My Special Little Corner

[Faylion]

Hi everyone, I was wondering how do you all feel about my drawing capabilities. I can copy other images quite well, but I have difficulty drawing myself and is very critical. Here is a Lucario I drew myself and an image I drew from the talented Larenn(my love shaded it). Please be critical and tell me what to do to become better. I am thinking about getting a tablet and wondering if I should quite yet.

Lucario

[hide="silent" by Larenn]

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[Juicy Fruit]

Time to greet the fresh meat.

Try and use the same medium when creating a drawing, unless you're trying to create a desired effect. For example Lucario - it's obvious you've changed what you were using to draw for his hands, and I'm sorry if you were trying to create some kind of effect but it hasn't worked for me this time.

Posing: Look at Lucario's pose, it's too dull! He's standing, front on, facing us with his arms against his chest. He isn't moving, he isn't using a move. Even his face is completely deadpan. Try and incorporate some action and facial expression into your pieces, especially facial expression as this can sometimes make up for a lackluster pose.

For posing, take a look at this grid: Now, imagine it overlayed over each one of your drawings (it may be useful to actually lightly sketch one in future). Where these lines cross, is where the eye's focus is naturally drawn, so this is where you should put the main focal points of your piece, discerning features such as props, faces, limbs etc. (I have no evidence to back this up, I've just heard it repeated in different places and choose to use it myself., that's not to say you should follow it religiously, you don't have to cover every focal point if it compromises the composition of the artwork.)

Also Lucario's head looks like it's been drawing from straight lines, did you use a ruler? NEVER use a ruler when drawing, especially on something in the foreground; no such thing as a straight lines in nature.

Looking forward to seeing more, keep it up!

 

[Faylion]

Ty so much for your response. I feels good to finally put myself out there. I will attempt to try a more dynamic stance next time. I rarely draw without a reference and was playing it safe. Still trying to get out of the safe zone. With the marker and pen, I drew it at work and colored with marker. I realized I didn't do its hands at home and couldn't find a Sharpe. And no, I did not use a ruler lol.

 

[Kasyeo]

Your drawing is real great, But next time around, make lucario less dull.

Give him alot more detail, and also show off some moves. Show him using Ice Punch or something.

 

[Particular1]

Try changing the angle your whatching from, or the position of the charachter. As everyone says, you have drawn well, what is left to do is compositional stuff to make the drawings more interesting.

 

[Kadew]

Only ever copying the work of others will lead you well on the path to being an inefficient copy machine, so it's very good that you are exploring drawing for yourself. My greatest recommendation for you would be to draw faster and more frequently.

Drawing with greater frequency is partly for us but much more for you. It's hard to really judge your art and give constructive criticism to help you with only one piece indicative of your drawing skills. But even more so, drawing often will make you better as you get more comfortable drawing away from others works. The only way to becoming good at art is to draw a bunch. One of my art professors said that every person has a million crappy drawings in them, and so you need to get all those out before you can draw well. While I cannot verify the accuracy of his numbers, I can recommend the advice of drawing even if they are crappy.

Drawing faster may seem like a strange suggestion, wouldn't forcing to go quickly make everything sloppy and ugly? The answer is yes, it does make things sloppy and ugly, but your drawing of the lucario, from what I can tell, suffers from the opposite problem of being too labored over and careful. Stiff figures with anatomy that seems to change scale in different areas normally comes from working with segments rather than considering the whole figure. Draw fast, try to get the entire figure and consider it as a whole, loosen up and make things that, while a little sloppier, are more alive than the formulaic statue of a pose you have made. Don't think too hard when drawing, the right brain is fine let it take the wheel. Also, this suggestion works in tandem with the above, drawing faster would also bring more volume of drawing so that you can improve even more and also give us more of your arts to see. Everyone wins.

I hope this advice helps and isn't too harsh. I think it's awesome that you are trying to get better and I hope art brings you much joy now and in the future. Drawing is awesome. :)

 

[Faylion]

Thank you everyone for your support and will definitely take your tip Kadew! This thread has inspired me to keep going and today, at 25 years old, it clicked like when I first copied my basic set Machamp card in 5th grade. Here is my Gyarados with my own touch! I will be outlining it so its clearer, but I am so excited to show you all that I had to put it up! I'll repost it when done.

Gyarados