need more details

Hey, I need a little help ... about what to put on this ship. The decks look very empty, but I don't know if I want to put more people on them ... but if not people, then I don't know what. Been googling pirate ships all week without much idea. Because the thing is that it's not a PIRATE ship persay... kinda just friendly pioneers of space exploration. Like the Lost in Space family. And this girl was born on the airship so she doesn't know what Earth was ever like. ... But I really don't want people to detract from her. Perhaps they all died and she's the last one left and deciding whether or not to visit her parent's home planet. .. which still leaves me with the bare decks problem!!

I don't know. Any ideas? Go wild and don't think about if it fits in with any 'story idea' i may have thought of ... i'm totally open at this point.


(image linked to its page)

Thanks!
--Deanna

an itty bitty teddy bear

Homage to the Mabel series

Maybe a bucket of soapy water and a mop somewhere leaning at the side?
I'd like to point out little flaw though, I'm not sure if you've noticed yet but the poles have the same veins in them as the deck.
For me it creates the illusion that the poles are in fact see-through at the bottom. But maybe you intended this??
If not, you may be able to solve this problem by making the veins run in a vertical direction instead of a horizontal one.

hmm, that's an interesting point .. it was intentional-- the entire ship is 'cut from the same piece of wood', literally, even the figurehead flying mermaid. I love that effect, I've seen it done before with a photo somebody took of a couch and then they interposed a pattern on top of it and the entire form seemed both flat and dimentional, i found it fascinating.

I didn't see it as seethrough however, and I don't like that. I think I'll add a bit of a shadow and highlight to the masts.

Man, you guys did get me thinking though!! I don't know why I couldn't think of these things before... the mop and bucket got me thinking about other things like a map... compass.. telescope... And the bear got me thinking that I could have this girl's history on the boat, something that showed she's been there a while ... namely, books. Lots and lots and lots of books, but no pictures. It's an idea I'd been toying with anyhow because I collect antique books, and there's this one from 1902 which is all about animals, and it's really fascinating, but there are no pictures. Also they sometimes call the animals something different from what we're used to, so I end up having to look it up, and then I'm like, "OH, they were talking about a manatee!" or something. But for a girl who was born on an airship, she could be imagining ANYthing! Perhaps even that all animals look like disfigured humans.

The lighting is... quite odd.

The main problem is that there's a huge amount of ambient light whereas in space that would never happen. I was just about to ask where the sun was (being the main lightsource) when I noticed the moon in the background that has a massively contrasted shadow on the bottom right, throwing consistency out the window. Although it would make more sense visually to reconstruct the lighting to match with a single lightsource (along with some reflected light from the planet) a much easier and more advisable route would be to simply take the shadow off the moon and add some consistent lighting on the ship.

I find the emptiness kinda poignant actually, but that's just me

I have to admit I don't have much interest in lighting right now. Throwing it out the window. I understand that it can make for a more dramatic image, but that is not my purpose here. I mean, obviously I am not going for realism. In space, if you took a photo so close to the earth like this, NO stars would be visible. And doesn't that completely ruin the piece's message?

I am trying to make more of a collage sort of fusion. That's why the entire ship is cut from one piece of wood, and so is her dress although that's harder to notice. The moon is sort of just tacked on there, things are dimensional yet flat. For me it's like a modern folk art style. Not every style of art portrays lighting in a realistic way.. this style reflects my imagination much more than a dramatic, unified piece of (sur)realistic artwork.

I'm only so adamant against this suggestion because somehow adapting this artwork to have unified lighting would TOTALLY change its mood, feeling, style, and in the end what I am trying to portray. Somewhere down the line I may have a subject that requires more of the drama of lighting.

Books, in stacks, first thing I thought when I saw the image was, this person is on her way to a new land, delivering goods, so in respect to historical sailors and whatnot, bring silk, books, and other precious goods they may not have seen or heard of yet! as for the ship, a box sort of structure mid-ship should be sufficient structurely as this would be a means of crew to enter the lower decks for dorms, and other stuff.

Good luck..

Luke.