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Silence
Thank you! And right out of the gate, I'm absolutely not here to judge you as a person. I firmly believe everyone's work has flaws. No one person's work is perfect. That doesn't mean the person is bad. I try my best to make everyone feel comfortable with what I say and I'll do my best for you too. :)
Allright! So, looking over your art first off I'm gonna rave so hard about that spiral for a second. That blending and color is gorgeous. The reason I mention this is because this looks like traditional work. So you're either damn good at replicating traditional in a digital format or you're damn good at scanning and cleaning up traditional works. My advice is always to charge more for traditional art, especially when doing FRC commissions. You're not making the money back to replace your supplies. Alright with that disclaimer out of the way I'm going to run through your pieces in the order you sent!
First off with your lined piece, first off kudos. I know the agony that is drawing guardian heads and yours looks very nice. The apparel looks nice and natural and you've got a good expression. My critiques here would be that for the price you're charging there's not much detail happening. Linework can be hard and time consuming, I absolutely get that. What I'd say here is that there needs to either be a more detailed piece, think more detailed hair strands, individual rose petals, more accent lines on the fin, the fin spikes fully drawn in, tooth detailing, ect) or a more stable and crisp line. Your current pen is pretty textured, and while that works really nicely later on with your coloring styles, it doesn't work so well with just blank lines. It looks a little more like a sketch. You can also try doing a basic single-color fill that's different from the background. That might help it stand out a bit more. I'm going to price you in gems for ease of potential USD conversion! Overall I'd price this around... 100g to 120g. Complexity of character, apparel, expression, pose, ect should all be factors into your price.
For your flatcolor holy hecc I'm still gonna rave about your coloring. Your blending is so smooth. I love the gradients in the mane and feathers. AAAA. Okay okay. So looking at this the biggest thing that jumps out at me here is the background color versus the colors on the dragon. I've had a couple people in this thread fall into the same trap. So because your dragon has purples in it, that blends in with the background. The white border helps but overall the color is still washing out a bit of the saturation. Same with the blue, since purple is made with blue! Because you don't have shading to add another depth of color, you've gotta keep the colors of the character in mind. Hunt for a color that makes the dragon pop off the page a bit! Your anatomy looks really nice, everything is clean, and I love the slight smile. I'd go around 180g to 240g.
Alright the shaded piece. Goodness gracious golly your coloring and shading are going to give me a heart attack in the best possible way. I think the rest of this post is just gonna be me raving about coloring. This is where your textured lines really start to match into your style. It worked nicely with the flat color as well, but because you've got similar texturing going on in your shading here it almost looks painted. The lighting is consistent and the shades you used to color each area work wonderfully. What I'm seeing here is a little bit of the background issue as before but there's actually a really good teaching moment here. You can see how the horns, back spikes, and the crown, and rose just pop right off the background. They look bright, they look saturated, they contrast and stand out. The guardian itself, while having a couple spots that blend in a bit, also stands out nicely in comparison! Where you can really see the blending happening is the mane. It doesn't pop as much and blends in a bit when you're not fully focused on it. In this case if the background had just a tiny bit more green you'd get that oomph to pop everything right off the page. 300g to 450g would be my rough estimate for this one.
Alright the commission shaded spiral that I raved about earlier has returned. Like I said, your coloring and blending are gorgeous. Again the style is super pretty, your lines and shading work fabulously off one another here. What I've noticed is that your value has some really nice dark ranges, but not too many brighter ones. Your highlights are getting washed out in this case, and it gives the piece just a little bit too much flatness. The same thing happens when you don't have enough dark values, which I've bonked people for tons in this thread. Definitely work on layering up just a few more brighter tones and it'll help your value pop! For this one 340g to 480g.
Alright for that fullbody reference. Looking at it... 400g to 500g. Because it is a simpler cell-shaded style you're going to want to charge less than for a painted piece, but still charge for the fact that it is a fullbody! I love the clothing and armor details, they give everything a good amount of life. I especially love the stitching on the boots and the leggings, it makes them look hand made and helps sell that fantasy vibe. What I'd say needs to be worked on a bit here is anatomy and cloth physics. Both of which are absolute beasts but regular practice will help you out a lot here. I like that the cape and the hair are blowing in the same direction, but with wind strong enough to blow hair out that far her cape and the hip cloth would be flowing much father out as well. Wind and air movement is... tricky to say the least. Hard to draw and keep in mind what you can't actually see. I'd recommend hanging a thin sheet, a shirt, a rag, a tissue, a blanket, ect outside and watching how the wind moves them. Sounds silly but you get a good idea for the weight and fold patterns for each piece of fabric!
Alright for that painting we're looking easily around 700g to 900g. Paintings take time and you've got a good understanding of anatomy here that shines through with how you shaded and contoured the face. Again there are some issues with the wind physics in the hair but it does work together cohesively really well. Here I'd say the values got a little too dark, and ended up muddling some of the color. There are a lot of nice strong highlights, and the hair has some nice details!
Overall I'd say you're ready to up and go for commissions. I hope the critique was easier to hear than it was in the past? Like I said, this absolutely isn't directed at you as a person. Feedback is good for growth but it can definitely be hard to hear it sometimes.
Those aren't ashes, they're fireflies