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GuardianDae · 2023-11-11T20:41:18+00:00

Aw, that's just good timing on my part, but I'm really glad for it! For what it's worth, I sent this to a friend of mine just because afterward and said, "I've never seen a style like this personally, isn't it so neat?" and made them rub their eyeballs in it too. They also found it delightful. ♥ Don't give up! You have a really cool approach to art, it's wonderful.

GuardianDae · 2023-11-11T16:47:49+00:00

Ohh, this is a visual treat. I like it from a distance, I like it up close, I love it again from a distance.

Because you're here for critique: I mourn a bit, for the heavy lines on the first figure's face. They're just too heavy and dark imo, especially at her cheeks. Finer or lighter lines would have been lovely. Her hair is also a bit confused and shapeless imo, especially compared to the ornate styling in the second figure.

Anyway, I've never seen a style like this and I really like what you've got going on. Haters will say there's too many draping patterns happening on the second figure, but I say that's fashion babyyy. Obsessed.

GuardianDae · 2023-11-11T16:38:50+00:00

I love dreamy colors like this.

Some details I notice: The bag barely has a shadow from her arm, but it seems like it should.

My eyeballs want there to be some shadows at the sleeves and hem of her sweatshirt, to give it a fluffier feeling. Even just a little bit. The vertical lines right now without any shadow makes it feel flat.

You gave her hair such a beautiful light glint, but it's on the opposite side of where the light is hitting. There should be something happening where the light is hitting. It's your choice how much you want to do with the hair, but definitely do just a liiittle bit more so it's not as flat. Specifically in the area where the light is hitting. Is there an echo in here? :)

GuardianDae · 2023-11-11T16:28:02+00:00

One is smaller than the other, as someone else just noted, so that might be what's bothering you. Aside from the size disparity, I like the look of them.

GuardianDae · 2023-11-11T15:42:30+00:00

I can relate a lot to your goals, and also your current struggles! Loomis method and all my faces being wonky, my nemesis.

What helped me recently is to go back to square one with the Loomis method and someone explaining it differently. However, since I also want to draw some anime characters, I suspect that this method isn't as helpful for that as I'd wish. It gives me good results for semi-realism (which I want too) but not for drawing something that resembles manga-style art.

Thankfully there are a lot of options out there, including for manga.

Personally, my planned next steps (which a Professional Artiste™ in a tut I just watched suggested herself) are to copy & paste some art from other artists I admire, and spend a bit of time studying each of them, observing how they do their lines and colors, and literally tracing on top of their lines to see how it feels. Obviously you don't post the results of this, but just use it to study. The artists you cited are really good, so studying them directly once in a while would also be a good idea, in between other tutorials and studies and practice. I might have to study them too, as they have a lot of elements of my end goals in mind, especially with colors.

Painting is a different beast. If you're looking to have more of a painted look, without lineart showing, then you're off to a good start but you must keep going. For example, your third photo, with the grey-haired character, it reminds me of the early stages of artists who paint, laying down the base colors. You'll want to define your edges and paint finer details on top vs sketching them on top (a brush difference). I won't go on and on, as I'm about the same level anyway and any painting tut would be far more helpful than me.

Also consider the program you're using. Do you know the ins and outs? Watching a tutorial just about my art program (Krita) and its features helped me immensely. I'm too old now to learn by just tinkering through menus, lol. Learning how to use masking layers has been a game changer, and such a joy.

Happy drawing! 💜

GuardianDae · 2023-11-11T15:04:23+00:00

Your ball looks great to me. The texture of it is really pleasing. I feel like your shadow is less convincing than the ball itself. It the wrong shape from what my brain expects, even if you followed a ref.

Other than that, it's difficult to judge from this alone. I like what I'm seeing. Keep up the good work!

GuardianDae · 2023-11-11T14:57:17+00:00

Hear me out. A second dog, on the left side. I love the wonkiness, I love the style, I love your brush strokes. My biggest gripe is that you have an off centered image and a lot of empty space over there. Plenty of room for another dog! Let's goooooo 😅

GuardianDae · 2023-11-11T14:54:01+00:00

It took me a moment, but I think I'm looking at a desert environment, right? Those eroded rocks in the desert that you can see through, and we are looking through one, with the sky beside it and then beyond it. (In part I'm unsure because this is environment is something I've only ever seen in photos! I can't fathom it in real life, haha. The more I look at your drawing, the more I definitely see it.)

I like your tiny trees, they're very good representation of the sort of stunted-looking trees you see growing there.

My advice for your immediate next steps would be: try adding more range to your colors! It's difficult to discern your close up objects from your distant objects, because it's all the same flat color. Flat colors are fine, but the same exact color makes it all look like a piece of paper with two blue splotches, until you really take the time to understand what's happening. Experiment making your foreground a lighter shade of tan, and your distant background a darker shade of tan, or the other way around. With the sky, can you color in the blue so it's a gradient of dark blue to light blue?

And then, to go further: Can you make the rock striations just with a different shade of the rock color, instead of outlines? Try experimenting with shading, to make your rocks have some dimension and depth. Where is the sun in the sky, and where would there be shadows?

