Poena Studios

Recently, I entered an online discord painting competition, the Lantern’s Reign Open. The judging stream goes live tomorrow around 6am my time, and I decided I wanted to try something. I want to compare how I evaluate the piece versus the feedback they provide.

This plan does come with a few flaws. Firstly,  I have the advantage of having the model available to look at in person.  Secondly,  I have the benefit of knowing my thought process and intent. I’m going to attempt to leave those out of my judging criteria when making my a gold/silver/bronze judgment,  but I’ll include them in my notes here.

Why am I doing this? It’s been a looooong 2H 2026, and this sounded fun.  I’m also curious as to how accurate my own criticism will be to the judges’.

I’ll judge my model based off the photos I submitted to the contest. I’ll put my judging hat on with bulleted comments, then add sub-bullets to explain what I had intended to convey. I entered into intermediate, so I’ll judge accordingly.

Hollow

Judging – Thoughts

• Gaps. Good lord, gaps. The the line above the ear and the hip connection especially.  One of the EASIEST ways to make a model look better is to fill gaps properly.
  • This one is due to me just… running out of time.  Work is hectic, and personal life has had some upheaval. I started and finished this on the due date, around 4-5 hours of work start to finish.  Terrible decision, but I really wanted to enter the piece.
• The back of the cloth looks nice, on the initial photo especially. There’s an attempt to make it translucent that could have been pushed more. The shadows look nice, but the yellow feels stark and out of place.
  • My goal had been to make this look sheer, like silk, and in person it is more pronounced on the hips.
  • I had also meant for the yellow to emphasize that she was stepping out of a dark dungeon into a sunny coliseum, but it didn’t translate as well as I had hoped
• The backdrop feels unfinished.
  • It is supposed to look like worn, gray bricks, but sketching out the lines looked weird. I dabbed on various grays with a sponge to try to emulate it, but ultimately I don’t think I achieved my vision.
• The arch looks nicely worn, but it again emphasizes that the yellow on the cloth is out of place.  If there’s strong enough light to affect the cloth, it should also be apparent on the arch. Without it the cloth looks stained.
• There’s a lack of color overall.  There’s the red sleeve, but using red elsewhere would have helped make the piece feel cohesive.
• The purple shading on the model’s left leg (the one near the lantern) is off. It doesn’t look right in the photo where she’s staring forward. It looks more like dirt or bruising than shadow.
  • This is one where I had a tiny mistake that, in trying to fix, made it worse.  Far, far worse.
• The best image is the first photo, which breaks the typical rule of the face being the focal point.  It’s weak from the front – the contrast needed to be built up in the face.  This would have been a good area to add more red via flushed cheeks, to add more color to the eyes (light blue, light green, something like that). Overall depening the shadows and adding some color would have helped immensely.  The face is just… boring at the moment.
• Is the splotch in the sand supposed to be a puddle? Quicksand? It looks sloppy.
  • Another instance of making a mistake worse trying to fix it.  She’s supposed to be stepping onto coliseum sand, entering combat, and none of the coliseum vibe comes through. It seems more like a beach.

Personal judgment: Not placing. There are too many big mistakes: unfilled gaps, messy basing, lack of contrast, and brush stroke errors. There was an idea there but it was not executed correctly.

Hindsight: Definitely shouldn’t have waited until the last minute.  I had my reasons, sure, but the piece suffered because of it.  I didn’t get the coliseum aspect portrayed well (if at all), and the mistakes made could be forgiven in a lower level but not at intermediate. Extra model preparation to make sure gaps were fully filled would have made the model look nicer, and giving myself more time would have given me wiggle room to correct the minor mistakes, which likely would have avoided them becoming huge mistakes.

That being said, all I can do is wait to hear what the judges say themselves and see how my own evaluation lines up to theirs. I’m still happy I entered. While I don’t think I gave the best work I’m capable of,  seeing the model in person still makes me smile.  I had an idea,  and I ran with it while I tried a few new approaches. This was a fun model to work on. I’ll carry forward my critiques and combine it with what the judges say.

Fingers crossed to hear what they say tomorrow!