Twisted House

This piece is very very cool looking! It's very appropriate for the Halloween season as well.

So, what I love about this is that you've taken this house which if straightened out would be symmetrical, and totally broken it down so it's not symmetrical anymore, and you've essentially done that with the whole piece. You have the house centered and the pathway could aaallmost be symmetrical, and the hill and smoke on the right making it darker contrasting with the lighter sky slightly to the left. So you have this theme of almost symmetry going throughout the whole thing, like it's reality with a dark twist because it's not quite right.

Also, I love how you have this line of tall, vertical objects leading your eye across the page. You start from the left with the lampost, and then the little wind thingy (sorry I don't know what it's called), and then the house, and then the chimney, with the smoke finishing it off. So your eye automatically goes to the house, but at the same time there's this diagonal line that balances the entire piece and makes you see everything. Awesome!

What I'd like to see more of though is some depth. You've created a really nice style with the house and the pathway and the houses below. They're detailed and they have awesome lights and darks in them almost in a way so that they kind of wet, like it just rained. But then you're background just sort of dies. The clusters of houses that are even with the bottome of the main house only come alive through the windows you give them. The style completely changes from there and into the rest of the background. It becomes flat because there are no details and only one shade is used, this would totally work if the rest of the piece weren't so detailed, but the two styles don't mix well. I would either lighten up on the detail in the rest of it or increase the detail in the background or at least add some variations of darkness rather than one shade blocking out a shape.

The only other thing I would improve would be the kind of fog you've got going on the houses at the bottom. I really like that you chose to add it in because it lightens up that area so you can see more of the detail you've done and it increases the mystery of the piece. I'd like it better though if it were over the pathway or a little in front of the main house. I think this would add more mystery and intrigue as well as adding some more depth to it, like you have to walk through this mist to get to the house to uncover the big secret. Since the fog is only on the bottom part it looks a little awkward, like the fog is boycotting the foreground.

All in all, I absolutely love this piece. It has so much cool detail, I can't stop looking at the pathway and the cliff and every little sliver of light on something. It gives off such a sense of mystery to it that's so appropriate for the season and all the little windows remind me of eyes that are creeping on that house, and the birds are flying away because something frightening lives there. It just creates a really cool story that the imagination can run wild with. Wonderful job!