My Art Thread. I want to be come better! Please critique!

[bluemayonase]

Hello everyone! There's a thing I have been struggling with my art, and that is professional quality and fluideness. I feel like I can draw anything I put my mind to but it never seems right. I can't draw in a way where I can say "this is me!" Sometimes when I look at my drawings, they just seem static. A fixed posture with no emotion. I want to draw in a way where it creates meaning, expression, when you look at the drawing it stimulates something in your head where it's interesting. I will update weekly for you guys to see improvements, if there are any. I know my first submission is horrible but please give me feedback. I must know how I can become better. I want to get better. ANY critique would help. Please be a ruthless as possible. I will start from scratch and draw it again if I have to.

[HiddenCreature]

Not an artist, but maybe my notes will help. The toes and fingers look a little stubby. There's no use of shadows or shading to make it more 3D. The face and hair need more detail. For example: the right cheek is lopsided.

[CSV]

I am far from being a professional, but here is what I can see looking at your art:

- The face and head look good, but the shading in the hair is a bit bland. You should take hair strands in consideration when shading it.
- The anatomy is not too bad. If you wanted to make it more realistic, you would have to make the head smaller in comparison to the body, but it looks fine for a cutesy anime style.
- The folds on the clothing need work. Looking at pictures of real clothing folds or tutorials on how to draw them could help.
- The tail looks a bit too stiff, too much in a straight line.

This is what I can say looking just at this picture. If you have other drawings you can post, I'd be happy to give more feedback. =)

[Cakey]

Well... I'll try to explain you how to draw character in motion.

1. Try to lean her at one side a little. Avoid symetry.
2. If you want motion, you have to actualy draw person in motion, for example walking.
3. Try drawing character relaxed standing/ laying/sitting. Catgirl seem unusually stiff. Maybe it will help you notice how body acts in some poses and situations.

Another thing is her posture. It is nice but it lacks in upperbody. See(or you don't? If you don't see what I have in my mind please ask) She dosn't have space for her lungs nor underarm.
http://turtle-arts.deviantart.com/art/Q ... 1388&qo=14
Use tutorials of this guy if you look for good anathomy lessos(but not for realistic drawngs)

If you want meaning, try to show emotions on her face, give her something to hold or think about

Shading could make her less flat. Try it. Maybe it's easier than you think

I will praise your hands nad legs. While fingers indeed looks a little sloppy, her feet are decent
Also her hips and legs are nice.

About clothes:
http://raru-tan.deviantart.com/art/Tips ... -371346049
Don't be scared to give her posture a little volume. Clothes always do that.

[SwedishJazz]

Everyone else pretty much coveered everything! It's a good start, it's easy to see you have a lot of potential. Right now, the problem area is the upper torso and arms - try drawing people from photos or from nature to figure out how arms are structured:

One very good place I recommend to look at if you want to see how arms and shoulders look is this blog; very good sources for figure drawing are also this channel and this website (they both feature nude models, btu that really is the best way to observe anatomy).

Basically, I think you should start by doing a lot of figure drawigs to learn anatomy. It's a solid base that you can't go wrong with - even if you want to simplify your style, you still have to know the rules to break them in appealing ways!

[bluemayonase]

Wow! I wasn't expecting such in depth responses. Especially due to how bad my art is. I can't thank you guys enough how much these opened my eyes to how I can improve. And I can't believe some of you actually traced the drawing itself to show me visually. After going through each post I started drawing a couple more images. Right now im focusing on the upper body. Where the shoulders and chest are. After looking through all of the anatomy reference links posted I found out that there is a neck muscle that connects to the shoulder. The chest should be wider or the opposite depending on the age/gender of the character. I tried making hair more fluid in the digital drawing and shading it a bit. I wanted to draw out a sad expression as well to make it more interesting. It will take dozens of drawings to utilize all of these helpful tips.

Update:
added shoulder pic with a fail attempt at shadows lol.