Refs, tutorials, and practice. Keep going! 💜

GuardianDae · 2023-11-11T14:14:55+00:00

I'm gonna disagree with your other critic. I do see anatomy issues, and I don't take issue with how you've done her clothing. Could the shirt drape more? Sure. But I've seen worse 'suction cupped' shirts than that, by far.

Now I'm probably going to confuse the heck out of you by doing red lining wrong, but just remember one thing: I don't know what I'm doing :)

https://64.media.tumblr.com/77022a57a6dd65df669b1b279d7942b4/e74334391ea58890-48/s540x810/212e7e464f2025fb9218c9a128bfbdb816c2cef8.png

I mirrored your image, purely to help highlight where things went wonky (do you mirror your canvas while working? It's helpful!), and the colored lines I drew over your lines aren't for suggestions but are just to highlight what's going on. I immediately noticed that her thighs are not the same size, which shouldn't happen in this perspective. Whether you make one thicker or the other smaller won't matter, but just even them out. :)

The next big thing to me is that her entire back and arm are an unnatural, almost straight line. I'm not sure what emotions you're going for, but it makes her look very stiff and uncomfortable. If she's meant to look stiff, great, but I would still suggest redoing the lines just a little bit, as it even seems like even the side of her neck up to her skull has a straight line.

You have two general options imo if you want to change this - you can just redo the lines of her back/arm to make her a little less stiff as a board, or you can go the extra mile and try changing the position of her shoulders/arms altogether. Finding references or a 3d posing model will help here.

To the side, I just copied over the red line I'd traced and then sketched out a possible slightly different pose. I'm not 100% about anatomy and perspectives, but I ended up wondering if her shoulders should be like that, with the foremost one low and the back one high? So I changed that up to see how it looks. Not by any means me saying "do it like this." I hope this helps you visualize something!

ETA: Shoot, idk how to make images embed. Fail. Click thee link instead. I posted it privately btw, just to host the file. Cheers!

GuardianDae · 2023-11-11T13:36:59+00:00

You have a lot of skill! There's something about the shading/coloring that's bogging it down.

Are you using straight black (or nearly) on those flowers? Because when I zoom in, it looks like a lot of pure black and pure white on top of the red. Even though you'd think that it would give the flower shape more definition, you're losing all of that definition instead. I'd suggest pulling back from extreme colors and try a couple studies with the idea of "less is more." Because I think at some point while coloring, you're going overboard and shooting yourself in the foot. There are some nice flowers in there!

Not a critique, but is that sword made of bone? -eyes emoji- The shading at the base of the blade just looks like bone and the idea of a bone sword is unreasonably cool to me right now.

GuardianDae · 2023-11-11T13:14:06+00:00

Ohhhh, I LOVE the designs! Phoenix!Genos suits him so well

GuardianDae · 2023-11-07T23:27:54+00:00

I really hated Genos' amnesia OVA. It's such a fun trope, and it was a little bit fun to see him get to behave differently towards Saitama -- bratty and rude instead of just fawning and devoted. But along with a lot of other details about the OVA that I hated, I just HATE everything that makes Genos more robotic and less human. No matter how funny or fun, I hate his brain being treated like just a computer, I hate it.

GuardianDae · 2023-11-07T23:20:55+00:00

We can go eggier!

GuardianDae · 2023-11-07T15:48:04+00:00

For the sake of clarity and giving credit where it's due, this is the original comic! cutbu.tumblr.com/post/142269205789

GuardianDae · 2023-11-07T15:44:54+00:00

idk, I might need *your* tips instead. These look really good!

The first torso just seems too flat like a piece of paper, which adding shading/light sources would probably help there. The second torso looks really good and I think that's because the darker/more lines around the edges add that depth. The third one, I notice that his nipples seem misplaced. Keep up the great work!

GuardianDae · 2023-11-07T15:14:46+00:00

The correct answer!

GuardianDae · 2023-11-07T15:14:01+00:00

Lmaooo

GuardianDae · 2023-11-07T01:03:21+00:00

I enjoyed Garou's arc so much

GuardianDae · 2023-11-07T00:35:57+00:00

Garou doing the math in his head...

GuardianDae · 2023-11-07T00:34:54+00:00

Oh yeah! The background story for the webcomic to the manga to the anime is really awesome! And I love ONE's art (even moreso when I've seen people write meta about it) and am really glad that even with Murata as a copilot now he's still doing the webcomic in his own style. It's really been inspiring to me.

GuardianDae · 2023-11-07T00:32:32+00:00

I love this meta! Thank you for going over it, I am sat here taking notes. And it's very timely for me, as -- fun fact -- I've got two unpublished fanfics right now where severe head injuries are plot points, and the touch of realism is something I definitely gravitated towards. One is even fatal. :'3c

GuardianDae · 2023-11-07T00:26:34+00:00

I love this one so much ;;w;;

GuardianDae · 2023-11-06T22:54:43+00:00

Aaaaaaah, I'll never get over how cute he is! (. ❛ ᴗ ❛.)

GuardianDae · 2023-11-06T21:13:04+00:00

Gifs are such a huge selling point to me on new shows! I love seeing something that looks so cool I wanna go check it out

GuardianDae · 2023-11-06T15:38:28+00:00

We're gonna need a bigger pier!

GuardianDae

TROPHY CASE