A Very Old Picture

[605Scorpion]

First off let me apologize for anything I may have done wrong in posting, when I saw a website/community that actually is comprised of professionals and offers valuable, brutally honest critiques I lost it (previous experience with DA). I was going to wait until tomorrow to post but I'm just too excited. I didn't think this was possible on the internet. :D

To be completely honest, I'm kind of embarrassed to post my crap here in the presence of real pros, but hopefully I can pick up a tip or two. :/

Done with plain Jane mechanical pencil in a sketchbook type thingie a couple of years ago. It was nothing fancy, but I got more and more into it, and I ended up spending months on it. Not much for the time spent, I know. :nohope:

I adjusted it a bit in Photoshop so you see the contrast better; it just looks worse on the screen vs on paper. The first url is original, the second is adjusted.

http://www.fileden.com/files/2006/10/25/316691/scorp_oagd01.jpg

http://www.fileden.com/files/2006/10/25/316691/scorp_oagd02.jpg

[Jason Rainville]

Hi and welcome. Just remember that not everyone on here is a proffessional (I am not :) ) but a lot are still very talented and we can all give decent enough critiques.

So a few things;

- It's easier to critique a piece if we can see it all at once. As a guidline, try to keep your pics at about 600 pixels high maximum.

- If this truly is years old, then you won't really gain much from any critique of this, as we'll be critiquing how you were at the time you created this. Plus, you might fall back on the 'yeah but I did it a while ago' defense :p My advice would be to upload something recent if you have it.

- This place works a bit differently from DA. If you're looking for a place to put all of your artwork, including sketches and such, make a thread in the sketchbook section. This is your sketchbook that you can update. For the crit center, remember it's best to have one pic per thread, and make new threads for seperate art pieces (I know you don't have more than one piece in here but I say this just because a lot of newcomers post ALL of their stuff in one thread in the crit center sometimes)

But I'll try to point out a few general things, just to get the ball rolling;

Value. Value is how light or dark something is. In this pic, the only things that aren't white (IE intensly bright) are the outlines of trees and such. In real life nothing is so bright that it's pure hile (not usually anyhow) so not a whole lot in your art should be pure white. try to fill in everything with value, even if it's a very faint bit of pencil work.

Lighting. Right now, there's none. (EDIT: I take that back, as I see you DO have some cast shadows. Problem is, every other element of lighting isn't present)Do some lighting work, learn how to shade a sphere and you can shade anything.

There's nothign else I can really critique on, but I'm sure others will stop by and chime in.

[Longxiang]

For a pencil sketch this is really good.

And don't worry, there are many many many people who post on CA who are worse than you. It's not about being good, it's about getting better.

[605Scorpion]

Duly noted - image rectified.

This image is old (a couple of years), but it is still my most recent work. Everything I ever drew was done mostly at school, and since I graduated, I stopped doing pencil drawings. I attempted to do oil on canvas, but was discouraged because I did not know how to work the medium. I still have all the stuff laying around.

I do not want to sound like I am defending flaws, but here goes. I did not make greater contrast between values due to the media itself. A darker shade requires greater pressure on the paper and this is fine and well until it comes time to correct mistakes. Anything erased would leave huge depressions in the paper. I could have gone back and reshaded everything to a full black to white scale, but I think this is impossible to do without screwing something up.

As far as lighting goes, I'd like to know what you mean better. :)

Thank you for your comments.

[Jason Rainville]

Duly noted - image rectified.

This image is old (a couple of years), but it is still my most recent work. Everything I ever drew was done mostly at school, and since I graduated, I stopped doing pencil drawings. I attempted to do oil on canvas, but was discouraged because I did not know how to work the medium. I still have all the stuff laying around.

I do not want to sound like I am defending flaws, but here goes. I did not make greater contrast between values due to the media itself. A darker shade requires greater pressure on the paper and this is fine and well until it comes time to correct mistakes. Anything erased would leave huge depressions in the paper. I could have gone back and reshaded everything to a full black to white scale, but I think this is impossible to do without screwing something up.

As far as lighting goes, I'd like to know what you mean better. :)

Thank you for your comments.

Hmm, I didn't mean that there should be more contrast, you have that. You have basically black and white and only a liiiiitle bit in between. My suggestion was to get more 'in between' in there, not just black and white. Adding a larger range of values (in the right places) not only makes your pic look more realistic, but more interesting as well. That said, yes it is hard to fill everything in, and mistakes will be made, but that's what practice and erasers are for ;)

as for lighting, there are more parts to lighting than just the shadow that's cast; what about the area of an object where the light isn't hitting it directly? what about part of an object that's only being hit a little bit? what about a part of shadow that's getting light reflected into it?

Here's a quick model of lighting a shpere;

http://img180.imageshack.us/img180/2870/castpo5.jpg

Here's (http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm) also prom's nice and concise art tutorial with many delicious tidbits.

If you can shade a shpere, you can take the principles of the and apply it to anything else you shade. So really in your drawing, you have only the cast shadow (that I can really see), and none of the other elements.

:)