My drawings-any advice?/feedback?/constructive criticism?...

[meldom]

Hello there!

I've been drawing for a while. I drew my first portrait in art class in 7th grade and became hooked. Eventually I got busy and put it off for a year, but have come back to it. I'm now a sophmore in highschool or 15 years old. I've improved a little over the past year or so, but I know I still have a long way to go...

Here are a couple old drawings:







and here are my newer drawings:







I'd really appreciate some constuctive criticism or advice. If you could give me any tips or advice at all, I'd be really happy!

thanks! <3

[ROCK_FREAK_89]

wooow i can really see how much you have improved

[junice]

You have the talent, my advice is........practice, practice and practice some more, that''s the only way to learn.........

june

pencilartbyjune.com

[buffyfan]

you 're very good at the eyes :P

[sarahvontrieck]

Originally Posted by buffyfan

you 're very good at the eyes :P

I agree

It's kinda funny to see it in chronological order,
because we can see how you've improved!
That's really nice! Keep practicing !

[Zindy]

I think the main problem with your drawings is the proportions. I can easily recognize the persons though. You have really improved over the years, that’s obvious. Fx. on the hair part – you make them with lines now, in the beginning you kind of just coloured it in – it’s interesting to see the difference My advice to you is to work with the proportions first of all, because you seem to be good at shading. By the way I think you did well on Dominic’s eyes, they look deep.

Meldom,

Things are hard to describe, but I would like to share a tip with you.

As I've said often, there is a book called DRAWING ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE BRAIN by Betty Edwards. It's been selling for almost 25 years. Its success is not because it mentions a lot of drawing techniques, but it talks about a whole new way to THINK during drawing. People try it, and suddenly improve hugely.

Basically, she says the two halves of our brain are not quite the same. The left brain specializes in summarizing and simplifying information. This was useful in the ancient cave-man days, where you did not spend time contemplating the detail of striped orange fur or marvel at the undulating pattern of sinewy feline muscles against the grass. Your left-brain summarized the information as "TIGER!" and you ran like **** away from there!

This was necessary for survival, but bad for drawing, where every bit of detail is as important as every other bit. The right brain is good at detail (but it does not talk or keep track of time well). If you've had an "altered state" where you were just drawing wordlessly, you didn't know where the time went, that is when you may do your best work. Mistakes in drawing, Edwards says, happen when people simplify or summarize, especially parts of the face with strong associations like eyes. The left-brain is in charge and says "I know how to draw an eye," but in fact it presents an over-simplified diagram out of 3rd-grade crayon stuff.

In your case your latest drawings are great. For example the eyes, and lip-shadow on the last one. Very good.

But perhaps the shading could be more finely divided. Compare small parts of the photo carefully to see if the tone in one area is really brighter/darker than the tone in another. People sometimes make a small hole cutout and move it around to judge tone (or colour), hiding the whole rest of the photo. Use pencils of different hardnesses/darkness if you can get them, such as a 2H (hard and light-coloured), HB, 2B (seems to be the most commonly used) and a 4B or 5B grade (soft and dark).

If you grade shading finely enough you'll realize the eyeballs each have slightly different brightness and it suggests a sphere. The upper eyelid casts a shadow on the very top of the "whites" of the eyes, etc.

Also, the ear on the left just seems to have an "X" in it. Is that a trick of the photo angle? Try to look carefully, what are the shapes, really? Draw a dark cave-shape here, a ridge there, shade carefully to round the objects (shade lots on the sides, little or none in the middle of an ear-ridge).

I am one of the worst artists here. Mostly it is bright young things on this forum. But I did lots of theory in learning books, and hopefully I'm putting suggestions into words for you that may help.

[meldom]

Wow guys!

thank you for all your input!

I'm still working on what Zindy said about the proportions and I'm definitely buying that book, Draconian. Thank you for that input. I think it'll help a lot.

I just finished this drawing of Ian Somerhalder. The shading doesn't look very good on the scanned version because it keeps scanning my pictures as "black and white document" so it makes the darker shading really black and the light shading really white. But anyway...



Please, more input would be wonderful! Maybe even a couple tips about the hair. I don't even know where to start when I attempt it. I ended up making his very sketchy...

Originally Posted by meldom

Please, more input would be wonderful! Maybe even a couple tips about the hair. I don't even know where to start when I attempt it. I ended up making his very sketchy...

There is again something I mentioned before: "how-to-draw" articles on the DrawSketch.About.Com site. Here is an article on drawing hair:

http://drawsketch.about.com/library/.../aa032303a.htm

A different site by Mike Sibley (who does very detailed pencil drawings) explains how he draws hair:

http://www.sibleyfineart.com/tutorial--draw-hair.htm#

[Innocent-Angel]

I don`t know who the guy on the drawing is but I think it looks very nice
Only the left pupil is a bit smaller than the right...