skier

Hey everyone, new thread. I started this for people that want to recieve as much criticism on their work as possible in order to work on their faults and improve themselves as artists.

I will personally take the time to studiously examine your drawing/painting/work of art and then rip it apart telling you exactly where I think you did wrong and how you can fix it. Now i'm still developing my own artistic flair as well ( I am a LONG way from anything resembling an artist) so i'm hoping others will be able to give you honest, harsh critism of your work as well.

Once in a while I will be posting work I've put a lot of effort into in order to get a grasp of what I can improve as well.

WIP (works in progress) are welcome here and will receive the same treatment as the rest as long as you provide updates on your art.

While doodles and sketches will be criticised, they are not really in the spirit of the thread because they may not show what you are capable of and show mistakes made just because of time/laziness.

Alright- it's out there, who wants to be first on the chopping block?

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"Asking a bomb squad if an old bomb is still "real" is not the best thing to do if you want to save it." - denim

FngKestrel

Lol, the sad thing is that posting it on my mom's fridge would just result in more criticism.

Fremen

Critique away.

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skier

Alright. let's start this off. I'm not really how much of this is "artistic impression" but there are several anatomy issues as well as some composition things here.

First off, you see to have combined a 3/4 view with a front view- ending up with something not quite either.

1. The angle of the neck seems to indicate you wanted the torso in more of a profile view with the head turned towards the viewer. The thing is that it is really akward to have the torso 90* from the angle of the head- it's an unnatural movement and it shows. The neck just sorts of trails off the picture, avoiding the torso problem, but ending up with the guy having a super long neck. To solve this problem, make an indication of the far shoulder like I did at #1 and
#3, indicate another shoulder. You end up with your torso in a more natural position relative to the head.

2. You have a 3/4 view of the head on the outline- the jaw, the ear, and how you attached it to the neck- to the right of #2. At #2 itself however you morphed it into a front view of the jaw, resulting in an off center chin. I decided to change the lines into a 3/4 view- which also means the face would be off, as it is in a front view and slants down to the left in an attempt to align the top of the head with the chin at the bottom.

3. Alright this is fairly minor compared to the others but at #4, the top of the ear should be completely covered, it shouldn't "shine" through the hair.

4. The hair. At #5, I placed a dotted line where the top of the head would be minus the hair. You should try to follow the form of the head as much as possible, else you end up with, say, a crease in the hair up a lot higher than where it should be (circled). At #6, the angled line is the angle of your hairline- the straight line should be the overall impression. While the hairline itself is more of a curve, it is easy to let it go crooked if not watching for it.

5. Composition of the piece. You have a lot of empty space over to the right. (#7). It is dead space, and draws the eye away from what should be the best part of your drawing. You could either crop it away, or put something in it's place.

Not sure what the colours are about though very vivid.

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"Asking a bomb squad if an old bomb is still "real" is not the best thing to do if you want to save it." - denim

TexanAvenger

Alright, pulling this one back out after a while. Sorry about not getting the whole thing quite on there. But I'd like to know what you think about this one. I usually just do these in class, but lately people've been asking me for them when I finish. Thus said, I want them to be better... Have your way with it.

skier

I'll do this in 2 sections: the blacks then the reds. If I screw up somewhere someone with more experience with this show me up.

__________________
"Asking a bomb squad if an old bomb is still "real" is not the best thing to do if you want to save it." - denim

skier

I'll do this in 2 sections: the blacks then the reds. If I screw up somewhere someone with more experience with this show me up.

Overall:
You're looking to emphasise two things- flow and form. Flow is how your eye travels over the lines and onto the next ones. Form is found in things like linewidth, direction, and terminations. As you've probably found out, a line that has a single thickness or a purposeful increase/decrease is pleasing to the eye. In the black image, all the #5's are areas where line width changes with no purpose and it detracts from the image. DIrections and termination I will get to in the black image section.

Blacks:

Looks like you started on a red background and filled in with black.

1. There are a few places that where the black is overwhelming- lines jumble and meld together, lines end abruptly and there are isolated pockets of red. These are all circled with a #1 next to em. The largest is the top one, and it has little to none in terms of flow and form. (although the one below it has good potential to become a reverse spiral) It implies a lack of direction- since you were doodling, you took a wrong turn with the pen, and the line you drew didn't really mesh with the rest of the drawing- you turned it back in on itself so that you could restart it along lines that work with the rest of the drawing.

When someone is following it with thier eyes, the line comes to a jarring stop, or gets lost with other melded lines. The viewer gets lost and has to reorient themselves on a new line. Introducing objects like the two checkmarked ones below the top circled #1 box is a good way to maintain that form even when you take a wrong turn.

2. Crappy terminations. All the ended terminations circled with #2's suck. They lead to a dead end, there is nowhere for the eye to follow a new line, or escape out of the drawing (like the double spike leading out the bottom) The #3's are similar to the #2's except they make contact with the flat surface, with is unappealing to see. Imagine the line ending (termination) is like a car- if it hits a dead end, it either has to slow right down or even back up to get out, or it'll crash- (making contact). Tribal designs avoid this problem by throwing in layers- can go under and over lines. With a single layer, you gotta get creative to make it out of tight spots.

