Creative Corner

@Andraya
my first impressions for the mistjam banner (go wind! it was my original flight <3) is that you've gone way overboard with the fuzzy bloom lighting effects. i can see that you were trying to go for motes caught in a beam of light, implying a dusty ambience - but the effect is a little overpowering, and really just doesn't work in this close of a crop. the beam-of-light effect is usually best used in a wider, background shot, when you can see the light, its source, and the darkness around it; this helps to contextualise it, but in a close-up still life like this the field of view is too narrow for the effect to really make sense. the text is the focal point of the image (the things a viewer will look at first in an image are faces and text, because they make the pattern recognition parts of the brain light up), so that at least needs to stand out better from its surroundings, but at the moment it's very washed out from the lighting. turn off your bloom layers, get back to your base colours, and take a step back.

i think the still life composition you've used is nice overall! the clutter's nicely arranged, although you seem a little unsure about the perspective on the pocketwatch and the inkwell in the front left corner. the text could be slightly more central, but i think the negative space leads the eye there well enough. honestly, i'm really curious as to what this one looks like without all the fuzzy bloom. it looks like you've got some really nice rendering in there. if you want, i could give that some more detailed critique if you reposted it without the lighting, but my initial impressions is that you should let the art stand on its own, because i think it's definitely strong enough on a technical level.

onto the banescale - i love the colour palette you chose, but the crop is a little claustrophobic - it took me a while to realise i was looking at its underbelly rather than its back. don't be afraid to give your subjects some breathing room, or to extend your canvas if you need more room to draw on either side. i'd also like to see you commit to your light source a bit more. the lower wing-arm is rendered really nicely - part of it is cast in shadow either side, and the gold highlight on the band perfectly 'sells' where the light is coming from. but i think on some of the other areas of the piece, the lighting is much vaguer. try and be a bit more conscious about where your light sources are, and remember that it's okay to commit to having an area in shadow if needed.

as for tips on drawing humans: copy and study from photos, or attend life drawing classes if you're lucky enough to have one nearby. humans are tricky because we're very familiar with them as subject matter, so it's more obvious when a feature or a proportion is off. the only solution, unfortunately, is lots and lots of practice. (i was in, honestly, a very similar boat - i only ever wanted to draw creatures or anthros, and it's only recently i've started putting the practice in. my figures are still very rough, but... i'm getting there! and if i can do it, anyone can lol)

hope this all helps!

Thank you for all the suggestions! I gave it a quick once over already and I'm planning on reading it again once I get home (navigating mobile is the bane of my existence) but it's super helpful already! Proportions are definitely something I've struggled with on people (and often times animals too, to be honest) and looking up a reference always felt kinda like giving up. But according to my friends that's apparently just a me thing, so... :P there's no real reason to continue avoiding them, I suppose.

People are just so dang difficult to draw ;;

Anyways-- thanks again for such an in depth response! :D

@Match
thank you! <3
i really like the staging and composition in some of the pieces you've posted, but i think all of them suffer a little from inconsistent light source/shading. taking the guardian at the top as an example - the neckpiece (which is beautifully rendered, by the way!) indicates a light source coming from the top right, slightly behind the subject. that's fine - but the shadows on the face contradict that. if the neck and the closer part of the neckpiece are in shadow, then so should the guardian's snout - but it's lit up. don't be tempted to hand-wave lighting to areas that should be in shadow - it's very important to commit to that to properly sell the lighting. (also, as a very minor nitpick - gold is a highly reflective surface, so the candles should be casting a much sharper secondary highlight on it! use a softer highlight for materials with more surface scattering, like rough cloth)

the third piece down has a similar issue with inconsistent shadows. i love the concept so much, but the execution just falls slightly flat. the nearest leg sticks out to me in particular - i think the light from the orbs is visible too far 'around' the leg, when more of it should be in shadow. the forearms are another example - they should be almost entirely in shadow. remember that light from a close source moves radially, and always in straight line; there's no way for the light from the orb to 'get to' the areas of the forearm that we see.

shading is really tricky because you need to be very disciplined in thinking about your subject matter in 3D. try to pay more attention to your forms while you're sketching, building your subjects out of simple 3D shapes like spheres, cylinders etc. and make sure to be consistent with your light sources, because this is what really 'sells' your subjects as three-dimensional objects, and not flat images.

hope that helps! i really love the atmosphere and stylisation you've got going on in your art, and i feel like you're at a point where thinking a little bit more carefully about your forms will really start to bring stuff together.

