Man this is rad, really really well done. That's the most important part of anything I'm going to type up here - tell her she's awesome and keep up the beautiful work, tell yourself you're an absolute sweetheart for bragging up her art. Then, if she wants feedback, is here:
In terms of general feedback, I honestly don't have much, because this a damned nice piece. The only things are really on the composition - I think the color choice of the orange stained glass is an great addition to the palette, and it makes for beautiful rimlighting, but because it's off to the side of the piece and such a big block of contrasting color field, your eye keeps being drawn to it and away from the action. It's being countered pretty well by all the detail and face-glows of Anub'arak, but right now they're fighting for your attention when Anu'barak and his battle should should be the undisputed king. The only other thing is just to keep improving how she uses detail and light to create focal points, knock back the background while still maintaining her material definitions, etc. (she's already doing a lot of this, and it looks like she's been consciously improving on this , I just wanted to say keep it up :)). This'll help her composition as well, so, double-win (and I think her Ghost Samurai does a great job in this department). Laurel Austin is probably my favorite Blizzard artist for guiding your eye around a painting with composition and detail placement, she might be a good reference.
In more practical terms, if she wants to be doing card art illustrations, here's some stuff she could work on in that specific context:
Both in this piece and her gallery overall, her style is really detailed, more akin to key art or a promotional piece. When you scale Anub'arak here down all teeny-beany the silhouettes stay clear (which is really good! a lot of people struggle to even get that far), but internal elements of each figure start to merge a bit. A lot of that's just the nature of the piece - this a big sweeping painting rather than a single minion purpose-painted to a card frame, but they're two different ballgames and will usually need to be approached differently. But zooming a painting in on just the monster bearing down, or the warrior taking a stand, with the hints of the other for story, will really help her to fine-tune her composition and focal point for card art specifically (and makes for a much smaller piece to paint if she wants to practice ^^). If she hasn't tried dropping any of her pieces in a minion or spell frame, that's a remarkably helpful way of getting context.
Pulling pieces from her gallery, I think something with about the level of detail of her Cinderstorm Golem, combined with all the awesome mood, value range and bounce lighting, and chunky material definition of this piece, could be a really great place to be. Hopefully that's kind of a helpful pair of references for her.
Also, just since her work is so full of detail and demons, throwing a really Hearthstoney piece or two in there will probably really help her. Not that she should feel like she has to paint Murlocs to apply - we give different pieces to Matt Dixon than we do to Nicola Saviori because they're great at different things, but showing that you can already do the thing will really really help in an initial application (shameless fan-art flattery has gotten me a lot of jobs:P).
Finally, I love her greyscale studies. And I tried to pick a favorite piece in her gallery, but I got stuck between King in Yellow, Demon Priest, and High Priest, so, just tell her great work.<3
Hadidjah
Man this is rad, really really well done. That's the most important part of anything I'm going to type up here - tell her she's awesome and keep up the beautiful work, tell yourself you're an absolute sweetheart for bragging up her art. Then, if she wants feedback, is here:
In terms of general feedback, I honestly don't have much, because this a damned nice piece. The only things are really on the composition - I think the color choice of the orange stained glass is an great addition to the palette, and it makes for beautiful rimlighting, but because it's off to the side of the piece and such a big block of contrasting color field, your eye keeps being drawn to it and away from the action. It's being countered pretty well by all the detail and face-glows of Anub'arak, but right now they're fighting for your attention when Anu'barak and his battle should should be the undisputed king. The only other thing is just to keep improving how she uses detail and light to create focal points, knock back the background while still maintaining her material definitions, etc. (she's already doing a lot of this, and it looks like she's been consciously improving on this , I just wanted to say keep it up :)). This'll help her composition as well, so, double-win (and I think her Ghost Samurai does a great job in this department). Laurel Austin is probably my favorite Blizzard artist for guiding your eye around a painting with composition and detail placement, she might be a good reference.
In more practical terms, if she wants to be doing card art illustrations, here's some stuff she could work on in that specific context:
Both in this piece and her gallery overall, her style is really detailed, more akin to key art or a promotional piece. When you scale Anub'arak here down all teeny-beany the silhouettes stay clear (which is really good! a lot of people struggle to even get that far), but internal elements of each figure start to merge a bit. A lot of that's just the nature of the piece - this a big sweeping painting rather than a single minion purpose-painted to a card frame, but they're two different ballgames and will usually need to be approached differently. But zooming a painting in on just the monster bearing down, or the warrior taking a stand, with the hints of the other for story, will really help her to fine-tune her composition and focal point for card art specifically (and makes for a much smaller piece to paint if she wants to practice ^^). If she hasn't tried dropping any of her pieces in a minion or spell frame, that's a remarkably helpful way of getting context.
Pulling pieces from her gallery, I think something with about the level of detail of her Cinderstorm Golem, combined with all the awesome mood, value range and bounce lighting, and chunky material definition of this piece, could be a really great place to be. Hopefully that's kind of a helpful pair of references for her.
Also, just since her work is so full of detail and demons, throwing a really Hearthstoney piece or two in there will probably really help her. Not that she should feel like she has to paint Murlocs to apply - we give different pieces to Matt Dixon than we do to Nicola Saviori because they're great at different things, but showing that you can already do the thing will really really help in an initial application (shameless fan-art flattery has gotten me a lot of jobs:P).
Finally, I love her greyscale studies. And I tried to pick a favorite piece in her gallery, but I got stuck between King in Yellow, Demon Priest, and High Priest, so, just tell her great work.<3
Hadidjah
I love how supportive y'all are of things like this. You're awesome. Good Trogg.<3