Michelle's Gallery Smatterings...(Updated)

[piratemasque]

Hi everybody, I just recently joined this lovely site and am looking to improve my artistry. Here's a bunch of my stuff and any tips and comments are quite welcomed. I'm a 20 year old animation student and I'm also interested in the comic book industry, maybe coloring or pencils.

A few notes:
The Crocko and Tiger one (with the Crocko...dile and the...Tiger.) was actually from characters I made in sixth grade, (hence the unimaginative names) and one of the first times I really tried painting at photoshop. I used a couple of tutorials, one for the starfield from http://gallery.artofgregmartin.com/tuts_arts/making_a_star_field.html and one from adonihs at Deviantart (http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/26588085/). I know that those type of stars in a city are absolutley ridiculous, but one can dream, right?^^

The Batman one was referenced from the wax figure/picture of Alex Ross' Batman, one of my most favorite 'versions' of Batman. It's kind of old and I know I really need to work on the skin tone and his lips, but I had more fun with the Cowl anyway. XD

The Bruce and Clark one was also just really fun. Yeah, you can tell I love making fanart.

And the Cap'n Jack one is from my favorite scene from POTC, or at least what Will imagined right then. XD "Aye, Seaturtles."

Sorry for the giant watermarks, I'm paranoid. XD

[Interceptor]

Hey, welcome to CA :)

Couple of crits for you.

Using so much white the highlight clothing makes things tend to look a bit leathery. I'd try to cut off using white for highlights for a while.. Plus all of that white is taking up good space that other colors could be using to make a more colorful image.

Another thing, it while I personally don't have ahuge problem with people USING watermarks, the one you have is pretty distracting. Especially this dark picture of batman.. and then there's some big yellow face, I can barely contentrate on batman.

And lastly.. in the first image.. the aligator.. if you tried to intertwine your fingers like that when holding a gun, you'd have a very hard time operating it. Look at some images of police officers or something online for an example..


CHEERS!

-Loren

[jfwalls]

Practice your drawing. I see some skills here, but there is a huge difference in quality between the pieces you've used reference with, and the ones you just made up. When using color, or grayscale shading, work on creating a focal point. Right now you're giving the same amount of detail and attention to every piece of the art. For example: in the crocko and tiger piece you could ease off of the highlights and detail as you move towards their feet and edges of the characters. Overall, decent work, just keep practicing.

[piratemasque]

Interceptor/Loren--Thanks very much for the tips! Hmm, the white on the clothing does look a bit odd now that I look back on it, and leathery like you said. I didn't even think about using different colors in it, cause most of the lighting in this piece is yellowish. XD

jfwalls--Thanks for the tips, too! I really didn't know anything about that focal point bit and I'll have to try that soon.

[Kitiker]

Hi Michelle, way to go with crocko and tiger- I love revisiting my old doodles from grade school.
I'd have to echo the crits above regarding the highlights, but enough said on that.
I recognize Tom, so how abouts posting more life drawings. jfwalls is right on about quality of the referenced pieces vs. those without.
Im a huge fan of faeries however! Can I request some more, maybe drawn from life references? It would be nice to see what you come up with.

Looking forward to more work!

[piratemasque]

Kitiker--Thanks very much for the tips and the kind words! I think I am gonna do that with the fairies, that's a great idea! ^__^

Here's a couple of dragons and Cloud from Advent Children.

[evildisco]

You seriously need to do life drawing and figure drawing before going all crazy with digital and such.
Learn the basics first.

Watermarks are also extremely irritating, as previously stated.

[ramonsk8]

wow, I also got the comments about learning life-drawing. tip: I found an entire book by Andrew Loomis on Human Anatomy, you can find the link in my sketchbook...

[Kitiker]

Disco's right on, let's see some life drawing. Life drawing isn't limited to human anatomy either, Masque. You're dragons for example would benefit greatly from referencing living creatures. Just because they're ficticious doesn't mean they don't have living joints & muscles, scales & texture, etc. Check out the dragon thread in the Community Activities.

Also, remember jfwalls tip about shading. You're top dragon has absolutely no sense of depth- it looks like his head, neck, and 4 legs are all pressed up against a pane of glass.

I saw you posting in the Digital Painting in PS. Keep it going- only observation from life will help with this. Now lets see some life drawings!
(and I hate to say it too, but lose the watermarks)

[piratemasque]

Thanks for the crits and tips, Kitiker, ramonsk8, evildisco.

I just downloaded a ton of the Andrew Loomis stuff, really awesome. I'm gonna start putting some sketches in my sketchbook (links in my siggy) if anyone could help me there too, that'd be really cool. I've had figure drawing classes before but I have more trouble drawing the proportions/anatomy right from memory and hopefully the book will help.

I'm not really seeing the dragon's plane of depth thing, is it because it's not really in perspective? *squints...then gives up cause it's late* I think perhaps cause I drew it and didn't pay attention to the perspective, and he's kind of just facing forward? I was assuming the values would help to pop it out more, or is there something else I should do?

Anyway I really do appreciate the help you guys! ^__^

[nonie]

Your values are too uniform for it to give you any depth. You need to save your lightest lights and darkest darks for your focal point and be a little looser in other places where the attention doesn't need to go. And really listen to everyone on the life drawing thing, look at bat wings for dragon wings, look at lizards and snakes for scales and feet. Making it up from your head is something that can't really be done effectively until you have a firm handle on the mechanics of what you're drawing. And when doing digital stuff, shade and highlight with colors, not with black and white. Using black and white for shading turns all your colors to mud.

[saa]

try to enlarge the range of hues between light and dark, i see that especially in the tiger-alligator painting

keep on posting

[piratemasque]

nonie--*nods* Aaaaaah, I get it. Thanks so much for your advice! I have problems being looser in the areas that don't need it, I'm a detail-freak when it comes to everything. XD I'm like--every pebble must be drawn perfectly...I shall certainly try your advice though. I've seen pictures of dragons and things that do indeed look like iguanas, dinosaurs, etc, and I will try that as well.

saa--*nods again* Aha, I see that now! Thanks very much for your comments!

[piratemasque]

Here are a couple of new ones.

The Boy Warrior one is just simple cel-shading randomness. The Link and Zelda one is the first time I tried using different shades for the shadows instead of different values of the same color, like you can see there's green and so on in Zelda's face. Like I said, it's my first try, so I have no idea if I did it properly, so...help please. :\

On devart one guy had made a furry Bond Villain and I wanted to jump on the bandwagon being all unoriginal myself so I made my hare character into a femme fatale. Bond Bunny sounds nicer than Bond hare anyway...