Artemis wrote:Hey! I like to do portraits. And Illustrations. I usually use photos as a base and work over them. Lots of :tool_pen: and :tool_dropper: and blurs... so...
This introduction, followed by the colorful circular guys is a funny combination. I was like "oookay, so where's the blur and photo-reference and all that?" :D Btw I'm a big fan of the pen-tool myself. It's what I'm using >90% of the time.
The second image (the bridge) is my favorite from this selection. I like the overall stylized look, the subtle use of gradients and the reduced colors. Really neat! The other one with the skyscrapers isn't bad either though I think the window lines stick out too much. There's just so many and maybe they should have been a bit thinner, maybe like the cable ropes on the bridge. Or maybe remove the vertical ones and go with just the horizontal, like in the other image? Also the clouds don't blend in with the rest of the image very well imho.
As for the rest of the works.. I'd say they're too heavily blurred. In the second one the thick black lines clash badly with the blurred colors. Personally, I like to use a different color for my line-work, like some dark orange or brown or some such. Just dark enough to make the line-art be clearly visible but not as "aggressive" as pure black. Another little thing I don't like about blur-filters is that you can't fully "control" them, i.e. the blur goes (obviously) beyond the shape's edges. In some places this might not be desired, e.g. on her neck where the color goes past the outline and onto the background. The only way I can see to avoid this would be to clip the blurred shape.
I've got one question before I'll leave: how "smoothly" can you work on such images? I mean performance-wise... I'm just curious because having only one blurred object can easily kill Inkscape's responsiveness and drawing performance on my system. That's why I add blur (if at all) as the very last step...