Creative Corner

@corvidus
I can see how it can benefit you as well, improvising your analytical skills and whatnot. You still deserve major kudos for providing such detailed and helpful insight though!

I think that the reason I mostly play it safe with attractive subjects is because that's what I find aesthetically pleasing and like looking at. Nothing inspires me more than reading a book where a subject is described as incredibly attractive, and then trying to draw something that would be as pretty as the author described it (I've yet to succeed, but one day I hopefully will haha). It's incredibly shallow but I like it :P That being said, I could probably bear to be more experimental with some of the stuff as you mention even if it isn't what I generally aim for, because I definitely get what you mean by some artists doing it really well.

You're right, I can't blame the washed out look as something intentional and I ought to be braver with the heavy blacks (and honestly brighter light as well). I think my fear of it stems from back in the deviantart days when every tutorial would tell you to not use black/grey saturated shading, and even if it's bad advice (just like telling someone to never use the smudge tool lol) I still took it in. I'll make sure to take note of it in future pieces though, and I probably should do some master studies just to see how other artists do it. At least now that I'm aware of it, photoshop's adjustment layers are only a click away.

Anatomy really is the bane of my existence. I think the main reason for the stiffness is that I rely pretty heavily on photoreferences quite often (all but the first one were drawn copying the pose from a reference, and the first one suffers a bit from the lack of reference lmao) and get more worried about something being correct rather than the flow of the entire pose. The weight bearing limb wasn't something I had thought about, so thank you for bringing it to my attention!

At last, thank you very much for the kind words :) I know that rationally you don't have to settle for a single unique style really (especially as I am a hobbyist with no desire to make my living from art), but it's not always as easy to remember when it seems like the online artworld makes such a big deal of it.

rounding up some responses:

@Eversnow
references are absolutely a lifesaver! i feel like one of the biggest 'secrets' of illustration is that.. EVERYONE uses references. they're super important and useful! hell, some artists even wholesale paste photographs into their art and paint over them to save time (it's called photobashing!). i always spend time before i start a picture looking up good references for it. i wish there wasn't this preconception that it's 'cheating'.. like, nooo, it's so useful! use refs. they're the best <3

@Rivertyl
thank you!! I'm really glad to hear you think so :) looking over all this art has been an absolute treat, really - there's so many talented artists in this community!

@Anchoram
nah, not shallow at all! it's fine to draw what you like - i think a little self-indulgence is great sometimes, and when it's something you're passionate about that really shows through in your art!

oof, i really feel that as someone who spent a lot of their formative art years on deviantArt, haha. i think there's a lot of.. questionable advice on that site :p and the focus on havimg a unique art style, rather than focusing on the basics, is another. but i also think it's great for young artists to be able to reach out and be part of online communities on there! and i know that my younger self would absolutely have rejected more practical art advice in favour of drawing sparkledogs (my old art teacher can attest to that!) so, you know. best i can do now is espouse the values of proper black levels!

if you find poses from photos are often coming out a little stiff, practising 60-second gesture drawings is a really helpful exercise! there's loads of sites out there with images you can use. focus on getting the major curves and movement of the pose out, first. if you're not worrying about neatness or taking your time, it becomes a lot easier to establish the 'flow' of a pose. it's one of my favourite warm-up exercises (and, admittedly, one i need to do more of... i should follow my own advice more often! xP)

whoa thanks so much that was super helpful! And yes i would love some more feedback on the unblurred version :0 [img]https://i.imgur.com/IhJHl5z.png[/img] I've also been struggling a bit with composition of images like the banescale you critiqued witch is what led to it looking quite cramped. I was trying to fit it in a kinda golden ration curve thing I found online because I heard that is was the way to go when trying to direct the eye. Do you have any advise on how to implement that without cramping the image too much?

@Andraya oh, i really love that! all the little details are so nice :) i think the text should be a little darker since it's the focal point of the image? it also looks like you've got a lighting layer above your lineart layer - it's more faded in some places than others (particularly noticeable, again, on the text). if you're using lineart, it should generally sit above all of your other layers so that it stays crisp (this isn't a hard and fast rule, but i think in this case it's making the piece look a little bit messy). i'd maybe duplicate the layer the text is on and set it to multiply to make it a bit more readable (and also, check the spelling - i'm not sure if the typoes are intentional or not!) so, there are kind of two approaches with the golden ratio - you can try and follow the curve, either directly with your subject or just by putting interesting stuff along it - but it's actually usually better to just focus on the rectangles and how they divide up the image. i never start with a composition guide (whether a thirds grid or a golden ratio/fibonnaci spiral), because i always find trying to sketch within a box results in me trying to cramp my subject. instead, i'll sketch on a big canvas, and then superimpose a guide when i go to crop and start working on the final image. i sketched some examples of how i would use the golden ratio as a guide in this case - one with a similar composition to yours, just giving the subject a bit more breathing room, and one that's a little different to show how you can follow the curve instead. [img]https://66.media.tumblr.com/06caa2e922d360d3a3ea2606cba02d11/91c7e170f226fc2d-4a/s1280x1920/98356745f720c986cfad2b05befd90b6a065ff04.png[/img] [img]https://66.media.tumblr.com/08dd74f87117b854cf3e16a6191f08c2/91c7e170f226fc2d-f1/s1280x1920/fcc379fd593e317086e11106cb98ef8e31bf2983.png[/img] composition is a tricky thing because there's no hard and fast rules to it. things like the golden ratio or rule of thirds can be helpful as starting points, for example, but you also have to keep in mind a lot of other things, like negative space (the space around your subject). as is, the crop interrupts the negative space around the neck, which disrupts the silhouette and makes the 'read' of the piece a lot less clear. you [i]usually [/i]want the important part of the subject to be in full view so that the silhouette is complete, because it improves the clarity of the picture a lot. keep this in mind while figuring out your crops!