Update:
added color testing

Update:
More anatomy practice

[Cakey]

Ok. There is waist of man, then it should widen a little becouse of ribs and lungs, and then there is underarm showing from the front. How do I put it... uderarm is more at front than you think It is not only on the side as you are drawing (I just corrected one side of picture. sorry)

Everythig else seems ok
I like how you tried shading(i don'tknow if the one with sun is ok. Still I an not very comfortable with drawing light source and shadows so I won't help you there.) and expresions seems nice

[bluemayonase]

Thanks cakey! Those pictures really help tell me what I need to work on. And Honestly, the expression I tried to make seem too try hard to me, lol.

The first one (drawn in green) is something I drew up quickly. I don't think I had many of the core aspects of the neck in mind.

Here's another artwork. I tried to draw a better looking face/body than I did before. Still working on those neck and shoulders. I think I did better with the hair.

I know it's pretty bad. It doesn't seem like im improving at all. When I learn something new I take one step forward then two steps back.

Im going to try coloring them later.

[bluemayonase]

I took some time to color it. Although it's not finished I wanted to show my progress so far. I plan on doing the shirt too. I tried to make the hair bangs distinct. Does anyone know how I can improve the coloring?

[MaiMai]

Do you have an example of coloring you want to emulate? For anime/manga style coloring, people's style vary, so it might be a good idea to have a frame of reference/goalpost you want to reach.

[bluemayonase]

Do you have an example of coloring you want to emulate? For anime/manga style coloring, people's style vary, so it might be a good idea to have a frame of reference/goalpost you want to reach.

This is kinda what I'm inspired by:

[MaiMai]

At this point in time, you might want to try following some tutorials so you can learn coloring techniques and pick up on what you like and don't like to do. Since you seem to be going for a painterly look with bright colors, here's two tutorials that you could look at to start practicing on your drawings.

http://zenithomocha.deviantart.com/art/ ... -290613138 (a cell-shade tutorial, but it's a good way to learn about other techniques)

http://sangcoon.deviantart.com/art/How- ... -373681579 (a more painterly tutorial)

Also, the best way to get critique is to actually finish coloring a piece. You get more practice in that way instead of having to pause and ask about what to do next. When you finish something, there's more to look at and it's easier to give advice.

[SinaAzad]

Well , I have nothing much to say here and a critique from me wouldn't mean much as I'm working on these stuff too ... actually by looking at your works I have found some things which I could use to improve my own works !

By the way I like the way you drew "cat girl redo".

[bluemayonase]

@MaiMai
Thanks for the links! Because of that I figured out that for the outlines, I needed to make the darker/lighter colors of the component they surround, and then blend them inward. For the hair I needed to add small strokes to show that they are actual hair strands building the shape of each bang. I tried to shade a nose, not sure if im shading it right. I tried making the eyes it's own thing, but im not sure if that was the right approach to make. The eyebrows seem weak, just doesn't fit. I feel that the head is alright, but the clothes seem way off. You said not to show a painting before it's finished but I don't know what to do next even after looking at other tutorials. Im totally clueless on how I can improve it further.

@SinaAzad
Im glad I helped you in some way!
I don't think it that great but thanks! I tend to draw allot of those types of characters but now im trying to draw all sorts of things.

[MaiMai]

I'm sure other people can probably give better direction than me, haha. Not because there's nothing to critique, but rather there's so many directions I could point towards, but it all really comes down to experimenting with coloring. A lot of experimenting, a lot of coloring, a lot of drawing. But you already know that so keep at it.

What I can point out so far about your latest pic:

I tried making the eyes it's own thing, but im not sure if that was the right approach to make.

They don't look quite finished, you can probably add more to them.

I feel that the head is alright, but the clothes seem way off.

The red of the clothes is really, really bright and there's no depth to them since you're sticking with basically one hue of red, with only a darker shade of red for the shadows. This is kind of a matter of design though, so you may want to look up actual jackets to see what other elements you can add to make it more accurate/creative. (That's another thing; collect reference images!)

Overall, maybe you need to get some color theory knowledge?