Want advice / critique on your art?

[Arkillian]

Oh- you're not bad. I'm a -9.25. My vision is pretty screwed. A new pair of glasses for me starts at $1200 cause of the lenses I have to get. That's if I can find frames


It might be the angle. Try drawing above your work, or on and angle.

[rayechu]

I'm baaaaack! With NEW(er) art this time:

visitors can't see pics , please register or login

ATCFillyFluttershyLuckyDay by npaytosh, on Flickr

So I feel much more confident about this one. I've started actually using brushes with the watercolor pencils.
I think the neck is a tad too far back so I will try to be more careful of that in the future. I dislike the BRIGHT blueness and the brown/green grass. I guess I should start looking for more naturey tutorial. It seems like a lot of the books focus on fruits and flowers. I'm also trying to be more aware of the rule of 3rds and use that to my advantage.

Please tell me things I missed/didn't notice. Suggestions for things to try/or avoid. Uh pretty much anything!

[Arkillian]

Well, the biggest thing that hit me wasn't the neck. Horses kind of have necks around the back of the head like that so it wasn't so much of a concern to me. My biggest concern was the angle that she's on. See, I turned her in Photoshop about 14 degrees to the right to get her to a point where she looked like she was following gravity, but her grass line doesn't follow it. To show you what I mean, this is a rotated version of the image


visitors can't see pics , please register or login

On this angle the neck doesn't look bad at all to me. If the grass were to be readjusted to be horizontal to the bottom of the page, then this picture wouldn't have any... What do I call it... It's not so much stress- making things on an obvious angle is a technique to create a sense of unbalance, unease, and surprise to the viewer, making it appear edgier. I don't think this was your intention though so I thought I'd point it out. A good way of stopping this is by sketching out the object first, then flipping it to see if it looks balanced. An un balanced image will look weird flipped. If it's balanced it'll be fine. Another good thing to not is HOW you are drawing when you do art. Ideally art should be mostly upright, but that's not convenient. I use to have the same problem as you- drawing it on an angle till I realised that I drew on my card on an angle rather than looking straight up the card. It's less noticable on A4, but on an ATC which is about 1/8th of the size, it's noticable.


Don't get me wrong though- this is a very sweet picture. I love the blue with the yellow, and you may not like the green but I do. Perhaps my monitor is calibrated differently or something? It doesn't look like a brown green. a bright green would over power the picture too much.


Keep up the great work, and take it one step at a time. With this tilted, I see that Fluttershy's head now comes into the third where it belongs and it looks balanced and aesthetic so you're doing the right thing. You just need to straighten your art out to level with the card (unless the whole picture is on a slant). I wish you luck with your next water colour ^^ You're more tolerant of the medium than I am I'm too heavy handed for it. I like the crudeness of graphite too much

[rayechu]

Ugh! I had to take out all of the background to see it, but you are totally right. That's what I get for not checking my work at the sketch level.  Thank you for taking the time to look at it and to illustrate your point.  I'm a little confused by this line though, "I use to have the same problem as you- drawing it on an angle till I realised that I drew on my card on an angle rather than looking straight up the card."
Would it be possible to clarify that? How do I look straight up the card?

[Scraleos]

I didn't paint this too long ago, but it's my best piece to date. I'm taking an art foundation course in university next year, so any help will be greatly appreciated!

http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2010/119/4/d/Serene_Freya_by_Scraleos.jpg

[Arkillian]

I'm a little confused by this line though, "I use to have the same problem as you- drawing it on an angle till I realised that I drew on my card on an angle rather than looking straight up the card."
Would it be possible to clarify that? How do I look straight up the card?

Sure thing If you sit at the table sideways (I use to sit beside my bed and draw till I got a desk. Those were my cereal box hording days. I didn't have enough paper to draw on so I used old text books and Coco Pops packs ) then the likelyhood is that it's hard to tell if your paper is on an angle cause you're on an angle too. If you sit facing your art work then you're more likely to get it upright. Another good thing to do is to draw a light gravity line. With humans, if half of it's weight is on one side of the line then the other is balanced gravitywise. I'm not familiar with weight distribution of ponies, but a line as a guide is a great help Scanning and flipping the picture will too. It was quite a sevear angle- that's why I noticed. If you were only a little out, I would've had to flip it to know why it was off balance to me.


visitors can't see pics , please register or login



This drawing I drew.... nearly 10 years ago? (Damn... feels like less than that...) the left is a plain scan of the image. Notice how the brick work is fine, but it feels off balance? It's cause I drew facing the left. If you tilted the image around it's fine, but then the background is off. If I hadn't followed the edge of the paper for the background I'd be fine. Since I thought it was all vertical, I assumed it'd be correct. I avoid this now by drawing in gravity lines in all my art.

