Critique please

I would carry the taller weeds to the back more, not just up around the tree. It needs some grass debris on the ground but not too much and must be random. What is going onto it? On another note, I'm not a fan of using a shot up sign, it portrays a negative image of people who own guns and hunt. I see them as well when I am hunting or driving by public lands, and it pisses me off.

 

The dirt is nice and your not too far from a good habitat piece. I used to make the same mistakes as you in this piece such as not using enough habitat and just throwing in some tall grass behind where your mount will be. If you are going for a wooded look just simply go out and look at any forest floor and try to replicate that on your base. Mosses, dead leaves, pine cones, small grasses and shrubs make a very nice forest floor base. You don't really want a bare low level habitat base and then go to a tall habitat. You want different levels of shrubs, grasses and driftwood. We always pound it into our heads to look at reference when we are mounting animals but the same goes for habitat as well. grab some reference of the look your going for and go to town!

 

That's definitely looking a lot better! Now my only critique is just that the whole piece is brown, but that also might be because of the lighting. But overall it looks much better, good job! Ill keep an eye out for the finished product on another thread

 

I really like where you went with it. Why two antlers ? Unless you want it to look like someone laid a set of sheds on the ground by a fence post I would only use one. I personally would leave only the one on the left like in your first pic. ( points facing up ) As far as the sign, just wait and see what it all looks like once your deer is on the post. You don't want the sign to over power the deer. You might want to slide the sign around to a slightly different angle or possibly bend it to kill the full on look. Cant wait to see the finished scene.

 

Gotcha. You might flip one over and move it to behind the post so it doesn't look so posed. Just a thought

 

Looking better, be sure not to space your grass stems and grass bunches too evenly; that seems to be a common mistake.

 

I'm not sure where the mount is going, but you might want to put the 'no hunting' sign on the bottom of the base. The way you have it now looks unbalanced. If you put the sign on the base, you can also incorporate the antlers more easily - prop on on the sign and put the other at the base. That makes it appear more purposeful.