@corvidus For more people like you. As an artist, I really think that feedback is important for improvement. Perhaps, I'll ask for you critique my art when I finish. Is really nice know that FR have this kind of support too :D

@Kahzu
thank you! :D please feel free, i'd love to look over some of your art!

@corvidus Let me ask your opinion before finish. [img]https://i.ibb.co/X24z6Bm/image.png[/img] I'm creating a Baby Gaoler Adoptable. But I have a little doubt if the wing is correct.

id love some feedback my lastest drawings. i dont do much drawing anymore but id love to improve some more ;P this is from this year [url=https://ibb.co/LNC43yQ][img]https://i.ibb.co/PD5BdyT/20200110-172435.jpg[/img][/url] [url=https://ibb.co/WPTThLd][img]https://i.ibb.co/8dhhCHR/20200112-134503.jpg[/img][/url] @@corvidus

@Kahzu aww, cute! so the faint lineart makes it a little difficult to see what's what, but i'm guessing the wing is the oval shape just to the right of the head? from what i can see it looks fine, but i think the 'spikes' for the wing fingers are a little extreme - i'd shorten them a bit, or blend them into the wing membrane a bit more. i also think a more natural pose would be to have the head tucked under the wing slightly, rather than laying on top of it. but i like it overall! adorable <3 @bamboo1996 i'll preface this with the admission that i don't know much about traditional media, haha. i'm always extremely impressed with people who have the patience to wrangle paints or pencils! the bottom piece especially looks like you put a lot of time into it, and the textures on the armour are really nice! so, to my untrained eye, there's a few places where your colouring is a little bit rough/uneven? i'm noticing it mostly in the dark blue patches on the scarf on top, and on the red banner on the fullbody. large areas of uniform colour are (from my experience) especially hard to get right using traditional media; either burnish your strokes with a blender pencil, or break the areas of colour up with shadows and highlights. if you want to show motion, a light piece of fabric will ripple with air currents, whereas a heavier piece of fabric will sag more under its own weight and move more dependant on momentum. you can look at [url=https://www.freeimageslive.com/galleries/nature/weather/pics/wind_red_flag_1011403.jpg]pictures of flags or banners in the wind[/url] to get an idea of how to show this! i feel like there's a couple other areas, like the fur on the lion pelt, that could really be brought up with some shading to indicate texture a bit more. you can also use hatching/crosshatching with your lineart pen to show shading. at the moment, the lineart is much darker than any of the colours you're using, giving your art a very bold, almost cartoony look. this is fine, as long as it's what you're going for, but make sure it doesn't detract too much from your subject. on the top picture, for example, the dark lineart immediately draws the eye, but it makes the details of the subject (rendered in a much lighter grey) seem kind of washed out. the other thing that's really standing out to me about the fullbody is the wings. the overall pose is really nice - i particularly like the twist on the neck - but the wings seem very two-dimensional, almost like pieces of cardboard. i'd really recommend looking at pictures of bats or birds to get a better idea of the underlying anatomy! a wing is essentially just a specialised arm, with really long fingers that the wing membrane is spread between. it should have a shoulder, an elbow and a wrist. here's a neat comparison showing the similarities in the underlying bone structures (hooray for evolution!): [img]https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Yaser_Saffar_Talori/publication/328511918/figure/fig1/AS:685637791383554@1540480196905/A-Human-hand-B-bird-and-C-bat-forelimb-comparison-Wings-evolved-from-the-same.jpg[/img] but i really like your art overall, especially the dynamic motion and flow of the fullbody! and as i've said, endless respect for anyone with the skills and patience to make coloured pencils look so good, haha. as with anything, the more you practice, the more you'll improve, so just keep at it!

@corvidus Thank you for so much feedback I have already put it to use although still need a lot of practice also pen ran out half way ( shame) [url=https://ibb.co/BqKD0KN][img]https://i.ibb.co/nz82x8C/20200307-170537.jpg[/img][/url] Colour still needs to be done