Agreed.

The rim lighting on the horse is just right! Keep it up.

thanks for the comments guys :)

sorry its been a while, been busy at work!

the rifle here is obviously too bright and the hand is all wrong, just blocked them in for now, tried to tackle the things that were scaring me most - the helmet, rifle and horse head!

im going for a 'long journey home starts here' kinda feel as its based on a real guy who ended up being buried near where i live!

The horses head looks great Mike. I love the helmet too. I think some hard rim lighting (as you have used on the rifle) on that will really punch through. For atmoshphere you could add rain or fog or something of that ilk.

One thing to look out for is the rule of thirds. Make sure that there are three distinctive plaines in the different greys so that the viewer has no problem seeing the fore/mid/background. This will create depth, and in a piece like this depth will be essential for establishing mood and the feeling that he has some way to go on his journey.

Looking forward to seeing more!

There is no way that rifle could look that bright, considering it is in the shadow.

I also noticed how the top of the hat and the mouth of the horse is cropped. This causes some uncomfortable spots and I think you should add more space around them. 

yep just roughyly blocked in for the moment, gonna go round and refine all the dodgy bits at some point.

i literally just finished defining the shape of the rifle before i put the 2nd wip up, Always planned to tone it right down, especially the rim lighting and the firing mechanism, so dont worry :D

as for the planes, am i right in thinking then that i should put something in the distance between the horse and the fires in the background? and make that mid-tone?

im thinking of making the fire area into a pile of ruined cannon or something.

thanks for the comments!

You could try to put in some midground objects if you wanted, but it would still work even if they were just different shades of grey. I am sure you will come up with something! For me though, I will say that I think this piece will be best served by being minimalistic. Keep the objects to a minimum and give the imagination something to work with.

Plenty of mood in this Mike. Looking forward to it!!

been ages since the last wip but let me know what you think of this one!

Ace Mike! I really like the lighting and the atmosphere, it is all very effective. You might want to look at his arm though. At the moment it looks kind of stumpy. I think that is because the wrist is undefined and the hand seems to get lost in his arm.

Try lifting his shoulder a little and use the bounce light in the shadows to subtly define his wrist.

Great work so far!