Kara - Final Cover Art

The final cover art featuring Kara for Computer Arts Practice. This character was designed as part of my Creative Research module. 

For this cover I wanted to do a close up of the character rather than another full figure shot like the previous cover featuring Siyok. I chose this to go forward with as based on feedback from previous modules I lack texture in my painting. Prior to this I haven't experimented with texture overlays and texture brushes in paintings.

Looking back on the painting now I feel that there are a number of issues. Firstly the form and anatomy of the character are off in places. The armour on the front of the character looks a bit thick, giving her look a bit front heavy. I think this might be because of the position of the arm which is covering the armour on the back of the character. The other main issue is the way the character's hair line down her neck falls. The hair line should come from higher up behing the ear...... which i now think is a bit small? With this painting I found it very difficult so get a good sense of texture on the character's skin and hair.
On the plus side I think that the textures on the armour and the planet behind the character and the armoured parts of the character came out alright though I feel the armour could have done with stronger highlights to give the material more of a sheen.
I think the overall ambience and mood of the painting works well as everything ties in together. I think the painting is cohesive from the background to the main character.
Like the issue with the previous painting of the back of Siyok's head being too tall, I feel that that these are issues I would have noticed and fixed if I had been working traditionally as I have done a lot of life drawing. I still feel there is a bit of a disconnect when working digitally, this may be due to lack of experience working digitally and I think this is an issue I want to overcome.
As with the other painting I am fairly content with the final outcome of the image. Though it has it's issue I feel that it has good moments and works well as an illustrative comic cover. I think the planet and background behind the character works well and I learned a lot of new techniques and functions in Photoshop while doing this.