Salla needs help with these pieces.

[Salla]

It's nice to see so much awesome artists here. That's why I feel kinda worthless and untalented in comparison. I've been drawing for 4 years now (well, actually I've been drawing since I got a grib of a pen, but that doesn't count. Let's call those 4 years the time I've been actually practicing and trying to get better.

Well, it took me a lot of courage to post anything, but I seriously need some help.

http://www.sherief.com/aura/wippii.jpg
http://www.sherief.com/aura/WIP__oil_pastels_by_aurastiina.jpg

Well. Here's two WIPs. I'd like to hear some ideas according to them. How to fix some mistakes (I can't really put my finger on it but there's something wrong. Help?) and make the pictures better, ideas on the backgrounds or something. Basically everything you say helps, I'm sure.

- Salla

[novenus]

They look okay, except that there's not enough to really critique on. You might want to work on them a bit more before posting for crits.

As for the first piece, you definitely need to select a well defined light source and flesh out the rest of your image (is it a person praying?).

[Meli Hitchcock]

In the first image, her chin is definitely too short compared to the length of her face. Aside from that, it looks okay, but like Novenus said, there's not much here just yet to give a bigger critique on.

As far as a background goes, ultimately that's up to you. Why not analyze the characters and ask yourself some questions to get ideas. What are they doing? What type of environment would define this character more? Or what do you want to convey here? Do some small sketches first to see what would work and what doesn't. That way once you work on a background you know what to do and won't be stumbling to just put something there. :)