I didn't paint this too long ago, but it's my best piece to date. I'm taking an art foundation course in university next year, so any help will be greatly appreciated!

http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2010/119/4/d/Serene_Freya_by_Scraleos.jpg

Can I ask if you're replicating this pose here?


visitors can't see pics , please register or login



Also, is the green in the background a tree? A vine? Moss? Something else? I assume this piece of art is done in water colour also? Sorry- I'm just getting a bit of lead up here cause I'm not familiar with the character at all. I thought Serene was the character's first name Lol!

[Scraleos]

Yes, I was attempting to replica that vector, but I changed it a little. Mainly the tail though. I did use water colours, yes. The green is supposed to be those climbing plants draping from... Something...

[Arkillian]

Ah- ok That makes it a little easier for me to comment then 


I think the first thing that needs to be pointed out obout the character is the layers. This character  has HEAVY layering and it can totally throw you off if you don't know what the form looks like under it. See, when you draw, you draw from the basics up to a final.


Ideally you start with a basic bone structure- kinda like where people have stick figures? It's not gestural lines. They only signify length of limb and direction.


visitors can't see pics , please register or login

Like this.




 Then comes the simplified muscle by doing the shapes of the form simplified with spheres, cylinders, cubes, and cones.


visitors can't see pics , please register or login

Like this.


Once you have this structure, then you can place objects on it like the face, hair, ears, breasts, clothing, hats, accessories etc... You do it this way around cause these items come off the body. I'll also help you shape the object better. This character is complex though cause she is a wolf standing on hind legs which isn't something you see normally in nature as wolves aren't built for bipedal walking. With that, you'll have to bear with me cause I'm use to drawing humans. If my friend Nani was here she'd sort you right out cause this is EXACTLY the type of creature she draws all the time


visitors can't see pics , please register or login



OK, I totally fail I'm sure, but you get the picture of what I'm saying, right? That Dragoon clothing she's wearing is HUGE on her. I assume for heavy fabric and cause they're sort of Paladin types right? So they're flashy in style?


Anyways, I say this cause I've noticed that your base doesn't seem to be very strong. I feel a bit like you were going for the final picture straight off the bat without working up to it through the layers (like inception? O.O Art within art!). I don't want to sound mean saying this though- I'm pointing it out cause you look like you're wanting to take art as a serious subject at school, and to do that, you need to do this. That's going to be a really cool thing for you to do this course, and it'll help your art alot. I'm not sure if words from the other side of the world will help more than a course would, but my honest thoughts are that- to solidify your base character without clothes. Get familiar with that form cause it's darn strange, and the clothes look like they have alot of layers of clothing under them. Bulky clothing can seem easy but sometime skin tight clothing is easier cause there's more creases to deal with in loose items T.T


The thing with the vines that I ask though is alot less important than the form thing, but I want to point it out cause you look like you going for something pretty and it was working. It just needs a bit of research. One thing with art is that you can't draw something that you don't understand. That's... a weird thing to say I know so I'll try to explain myself... If you look at something familiar to you, lets say your hand. Look at it now and think about all the details you are looking at. REALLY think about it like you never have before. Look at the shape your hand makes, the textures of the skin, the creases of the knuckles, the dimples the back of your hand makes, freckles and haow frequent or infrequent it is, the colour, are the nails long? Short? Cut in a certain way? Maybe there's a scar? THAT is being familiar with something. To do that, you need referances. In person this is easy cause you can touch and smell the object. See all it's perfections and imperfections.  In photos you have to dream it up a little. I suggest though that since it's just background finding a referance of vines doing stuff you like and eye balling it. Like... vines have a stem that is twig coloured, and the leaves branch off the length. Those leaves are specific shapes and sizes. What are they? They'd go in a direction and maybe have a tendrill curl around something. Are they growing off a wall. a grating, or just dropping to land.


I hope I make sense and haven't offended or something. You've done a good job with eyeballing the colour match. The colours look close to the referance. Some would be hard to make without washing out like the cravat so it mustn't have been easy. Keep up the practise with that. I could give you tips on water  colour use but alot of it is trail and error. Just go made and draw heaps. You'll learn FAR more that way than by reading my text walls So yeah- I'll stop there cause I'm actually tired now and need to go to bed after this epic effort crit here *falls over*


<edit> I hope this makes sense. I just realised that I've been tired since before I started this. I hope I didn't ramble off on a tangent </edit>

[Scraleos]

Thank you so much! This helps a lot! I hope you don't mind if I save all of this

[Arkillian]

Go for it. It's there to help you if you want the help

[rayechu]

@Arkillian  haven't really paid attention to how I draw. I guess I will in the future. But for future sketches I know I'll be flipping them!

[Arkillian]

Giving this thread a bump since this forum moves very fast