Something's missing

~jcurr87 Dec 10, 2012 Hobbyist Digital Artist

For some reason, I just feel like there's something missing from what I;m doing. I don't know if it's lighting, tone, emotion, facial expression...I just can't put my finger on it.

I'm honestly open to suggestions if anyone has any

And I really want to thank everyone in advance for taking a look for me!

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=DamaiMikaz Dec 13, 2012 Hobbyist Digital Artist

I'd say it's mainly colors and composition.
What I notice is that you only use skin color on your characters, while the skin has in fact countless of colors, reflecting the surrounding light. This goes for backgrounds as well. They'll appear more lively when you widen the range of colors you use.
As for composition... you tend to fall back a bit on the basic poses en portrait. Try something different every now and then ^^

~Porto881 Dec 11, 2012 Hobbyist Digital Artist

Let me start off by saying you've got tons of potential. Really c:
So here are some thing I think you can improve on:

1. Contrast: I noticed in some of your pieces (namely your original character) that the difference between your highlights and shading is a little nominal. Darken those shadows and brighten those highlights and your piece will pop more.
2. Line Weight: This is more for your drawing pieces, less for the painty ones. Line weight is kinda something you have to feel for every individual piece (or maybe I just don't know how to explain it, I dunno), but something you can start with is making the lines of the drawing in 1, thinner brush and then outlining the entire outside of the character with a thicker line. It's a good starting point for understanding how lines work to make pieces bolder or softer.
3. Anatomy: Your understanding of anatomy is okay, but you'd be surprised how much you can improve by doing just a few figure studies or sketches. If you have the money and time, try to get in a figure drawing class. If you can't, maybe ask a friend or family member to pose for you while you sketch them. If you don't wanna do that, there's plenty of stock photos floating around the internet that you can reference. And remember, these sketches don't have to be entirely accurate or detailed, and you can take as much time as you want with them. Try doing just a few quick skeletons of people for fun.
4. Try Different Mediums: From the looks of it (I could be wrong), you're just using Photoshop. PS is okay, but other tools like Sai are much friendlier for digital painting. Same with line art. Again, PS is okay, but Illustrator is the industry standard for nice, clean line art. And when you work on a single piece, don't limit yourself to any one program; you can easily do a sketch in PS and bring it over to Sai for painting.

Anyway, I hope that helped a little. I'm by no means an expert, but I figured I'd at least try to give you some wise words from my own experiences c:

~jcurr87 Dec 12, 2012 Hobbyist Digital Artist

Honestly this is great, and I appreciate the compliment. I just recently got into coloring my work too, so I'm still getting the hang of contrasting the colors so they pop a bit.

It's definitely going to take a bit more time. As far as the anatomy is concerned, you're exactly right, sketches of the body are the way to go so I can up my knowledge on how the body looks in different poses and at different angles.

I've never heard of Sai or Illustrator, I guess I'll check out their websites and see what they're all about.

Thanks again!!!

*EldingaGunman Dec 11, 2012

Have you studied the absolute basics of art? Like, drawing spheres and pyramids, color scales and human anatomy until you 'get' it? Basically, do you have a good, 3-dimensional understanding of what you are trying to draw, rather than copying from eye or memory?

~jcurr87 Dec 11, 2012 Hobbyist Digital Artist

This is something I newly acquired. And unfortunately I'm a bit rusty at this point.

To tell you the truth I may be better off going back to basics and just practicing shapes, body parts, still life, things like that...

*EldingaGunman Dec 11, 2012

Such exercises are damn great to throw into your regular drawings. Things tend to get a lot less stiff that way - spend a couple of minutes each day just sketching basic things you see, and there will be some improvement - the more you try, the better you will get, as with everything else.

~jcurr87 Dec 11, 2012 Hobbyist Digital Artist

Thanks a lot for your help, I really appreciate it...I will definitely get on this

~narutokunobessed Dec 11, 2012 Student General Artist

I think its a mostly color, but some of it is facial expressions too. Too much grey and one color is used in the picture.

~jcurr87 Dec 11, 2012 Hobbyist Digital Artist

So, almost like there's some sort of blending issue?

~narutokunobessed Dec 12, 2012 Student General Artist

Turn on grey scale on Ezelzo and see what I mean for contrast.

Thats how you can tell. Visually you should see that with color on, but takes time and observation.

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