Greycat wrote:Oh my god, thanks! You're the person who drew this big-gate-4-shadows-image-thing... (well versed, what can I say!) I wanted to comment on that but I was scared.
Man, don't be scared. All you need to do is look at my other threads in this section of the forums to see that I take criticism from anyone eagerly, I know I'm no Caravaggio and every critique helps.
It's so great! I could never paint such a thing, I don't understand how straight, rigid lines work
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Thanks! I cheated with the straight lines, though, all you have to do is hold shift in either Painter or Photoshop and the program will keep the lines straight. I actually try to do them freehand and mess them up a bit if I use shift, makes it look more natural. I'm personally deeply unsatisfied with my abilities, and I got really depressed about it recently and deleted 4 paintings in progress and curled up in a fetal position and wanted to die. So... Uh... Obviously it helps a lot to hear such praise, deserved or not. Thank you.
I mean, you can critique(!), it's just if you don't want to, then you don't need to feel obliged to... I definitely like when someone points out the flaws I may commit, with the exception when someone says "well, that's just crap go die" becaaaause then it's just unnecessary hate.
I would never say such a thing, especially not to you because it's not even close to accurate. Since you gave me permission, though:
What I adore about your style is how free and expressive the figures are, they just look like they're in motion, and that's something I struggle to accomplish in my own work. There are two things that really take away from that, though. It's clear that you lack confidence in your strokes/lines from the way it takes numerous lines, often going in different directions, to define the curve you were looking for. A bit more planning, more time spent visualizing the curve you want to draw before drawing it would not only add a flourish to your drawing it really needs to suit the subject matter, but also force your brain to think more carefully about the form of the subject. As it is, it's easy to tell that you're approaching each curve as it comes, and it doesn't seem that you have a very clear idea of the overall form of the subject while sketching. I hope this all makes sense. I'm trying to say that you should try lifting your pen up less frequently and draw your lines in one go, without changing your mind and doubling back as is clear in the arms, shirt and the lower right part of the left leg in the first drawing in the OP. The face and the upper left part of the left leg show more condifent strokes, and also a clearer idea of what you wanted to depict, so these parts of the drawing look better than the rest.
The second issue is that the poses look unnatural. The first one really doesn't look like a running figure, and a lot of this has to do with the straightness of the legs, but the biggest issue is that the figure looks off balance. Her center of gravity looks like its leaning to her right quite a bit, and her arms look like they're flailing rather than pumping as a runner's would. The center of gravity of the second figure is also leaning, this time far forward, making the figure look unbalanced. The legs also do not seem to be in a position of supporting her weight. This is also an issue in the third Emi drawing. This one could be fixed by straightening the leg that's meant to be holding her weight (seems to be her right leg) and making the hip it's attached to raised above the leg not bearing the weight.
Finally, her tits are too big to be Emi's
The Hanako image has none of the CoG issues, though, and the pose is great. Your style is great for prone positions like this, and you handled that with much more aplomb than I can manage with prone positions. The big issue with that one is that her left forearm is unnaturally twisted away from her body.
The colors you chose look great. I have no idea what I'm doing with color, so the only criticism I can make there is that her hair seems a little dull. Making the highlights warmer in color and the shadows a bit cooler would go a long way to making it pop more (or rather, reverse that as your shadows are warm in color on the rest of the image). I love the composition of it, as well.
crinklywrap wrote:It does seem like you're holding yourself back a bit in the digitized version overall though, maybe because you're not as comfortable with it? Keep pushing!
Couldn't have said it better myself. Experiment! Throw some weird colors in there, like some green!
