Ye Olde Sketches

[Czaritsa]

Hello guys!! I'm Ashlee.

I wanted to join this site to get some good crits, heard that this site was very good at that, haha.
Nearing the last year of school so that means I really need to buckle down on getting better at what I do, so this place seems like it'd really help.
I use CS3, I eyeball everything I draw... no grids, copy/paste, or anything like that.
As far as experience... I have some, but barely any to do anything. I've been drawing seriously since I was about 10, and I've pretty much taught myself.

Ah, I can't talk about myself very well... so if anyone has any questions, feel free to ask!!

Please be gentle with crits though, I'll be honest... I'm a wuss.

(and help with this thread would be awesome, I'm not quite sure how to use the pictures and everything. XD)

Here's some of my newest/faves!!

[GaussianRaider]

Hei Ashlee, thanks for sharing your stuff...it'd be informative and helpful if you talked a bit about your goals and your experience with art as well.
Anyway, I really like simoooooon.jpg, you really nailed the skin tones and the eyes imo, the rendering is pretty good; I don't understand if you traced or used the color picker to help yourself a bit, you have a pretty good eye if you eyeballed those references!
The manga-ish pieces lack volume, imo, especially along the limbs...you could try using bigger brushes and concentrate on giving a more convincing illusion of form.
Nice start overall.

[Czaritsa]

Alright!! I'll work on that a bit though I'm horrible with talking about myself. XD

Wow, thank you.
I use the eyedropper tool a lot but I do change the colors quite a bit, but yeah, I just eyeball the references.

Okay, that's definitely one of the things I wanted some good advice on. It's always been really hard getting everything to look right.

[Czaritsa]

Here's some more...

[Cacodaemonia]

That second to last one you posted - is that the creepy guy who played Crane in the new Batman movies? :| Scary eyes! I don't know if you're done with that one, but I think if you do want to take it further, you should tighten it up a little, make some of the edges more crisp. Right now it has a general blurry feeling to it.

Like what GaussianRaider said, your portraits are really amazing, so I think you need to learn how to bring what you do there to the images you create from your imagination. :)

[Czaritsa]

Yep, that's Cillian Murphy.
Uh... I could work on it more, but I really just did it as a warm up kinda thing. o3o

Okay!! I haven't really practiced in a long time with any type of anatomy, is there any advice for ways of doing that? (since it's different from drawing faces and stuff. haha)

[vayne108]

Generally your work is good!! just as the others has mentioned the blurriness of the pics is the biggest problem. Like in the iron man one, his hand should be the most crisp and have the most contrast. Because it is the closed object to the viewer and the rest should get less focused as it moves away from the viewer. Anyways, I love you work, and I can't wait to see more!!!

[Cacodaemonia]

I haven't really practiced in a long time with any type of anatomy, is there any advice for ways of doing that? (since it's different from drawing faces and stuff. haha)

In the absence of people to model for you, Google Images is always nice. ^^; You could try googling photos of people doing different things - standing playing sports, sitting, lying down - and work on those images for a set length of time. Maybe a few gesture drawings - 1 or 2 minutes - then move on to longer poses.