@
Mintiani
I'll take some time today to create and compile more constructive resources for you :) i may be a few hours but I'll update this post again when I've readied what I'd like to show you.
Edit:
Firstly, let me preface everything I say here with how impressed and proud I am of you for taking the committment to better your skills seriously and for actively striving to improve. You're showing a lot of initiative and drive, which by default means you are going to keep improving and keep getting better and better. You've already come a ways from your first examples, so I hope you continue to see the critiques presented to you as opportunities to improve rather than instances where you have failed. Please take encouragement out of my words here!
For the exercise in line weight specifically, I've a few more thoughts that may venture into more intermediate to advanced topics, so feel free to focus on any areas that are more so in your comfort zone and come back to anything you may not be ready for later. I don't want to overwhelm you! These are just a few of the points I'd like to bring up.
1. Firstly, I want to commend you for keeping your line weight in this area of heavy detail mild and without any stark contrast. Too much variance in weight where there are many aspects for the eye to look at, such as the cluster of chest feathers and the detailing of the head crest, can quickly become overwhelming and tiring to take in. I think you have an appropriate, subtle variance in your line thicknesses in this area that lets the viewer appreciate all of those details comfortably.
Now we're getting into a little bit more subjective territory. Depending on what you might be going for or trying to represent with
depth of field or stylized focal points that disregard depth of field, any of what I say might not be applicable for you. So feel free to only take away what applies to your intent :)
2. The thick and bold line to distinguish the farther wing from the neck and chest does very well to add
interesting contrast between those areas of focus. While the feathers hold a lot of detail to capture attention, the wing line helps to keep the eye moving while not feeling too distracted. This line thickness on an area of the coatl body that is farther away from the viewer may not be ideal, however, if you're attempting to establish depth of field. For more accurate depth of field (creating the illusion that some points of the coatl are closer or farther away), the farther back an element of the image is, the thinner the linework tends to be. This allows the closer points of the image to come into more focus and draw attention to what is usually the primary subject of the picture. Then again, these points typically apply more to subjects that are set within a scene--say, if your coatl here was drawn against a background.
3. Continuing on with the idea of depth of field, the bolder thickness of lines on the closest hindleg nicely separates the limb from the tail, which appropriately has thinner lines. Personally, I would put more thickness on the line shaping her knee (that also intersects with the underbelly line) to help distinguish those elements even further.
4. Additionally, your thinner lines for the back wing feathers continue on with that idea of depth of field. The relative thinness also helps set in that illusion of it being placed farther back. How you've left the feather line trail off and disconnect near the head, whether intentionally or not, is also quite clever in how you're applying the different
types of edges (hard, firm, soft, and lost). Here's a page that explains those types and how they affect your artwork:
https://www.artistsnetwork.com/art-mediums/pastel/pastel-pointers-the-art-of-edges-in-our-paintings/
5. So, with all of these points being mentioned, I'll continue on to a few areas that may be drawing attention in a "bad" way. The hindleg set farther back has lines that are too thick; they're distracting the eye away from areas of more focus like the head, crest, and wings. This leg can do with very thin lines, as it doesn't have as much of a role in conveying the "feeling" of an image. By that I mean the overall body positioning and wings are doing a much more effective job taking and creating space in such a way that captures far more interest than the placement of just one leg.
6. Lastly, the thickness of lines in the tip of the tail may be too bold in a similar way as the further hind leg. At the tip of the tail, the lines converge to being the thickest without there necessarily being a strong indicator for them to draw so much attention. While it can be debatable based on personal stylistic preference, similar to point number two listed above, I feel this point of interest isn't doing your artwork any favors here. It's drawing a lot of attention away from the dragon's head and chest, which is the apparent focal point with how much detail has been drawn in.
In summary for this line weight exercise, some helpful tips might be to look at your drawing from a distance. This could mean zooming out your canvas so that it is the size of your pinkie finger (or smaller, ideally) so that you are not allowed to be caught up in any one area of the drawing so as to be blinded to any errors in other places of the image. While viewing it on such a small scale, any lines that are too thick will draw more attention, and you'll be able to pinpoint places where you may have created any unintended focus. This tactic works well to help you notice other imperfections too, particularly in areas of too much or too little lighting/shading. But that isn't necessarily your focus at the moment, so I wouldn't worry too much about anything other than your lines for this practice.
I'll be making another post with tips on
shading digitally soon, as well as more of an
analysis on wings (forgive me other posters for taking those topics into my own hands as well).
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