Evaluate my pencil

[miljenko]

::::Update 12-23-2006: Scroll all the way down for Jake Lamota in pencil::::

Its supposed to be British actor John Hurt in a scene from a movie "1984". Need crits on line, value, rendering, composition etc.
Thx! :yayca:

[armando]

That hard line on the shadow side of his arm could be softened. It could be caused by a pillow or blanket, but it doesn't look like overlap, and it's contrast with the rest of the linework makes it a bit too much of a focal point. The values could be pushed more on the shadow side of her face, another contrst and focal point issue. There needs to be more seperation between shadow and halftone. Look at his hand and notice the halftone in relation of the shadows of the knuckles, then look at his chest and arm and notice that the shadows here are the same value as the shadows on the knuckles, keep lights and darks seperated.

[miljenko]

thanks a bunch armando on your advice. Will try to post some more pencil drawings in this thread so as to track progress.

[miljenko]

Tried to improve it, whaddya think? Armando?

[miljenko]

Here it is, hope there's resemblance, but most important of all, I hope that this time I did well with the values. :\

[v0rbiss]

Hey there. :) On your last pic: the reflex on his left cheekbone and the ones on his mouth area are a bit too light and seem to break the shadowed part. Sorry for the poor english, but I hope if you squint your eyes you'll be able to see what I'm talking about. ;) Another thing, you've used your darkest value in the hair, you should've reserved it for points of interest, like the eyes, nose etc.

[miljenko]

v0rbis: You're so right about the left cheekbone: surfaces with reflected light should be considerably darker than values on the lit part of the face. Good news is that I started thinking about value economy alot more than before, thaks to the classes I took and people on CA.org :yayca: . I look back at my earlier pencil portraits that at the time had appeared fine to me, and become appled at inconsistent use of values that had been in most cases made too dark and set far apart.