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Angel
Crazy Artist
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
OK so this is the piece I want a critique on. I hand drew this a while ago, and then scanned and digitally traced it on my Wacom. It's not the best, but I'm trying to improve. So please let me know what you think.
Also, if you want to see some of my other art (shameless plug, I know...but I do want critique on my other work too) go to 1337art.blogspot.com
Also, if you want to see some of my other art (shameless plug, I know...but I do want critique on my other work too) go to 1337art.blogspot.com
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Many people on this forum will tell you to "draw from life'. That's always good advice, so I'll give it here. Really take a good look at what people and objects really look like. Then draw them that way. Find some good books on anatomy for artists and study them. You do appear to have some talent when it comes to drawing, but there's a lot of room for improvement. The most important thing to do, of course, is to keep drawing. Practice is the only way to really improve.
The fact that you outlined the figure but didn't outline the background makes it look funny.
Your wings aren't too bad, but the 'bone' at the top is more what you'd see in a bat wing than a bird wing. From a physical standpoint, the inner part of the wings is curving down while the outer part is curving up, which makes them look like they wouldn't meet up...
Try looking at some actual bird wings: http://www.paulnoll.com/Oregon/Birds/ID-wing-Duck-2.jpg
The face is good, so is the sword in his right hand. The sword in his left hand looks like it was made out of cheap plastic and has slightly melted. Obviously there's not much to say in the anatomy department, but I have no idea what's keeping that belt up since he has no hips, and his wrists are, frankly, worrying me. I mean he looks like he's got a serious anorexia problem. The hands are pretty good, though.
Luckily, there aren't too many angels in real life, so that shouldn't be too much of your problem :P
For a scimitar, remember that the handle should still be straight, not curved. No one wants to hold a curvy handle. The back of the blade, by contrast, should curve, matching the front of it. Until you get good at it, just keep around pictures of whatever you're trying to draw (I'm assuming it's not practical to go out and get real scimitars), and refer to them often. And then just practice practice practice.
The wings are better.
The composition is very stale and part of his wing and sword are cropped off for no good reason. The line-art is wobbly, the cloth is all made-up. You gave it a shot, but the coloring and rendering on this just make the whole thing flat as a board (Please don't use gradients unless you really, really know what you're doing.).
Basically, you need to put the wacom away for a while and get out the sketchpad and a pencil if you want to eventually be able to successfully do this type of art.
Draw them naked first.
You don't have to do it directly on the sheet of paper you intend on being your good copy of the sketch, but at the very least do a practise of a person in the same pose to get a feel for where their anatomy should be. Really, to get it right you want to do LOTS of poses of the person, from LOTS of different angles before you take things any further. The more you do the better grasp you're going to have of the pose and the anatomy, and how it will all work together without you having to resort to guess work, which is a lot of what I'm seeing now.
There's been a few mentions of the problems with the wings and I have to say I agree, even with the revisions. Now, angel wings on a human will never really make sense, since the human chest doesn't have muscles in the right spot to "flap" them. But most artists generally follow bird wings, meaning that the wing will protrude from around the shoulder blades as thin stems and then swell into their full shape.
Wings are annoying as hell to draw, since if you observe them carefully they're not really a lump of flesh like an arm or torso would be, instead they're actually made up of tiny feathers. This can be really horrible to attempt to draw since there's going to be hundreds of feathers, and drawing/inking all of them in detal is not something that's going to work.
Finally with the figure, drawing robes, in particular cloth robes, that are supposed to be folded and creased and wrinkly is something that's incredibly difficult to do for even professional artists if they don't have references to work from. So the easiest way to make your figure look better is naturally to get some references of robes! Right now the robes you have lack any real form, and you've tried to cover for this by adding some wavy lines to indicate creases, but since there's no change in the shading or tone of the robe it looks totally flat. See how his robes drape, like a curtain? See how dark the shadows get in between the folds? See how the tone and shade changes to indicate the robe compressing and flattening where it rests against the ground? That's all detail you can work into your picture by using photo references.
For right now... I say get some pencils and try re-drawing this guy in a different pose from a different, more dynamic angle, and post some WIPs as you go along. If you're giving it an honest effort you'll be bound to show a lot of improvement.
Anyways, here is a quick and dirty sketch of the seven folds:
And here is a link to a drapery tutorial by a former instructor at my school:
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=14739
What i do before every figure now is a very light stickman where the figure with be with good proportions and the like. You can then just draw over it.
It has helped me alot.
I note that you're still drawing that 'bone' really distinctly at the top of your wings. Bird wings don't have visible bones like that (because the area is generally covered in feathers... Technically you want a little differentiation there, but not as sharp a line as you've got. They're still better, though.
There are lots of good books/tutorials/classes on anatomy out there, so have at it. (Worst case scenario, use the mirror).
A note on the robes: most people I know who wear robes put the belt knot to the side, rather than in the center.
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