This was incredibly helpful, thank you so much!! I definitely struggle with consistent lighting. I've been meaning to do lighting studies and this is the kick in the butt I needed! And I'll def try using simple 3D forms to help inform shading choices, that's a great tip.

thanks again, I really appreciate the feedback <3

@Rivertyl
(cracks knuckles)

so i'm gonna start with the pic of trico, since i love it a lot and it gives me a lot to talk about. first things first: if you're drawing architectural elements, make sure your lines are straight. use a ruler, a perspective grid, whatever tools your program has to make straight lines (photoshop lets you do this by holding down shift iirc). the composition in the background is lovely, but the wobbly, not-parallel lines immediately jump out at me, and unfortunately they really take a lot away from the background. i honestly thing just fixing the lines up to make the architectural elements more crisp would already take the piece way up.

be careful not to over-render your background elements, either! the shading/definition on some of the buildings is very sketchy looking. sketchy brush-strokes imply texture, particularly organic texture, and architectural elements need to be crisp. watch your edges, as well; even for elements that are far away, the edge between a building and the sky should be very crisp. even if the building itself is only one colour, a sharp silhouette will look much neater and tell the audience more about what they're looking at.

the subject itself i don't have as much to say about, because i think trico is wonderfully rendered - the edge highlights especially really sell the piece, and keeping the face in the sharpest detail while allowing the fur to be a bit looser is a smart move. if anything, i'd say make your highlights a little sharper. the more illuminated a surface is, the more definition it has and the more information we can glean from it. for very sharp rim lighting like in the picture, you can pick out individual strands of fur to really drive home the texture (don't forget the whiskers should be catching the light as well!). even having just a small amount of a subject be very closely rendered really informs the look and feel of the rest of it, because our brains are great at taking those little bits of information and assuming they apply to all of the rest of the image.

other minor nitpicks - there's a few minor lighting inconsistencies. i think the right ear (our left) is more brightly lit than it should be, and the shadows around the feet seem a little uncertain. i also feel like trico should be casting more of a shadow on the plinth than it currently is. at the moment your shadow midtones on the plinth are still pretty bright, which makes it hard to see where the cast shadow is falling. and i think the shadows overall on trico are just a teensy bit too dark. as a rule of thumb, things lose contrast the further away they are from the 'camera'; save the darkest shadows for the things closest to the viewer. at the moment, the fact that the shadows on trico are the same shade as the shadows on the nearest buildings implies trico is in the same 'plane' as them; bringing trico's shadows up just a teensy bit would help sell the atmospheric perspective in the piece a lot more, imo!

i don't have as much to say about the bust because there's not as much there. i like the scale detailing a lot, but i'd say to still watch your edges - the definition around (eg) the horns could be a bit sharper, and the neck scales and underbelly look a teensy bit messy. i think the rim light from below could be a bit bolder, as well - the subject blends into the background a little at the moment, and i think it could do with something more to define it. the piece is pretty low-contrast overall, which is fine for ambient or moody lighting, but make sure you've still got enough visual information to help the viewer pick out the subject properly.

in terms of making your colour palettes pop, my biggest advice is honestly learning how to use photoshop adjustment layers. once i've finished painting a piece, i usually spend at least 15-20 minutes adjusting the contrast, the colour balance, the value curves; adding some extra effects layers to places i think need a bit more of a bloom or a deeper shadow; checking it on my other monitor to see if the colours still look good... post-processing is a super important skill to learn, and can really make a piece pop! i honestly think as is, your colour choices are fine, and both of the pieces have a really nice atmosphere to them; if you feel like there's something missing, play around with a colour balance layer in photoshop for a bit, because often just juicing the shadows a bit or tweaking the highlights can be the thing you were looking for.

this got a little long, but hope it was helpful! thank you for showing me your art and letting me pick through it, haha. i'd love to see you continue with this painting style!

@parasites
so i flipped to the end to look at the latest pictures first. i really like your composition and framing, but your line quality is quite rough, and your poses are a bit stiff. then i went to have a look at the first few pages, and saw that you draw with a mouse. if that's still the case, i'd really really recommend you picking up a drawing tablet if you're serious about working on your art!

i think a tablet would really help with your gestures. when you're sketching out a pose, it's best practice to start with a line of action that establishes the general motion of the piece. natural, loose curves like this are much harder with a mouse! it'll help with your line quality as well (it's much easier to do lineart with a tablet), and in the long term it'll greatly reduce strain on your hand if you're drawing a lot - small, delicate mouse movements required for art can cause some serious wrist damage over time. if you're on a tight budget, go for second-hand, and look for a brand like huion - the quality's good, but they're not as expensive as wacom tablets.

i hope this helps! in terms of critiques, it's all mostly stuff i think you'd improve if you had a tablet - more natural poses with a stronger line of action, and smoother lines.

