very good grasp of cloth folds and drapery, which is a tough thing to do convincingly.
A few nasty problems that nobody's pointed out yet. You seem to have trouble with circles in perspective. The clock over the door would be a lopsided oval if looked at face-on, like an italic zero. The overhead ceiling lamp would have sharp corners. The bowl of fruit is actually tilting towards the viewer, as is the top of the trash can. I'd suggest spending time drawing pages of circles in various stages of foreshortening (it's boring, I did it more than I would've liked, but it'll help you tons).
My other main suggestion is to work on your rendering. This drawing is like a cross between a technical illustration and a rendering; I actually think it would be stronger without shading. Rendering is an art all its own and requires an intimate knowledge of how light behaves, probably the single most difficult thing an artist must deal with.
Perspective is one of the hardest things there is, I still have problems with it myself and there was an entire class I took in art college that dealt almost exclusively with perspective in all its forms. You've got a good handle on it to start out with, though, so just keep practicing!
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Heya Wassy, nice work overall with a challenging subject.
As for critique most of the perspective issues have been touched on already here so I'll refrain from reiterating those but I would add that the lines of the room appear to be converging too rapidly toward the vanishing point for how short the room is. Also the top line of the lightswitch doesn't match the line of the doorframe (even given how much further down the wall it is).
Overall the biggest thing that stands out to me though is that there does not appear to be a definitive light source. Most of the shadows seem to hint that it's the window but looking at the room you can't really tell what time of day it is by the length or placement of shadows.
Other than that I would say you need to focus more on how circular object look in a 3D space. We are seeing too much of the far side of the light fixture and dials on the stove for example. The clock appears to be a drawing on the wall rather than solid and the fruit bowl, mixing bowl and the top of the coffee maker appear to be leaning in toward the viewer as well.
What is really well done are things like the floor tiles which look great and window sink area with the curtains blowing inward. Also the the door handles and the glass window on the stove are very convincing too and the fruit in the bowl looks edible... hmm now I'm hungry lol. Nice job with this.
Thanks CR! I really agree about the light source because I'm not as happy about the shadowing and know I can do better.
I DO have to disagree about the cabinets/counter top. The entire Leonardo grid was properly plotted out, and the horizon line is placed in the area between the cabinets and the counter top (I'd have to go back to my first sheet to double-check, the inks are a trace since the first drawing was a rainbow of lines of sight and such). So doing the lines of sight back to the vanishing point, there was just that smidge of underside visible.
If the horizon line doesn't seem like its placed right, its just because of the set-up we were given. The actual grid and scale was done right in class. I thought there were a few of the specs that were fruity, but maybe the instructor thought they would be easier to deal with or something. I can only assume there was a method to her madness ^.^
Or maybe it was her way of saying "this is my kitchen, and this is cheaper than commissioning artwork for it" 
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She's a bit out-there... sort of your standard flakey art type (though the first instructor I've had in the program like that). I guess I don't really blame her, she's only up here (central New York State) during the week and on the weekend commutes down to work in a studio in Jersey City. I'd be totally insane driving that every weekend.
Lots of good points have been given here already, Wassy.
To me it looks more like a kitchen in an older home or apartment, which is going to be on the smallish size. The cabinet doors do look too large (wide) and depending on the age of the kitchen, most upper cabinets did not go all the way to the ceiling. If this is supposed to be a 10' kitchen, there would likely be a sizable space above the cabinet.
Love the curtain over the sink, that's a nice detail, as well as the oven mitt hanging from the cabinet knob. (you may want to add shadowing to the backside of the mitt as it currently looks a flat.
As for the problem with the wall clock, remember that most clocks will have a bevel to their base, I think it's the top edge of it that's throwing everyone off.
As for the island, it does look overly large. Does it have to be solid? Generally kitchens that small will not have a permanent island, but a roll-around one, or one with legs. If you could make it one with legs, that might allow you to show more detail behind it, and would decrease it's impact on the room as a whole.
The fridge looks as if it doesn't give a lot of clearance to the base cabinet that is behind it. If it's possible to turn the island into one with legs, you could even move the cat dishes under it and maybe move the fridge out.
And I like the cat, it's size is fine, most of the cats in our family have run 17-22 lbs so I don't think he's overly large.
Overall, I think you did a great job with the limitations of the specs you had to follow.
Wassy, your talents never cease to amaze me! I love your little kitchen! The details are totally your style of art...from the curtains waving in the breeze, to the little cooking mitten hanging on the cabinet knob, to the little kitty posing on the kitchen tile. Even the little dots in the ceiling are totally your style. So, I have no critique to point out because I love your style as it is. You get an A+ from me!
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Originally Posted by Wassy
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Either that is a humongous fruit bowl or a really small island. The island also takes up a lot of space, the scene might be better without it.
I fail hardcore at environments, especially buildings/interiors. I recently finished an extra credit assignment for a drawing class that was a good exercise in doing a room for me.
Extra Cred Kitchen
I'd like lots of critiques to help me get better with them! Sorry for the quality... if a lot of you guys it might be better to have a scanned crop of the piece, I can do that.