3. Line weight- thickness of the lines. Whenever lines meld together, even for a moment, they become a single line. When the line weight to change in this double/single line it looks unappealing- like compression and expansion. I've marked down as #5's where line weight changes

4. bottom right with the lines- I'm not good at this sort of drawing, but that would be my suggestion on how to improve the flow in that area. Get rid of the "hook" that turns into the wall, isolating the red. Get the line weight of the red consistent along with the black all the way up to #5. etc.

Red Section:

1. All the areas circled and marked with a 1 are sections where the red line thickness got a little too wide, but not wide or long enough for a black line, right? So you "cheated" and stuck in a little black to make it look good. I'm not saying it's not acceptable to do so, but minimize the amount of times you need to do so. It looks better than a large red section, but worse than that red section being a proper width.

2. The only curve issue I really saw in the whole piece. You draw a mean curve, Texan.

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"Asking a bomb squad if an old bomb is still "real" is not the best thing to do if you want to save it." - denim

Fremen

Hey, thanks skier, that gives me a a lot to think about and study on.
I've wanted to learn to draw well for a while now, and it doesn't seem like I have much natural talent for it, if any.

Appreciate your help and constructive criticism.

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marsfyre

Crit away! This is one I've revised several times, so it will be interesting to see what crits I get ^__^ (so i can revise it a fourth time of course ;D

TexanAvenger

Thanks a lot skier. I really appreciate the time you took to help. You're a helluva critic.

Actually, I started on a white background and covered it as I went along. Not that it matters, just a point of interest.

skier

Alright, let's work on some anatomy on this picture. Again, if I screw up, someone show me up so i'm not teaching bad stuff.

1. Balance. In real life, to stay upright, a person needs to have balance. If you lean over to the left or right you gotta stick your foot out to catch yourself or you will fall over. This means that in a picture if your lady is leaning out to the left, she better have something keeping her from falling down or the person looking at the picture will get the impression she is falling over. The line with the circled 1 shows you the center of balance in this photo. You should keep in mind that 1/2 the weight should be on one side of this line, and 1/2 on the other. To me it looks like to balance out the forward lean on her torso you've done three things:

A) make her ass huge. Having a dress is an easy way to help draw a character- you can hide hard-to-draw legs, and add material here and there to help with balance. But the most important thing about doing a dress is that there ARE legs underneath that dress. Unless you are doing a victorian era dress that balloons out like crazy, the dress will generally conform to at least one leg- especially in the wind. SInce it just drapes down, any place where it bulges out should mean there is something UNDER the dress that's pushing it outwards. A good excersize to try is draw the legs lightly under the girl even though you are doing a dress, and then erase the legs once you've done the dress.

B) Added material on the left side of the dress as a "prop" for the girl. The problem with this is that the added material is just that, material. It won't hold the girl up, and it is hard to imagine a leg that would bend unnaturally to hold the girl up.

C) Chains at the top of the picture. The problem with adding the chain is that it's only holding up her arm. A single chain would twist the torso if weight was placed on it, and her arm would probably be more behind her than directly in front of her.

The best thing you could do with this picture is have the girl stand upright. The line labelled 2 is the angle of the torso. bring it back up to 90 * or close to it. Another thing that would help is looking at pictures of *mostly* or fully naked people in profile view, so you can see the spinal column is curved, not a straight line. Also in action shots, the torso itself can bend quite a bit and it adds smoothness to the drawing.

2. Arms. The further arm is a fair amount larger than the nearer one. This is lacking proportion- the arms should have roughly equal length, or the farther one should be a little smaller, as it is farther away. (close bojects =bigger, far away=smaller) And second, by the shoulder of the further arm you are missing some muscle. the area marked in blue is where the shoulder should be, and so her black dress thing should be up a little higher. Hands are difficult to learn to draw (took me some time) so it's best to start drawing a few on their own froma tutorial then drawing your own hands.

3. The head! The yellow line is the angle of her head. If you ever wonder if the person you draw looks unnatural, try his/her pose yourself and see how it feels. if you would like her to remain looking up, bring her chin in a bit, then up. You'll have to draw the underside of her chin/jaw however. The yellow circle is the cheekbone. You can tone it downa bit and get the same effect you were going for i believe.

4. Background. I love the upper clouds and moon, but i'm not really sure what the swirly black stuff is. A good background will add a lot to the quality of your drawing.

__________________
"Asking a bomb squad if an old bomb is still "real" is not the best thing to do if you want to save it." - denim

skier

That is interesting TA. How/when do you alternate between the red and black?

__________________
"Asking a bomb squad if an old bomb is still "real" is not the best thing to do if you want to save it." - denim

la petite moi

Oh boy, critique me.
Medium: watercolour pencil.