@corvidus
thank you for the critique!! i am planning on getting a drawing tablet in the future once i have enough money on my hands. i can definitely see where you're getting at, and i'll make sure to improve those things once i do get my hands on one

but again, thanks for the feedback!! i found it helpful :D

@Corvidus You seem to give really good and thoughtful critique, and you certainly have the skillset to back up your words. I'm in awe at your storytelling skills! If you have the time I'd love some feedback on my stuff! I feel as if I've reached a point where I at least get some satisfaction from my finished pieces, but I'm also just not quite where I want to be and I have trouble identifying what I should do. Part of it is probably because I don't know how I want to draw (one day it's anime, the next it's rennaissance portraits) so rather than specialising I'm all over the place with trying out new things. Here are some recent drawings: [img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/345873358824538119/684846861693222958/starburst_prince.png[/img] [img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/345873358824538119/684847991093198867/sword_carrier.png[/img] [img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/345873358824538119/684847951209955355/rubeus_try.png[/img] [img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/345873358824538119/684848119652941919/Valemon.png[/img] [img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/345873358824538119/684848483114418246/Katana.png[/img]

@Anchoram thank you for saying so! i'm finding this a really useful exercise honestly, so i'm glad other people seem to be finding it helpful as well. first off, i'd say that bouncing around with a bunch of different styles is great, and honestly it's fine to just lean into it. if anything, i'd say you could go a bit more extreme with it. you're using different rendering styles, but largely the features and proportions are pretty consistent across the board. if you're happy to experiment, then go wild with it! look at different, bolder styles. maybe try something more angular, or with a greater focus on shapes or more extreme anatomy. make a twitter or tumblr or pinterest and find a bunch of different artists with diverse styles and soak it all in. all of the examples are conventionally attractive, thin subjects, and the styles are generally clean and aesthetically pleasing. don't be afraid to get weird or ugly with it! gorillaz is one of my favourite examples of an 'ugly' art style that i personally find really pleasing - those little imperfections bring so much character. even if it's not something you particularly find appealing, analyzing it and picking it apart can still be helpful; the broader the styles that you immerse yourself in, the better. ok, on to something that's actually critique! i'll start with the painted examples because i usually have the most to say about painting. i think your shadows could do with being a little darker to help ground your pieces. what really makes renaissance paintings 'glow', to me, is the fact that they all go down to black or near-black shadows. the darkest shadow on that first picture you posted is kind of that mid-purple, and even the black of the sword handle is fairly grey. it's ok to go to pure black! in fact, if you don't, you run the risk of making the rest of your colours look washed out. here's a quick example using an adjustment layer to try and darken the shadows (it's sloppy so there's a few places, like the collar, that also got a saturation boost, but largely speaking the darkest areas are the only places affected): [img]https://66.media.tumblr.com/f6e159b4196c0c256543a19654d24f02/91c7e170f226fc2d-4c/s1280x1920/dae646a2ece0f0460f91ca81b0b629b40cc340f6.png[/img] unless you're specifically going for a washed-out or pastel piece, strong blacks are really useful to ground an image and make the rest of the colours look brighter. (this is, for example, why comic books use so much black ink - it makes the rest of the image seem much more vibrant!) all three of your painted pieces have this same problem, and it makes them all look a little more faded than they could otherwise. your anatomy is solid overall, although you seem to struggle a little with hips and legs - i'd recommend taking another look at the skeletal structure from the pelvis down, because the place where the legs attach and bend from (top of the femur) can be a little deceptive. the other thing is, all your figures seem a little stiff - obviously with the top picture, that's part of the look, but for the others it's good to establish a strong line of action as the first step when you're sketching a pose! take note of where your character's weight is distributed, as well; weight-bearing limbs tend to be straighter because it's less strain, and it's good to keep an eye on your character's center of gravity to make sure they don't topple over. overall, i really like your art! even though you're experimenting with different styles, i think they all definitely have a similar identity that's showing through. i think the top piece is technically speaking your strongest, but they all have a lot of merit - i particularly like the colour scheme and graphical elements for the one of lio, at the bottom! i'd honestly say just keep experimenting, because ultimately it'll really help to diversity your style and give you a strong technical foundation for whatever style you end up landing on - if you even pick one, that is, because a lot of artists stick with a diverse portfolio of styles. flexibility is always a good thing! hope this helps o/

@corvidus

Holy hell, that was extremely helpful. I wholly appreciate the work you put into going in-depth with critique—not just a couple people, but everyone on this thread! I applaud you for your time commitment. It’s not the fact that you just nitpick, but you explain why it should be the way it is, making your explanations easy to understand.