Creative Corner

Hi everyone! Some of you may have popped past SunBurn Lore, Coding, and Graphics, however I'm also looking to learn how to properly draw humans! I have always been a rather good artist when it came to creatures real and fantasy and I've always always wanted to expand out to humans for years now. Well I took a little downtime to do a quick gijinka sketch (my first REAL attempt at a human) and this is what came out: http://imgur.com/xVxB1q2.jpg Apologies for the light strokes! I took 10 minutes to sketch this up using a mechanical pencil. Only my Fae, Whirlpool was used as a reference (yes I do plan to fill in the patterns on the frills and such): [url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=8886] [img]http://flightrising.com/rendern/350/89/8886_350.png[/img] [/url] I hope to turn that page into a complete reference page which I plan to eventually digitize! (EDIT: 1 - 8/14) After taking all of your critiques into account I have completely redone my gijinka! I adore her current look and have started on her fullbody which is in the corner as well~ http://i.imgur.com/72qVs5A.jpg Notable differences would be her facial shape, the similarity between eyes have improved (I took 20 minutes just redrawing that gosh darn right (from our perspective) eye), and the nose has become much more defined and larger. I also managed to define her lips more as well as shade a bit (still new to that)! I am still off about the hair I think so PLEASE give me any examples and tutorials that you think I may need because I'm still confused on how the hair curves with the skull @.@. Please leave me any critiques, helpful anatomy tools, Tumblr blogs to follow, things that help -you- learn and grow, etc. I want to eventually expand into all genders and body types as well as master the full body~ Thank you all so much!

Pinging art people for their possible opinions that I know (I'm sorry if you don't want to be pinged!!)
@AceZaslavsky
@Eren
@CoolPepCat

@Gem4567
The head looks a little flat, so does the nose. The nose in general is just too small. The left eye is a bit too small and it looks like shes squinting.
You did a nice job on the frills though!

@CoolPepCat
It's a flat bust~ I didn't do any shading so it's understandable why it looks flat. Mechanical pencils can't shade after all! The strokes are too harsh and end up ruining the picture rather than accentuating it. I went for a small nose as I felt Faes should have delicate fine features and I thought it fit her face well. The left eye I do agree is too small. I have awful symmetry when it comes to drawing things from my mind and therefore I almost always end up with two slightly differing eyes.
Thank you so much!

@Gem4567
"Too Harsh"
lol don't ask me for critique then, I ain't harsh, I'm honest. You don't need shading for something to not look flat dude
Example
It really looks like her head is caved in and her nose is just a hole in the center of her face, make the nostrils more complete.

@CoolPepCat
Mattie, she meant the mechanical pencil was too harsh to shade with. Which, is true. They smear and tear if you shade with them.
She was happy to have a critique, even if it is harsh. Tough love makes for improvement

@CoolPepCat
I'll go rephrase the sentence! I'm terribly sorry for my grammar mistakes. And I'll keep that in mind! Do you have any nose tutorials or anything? Eyes and noses are my weak spots so I'd love the help! (You know I love your art so help me XD)

@gem4567

As a fellow artist who struggles with humans, I commend you on the effort xD

Here are a few things I would like to point out:

-As mentioned by another user, the eyes are a bit odd. That they aren't equal in size is obvious but the shape is also a bit weird. I can see that you wanted to make it look like her gaze is a bit lazy, elegant, half-lidded in that sort of way, but you can't just put a curve over a normal-shaped eye.
My tip: Don't be afraid to look at references and draw from those, especially for perspectives and other things you're not familiar with drawing

-The hairpiece looks like it's driving into her skull. Again, here I would merely suggest looking at references and then you can see how hair works, and that there isn't such a strong 'valley' as you can see in your drawing

-As for the nose, in order to give the nose the appearance of being very slight, leave off the vertical line. There are a lot of examples out there of faces with very delicate noses (i would suggest looking at pictures of fantastical characters or aliens rather than humans, or even other gijinkas)

-I'm sorry, but the mouth just looks really wrong. It's too high from the chin, but that just means you need to work on facial proportions. the distance from nose to mouth doesn't look bad, but you need to adjust for the rest of the face.

But overall, not bad.

My biggest tip to you: references, references, references. Work on getting proportions down right up until you can do them without looking at references and then you can start to develop your own style.

Keep up the good work!

@CoolPepCat

I'm very surprised at how crude you're being in response to Gemmie, especially when she didn't mean your critique was "harsh". I also do not think that your art provides the example you're desiring.

@Gem4567

The composition of the face is very good! The pencil is very light and hard to see, but I think that you're on the right track. I do not agree with many of the critiques here. For your first try at a human head, it's quite good. I like the way you know exactly the way the hair needs to go.

Since I think you have proportions down, at least in theory, I think the next step is to look at the specific parts of the face (eyes, nose, lips) and figure out how you want them to look. Look to the styles of other artists as well as photo references.

Phobs is one of my favorite artists, and they have a quick thing on facial features here: http://www.deviantart.com/art/face-tutorial-177059553

HAYE GEM! -waves-

As far as the "flat head" comments, as I said, its because your hair doesn't follow the curve of the skull. A common mistake for beginners. Hell I did it myself! This is why its important to sketch out your basic shapes beforehand (No clue if you did).

For the eyes, a little tip I found to draw the GOSH DARN OTHER EYE is to draw stroke after stroke. Draw the upper lid on one, then the upper lid on the other, and so forth. It's pretty tricky! That's why I just cheat and copy paste but you're drawing traditionally so kudos for your patience!

My suggestion is to study up facial proportions. Don't worry about always having to look up references at first. Eventually you'll become used to them and know how to arrange features on the face with no issues. As for your drawing looking "flat", its true that no shading doesn't help that, but its also something that's learned with practice. Sketching the skull structure beforehand gives your drawing a proper anatomy and illusion of dept.

All in all, you have potential sweetie. Don't give up! Keep practicing and use photos as refs!