TexanAvenger

I start off with something like this:

Fill in between the guide lines, and then alternate inward/outward with another color at, usually, the same line thickness intervals. However, it's all judged by eye and I don't pay great attention to the thickness. If I make a mistake on the thickness I just go with it. This one's on notebook paper, but the other one's on drawing paper. It just depends whatever I have at hand when I feel the urge to draw these.

skier

Ok! let's start off with postition of the body as compared to the head. It sort of seems you added on the body almost as an afterthought when finished the head- it's of poorer quality and seems "tacked on" to the peice. The circled "black ring" to me is evidence of that. The girl in the portrait lacks a neck and developed shoulders, and as demonstrated by the blue lines, her head is not centered on the body. The torso also has proportion issues- it is considerably smaller than it should be (compared to the head). There are some problems with the striping on the shirt- stripes change width and curve in directions not consistent with how the body underneath would morph them.

Onto the head. Your style is pretty good, you should keep practicing it and developing it further. Since facial proportions in a more cartoonish style are more at the discretion of the artist, i'll leave that stuff as it is. You have a fair sense of where things should be anyways- eyes at midpoint between chin and top of head. (orange)The distance between mouth and chin seems too small- leaves an impression of an overbite. Lower the chin a bit and it should be fine. For the jawline, make sure both sides are symmetrical in a frontal view- on the right side the angle and sweep of the jaw is sharper/higher than on the left.

You draw very good eyes. I have no complaints- they are the best part of your drawing. The highlights in the eyes indicate a light source up and to the right (yellow sun) but these are the only consistent highlights. Keep in mind a light source (or two) where it casts shadows and highlights. The shine in the hair is caused by the light reflecting off of it and towards the viewer. the areas circled in yellow have no reason to "shine". The shadows you put in under the hair strands (in yellow) are isolated- you have no other shadows to go with them. Combine those shadows with the red areas

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"Asking a bomb squad if an old bomb is still "real" is not the best thing to do if you want to save it." - denim

skier

That's cool man. It's fun just to draw things hmm

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"Asking a bomb squad if an old bomb is still "real" is not the best thing to do if you want to save it." - denim

la petite moi

I just want to defend myself a little bit- the shirt is a turtleneck, hence the black neck. Yeah, no shadowing because it was pretty much my first watercolour pencil drawing. The body is shitty because I was trying to do something with a sketchy angry feel to it...it just turned out crappy and not part of the head, like you said.

Thanks for the critique, now I'm gonna post more!

la petite moi

Yay, another one of nwlinkvxd and I.
Medium: Pencil, Photoshop.

skier

This one is much better. May I have a look at the photo you used for reference as well? (that is if you used a ref.)

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"Asking a bomb squad if an old bomb is still "real" is not the best thing to do if you want to save it." - denim

la petite moi

Sure. Here it is. However, I was thinking- should you really need the photo to critique me?

skier

Nope, don't need the photo. It helps though- I was wondering about nwlinkvxd's ear and now I see the problem. Some other stuff helped as well. Also I wanted to see what you worked with- i'm curious.

edit- didn't mean your materials. I meant how you used the reference photo.

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"Asking a bomb squad if an old bomb is still "real" is not the best thing to do if you want to save it." - denim

la petite moi

What I worked with? Just a sheet of paper, a #2 pencil, and photoshop.

skier

I found the light sources very interesting in this one. first, the Flash from the camera- so basically the viewer is the light source. The lamp in the corner i think has posed some difficulty in identifying highlights. The main thing that was bugging me about this drawing that was revealed by the photo is that I viewed it as you two standing and kissing, rather than laying down. I guess that's how it's meant to be seen, but a few problems developed during that translation.

1. nwlinkvxd's Shirt. It looks as though you are pulling it towards yourself to kiss him- but the shadows and highlights used make it look like it was in the photo- flat and unmoving. This isn't congruent to how it should look if you were standing up. In the #1 circled area this is especially so. There shouldn't be any of that shirt so far in the foreground. It would work if you shaded the shirt to seem in shadow, farther away, or even overlapped it with a portion of your other arm.
2. Light source. Almost all of your drawing is consistent with the light source being just above and to the right of the viewer, with the exception of #2. the darkness there implies that nwlinkvxd's cheekbone is sticking out, causing a cavity in that area. It gives the impression of a "famished" look- *tries to find right words to describe* Like you haven't eaten for weeks and there is no flesh rounding the face out. As for shadows created by the lamp- They should be darker/more prominent at #6, and perhaps less so at #5.
3. nwlinkvxd's head tilt. add more shadow to the blue circled area to give depth to it. As you go furthur down his head to his chin etc. it should get darker as it is getting farther away from the light source as well as being hidden by his shirt. it'll tilt his head towards the viewer more and add shape to his face.
4. Your hand- while similar to the photo, It would be nice to give the hand more definition by adding contrast- in between the knuckles, slow gradient on the right side, highlights on the left. Also, while the hand is a fist, the thumb can't fit underneath it- it needs to come out at an angle. Try making a fist yourself and check it out.
5. nwlinkvxd's ear. the angle is wrong- ideally it should either follow the jawline, or be more upright

Ummm yep. I think that's everything. I like how you had your hair blowing in the wind.

edit: maybe I should've added the picture :P

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"Asking a bomb squad if an old bomb is still "real" is not the best thing to do if you want to save it." - denim