Looking at those beautiful ravens, I don't think you need tips on painting birds. You're doing really well Artloader!

I teach 7th graders (13 years old) Beginning Basics using GIMP. The school system finally caught on to the Open Source movement. All the lab computers have Ubuntu as the OS and of course, using GIMP for graphics. There is no money for Windows and Photoshop, where graphic arts is concerned.

I love the raven.

Ditto above comments - love the ravens.

@Dinasset: Thanks and good crit about the details on the Man Wearing Laurels piece - thanks.

@Erisian: Thanks for the kind words Erisian.

@Mahvin: That's a worthwhile occupation my friend. Thanks.

@Sallyanne: Thanks Sallyanne .

@Oldmangrumpy: Thanks Oldmangrumpy .

OK so the illustration I'm working on is going to be a scary Halloween type one. It will involve a spider-mutant and a giant raven. Here is a study of a mouse spider and a design for a spider-mutant - any critiques would be appreciated - thanks.

Here's a study of a rabbit. I'm trying to ween myself off having to do really tight line-work before I paint. Here I just went straight in with blocking in shapes and colours:

The "serious" Spiderman!

That's a pretty hefty rabbit.

Yep - he's a pretty serious character - he goes out at night hunting for fair maidens to take back to his evil cult brothers. I might tweak him a bit and give him half a spider face ... not sure.

Yep he gets through a lot of carrots!

Here's a Gimp piece I submitted to a Halloween themed challenge called Crimson Crucible 6.

The humanoid is called Spiderborn, he is a warrior cultist who's job it is to go out and capture young maidens for ritual sacrifice. He rides around on a giant raven called Ravenred. They are a couple of the baddies in my comic project.

I had to rush it a bit and came nowhere near to winning but enjoyed the experience and learned a few things in the process.

For example I tried tilting the horizon line to add a bit of drama as I've seen some of the pro's do this to great effect. It's a pity I forgot to tilt the clouds as well :/.

Critiques always welcome - thanks .

IMO there is a lack of "texture"
I applied Freaky Details twice to get out some

and here I added more color contrast



still in the same direction of getting more "structure"

@Dinasset: Heheh Freaky Details I love the name of that plugin, and I love the work you've done, thanks!

Trying to get more familiar with back muscles:

The Leonardo of Gimp, you really are an inspiration.

Not quite, but thanks RJKD!

I've been messing about finding a better process for painting a human figure from imagination.

Some studies of kettles for a book cover illustration I'm working on.

I was a bit scared of attempting the dirt texture for kettle number 4 but I used the principle of working from large to small (large simple shapes first and then smaller details on top) and it wasn't too bad.

Any critiques would be most appreciated - thanks .

Here's a digital painting study of a guilty looking puppy dog - critiques always appreciated - thanks .