Hey Daggers, I need you help! I'm usually too nervous to ask, but I'm not going to get very far that way.
I'm having some issues on these two paintings, I'd like to hear your crits - I'm not sure how to push them further, kind of just been screwing around with them at the moment, and I want to avoid just wasting a bunch of time.
For the first one, taking a look at good references never hurts, grab some pictures of people with that kind of clothing and observe, do some studies.
For the second, well my experience with monsters i close to zero, but when doing this kind of creepy scary things always help to push the values and add some kind of atmosphere to make the creature look more menacing.
You could take a look at all the monster pieces of Brad Rigney in his deviantart for some inspiration. For the hands of the creature, you could do the same that i suggested for the cloth on the first illustration. Look at some refs, or better shoot your own.
I'm nowhere near a "master" but I figured I could help you out with this fabric situation. First, definitely look at reference whenever you are doing something like this(I know its annoying sometimes). That being said, I have a few tips. First of all, check out how fabric folds and hangs, as a general rule of thumb fabric only wrinkles when there is too much fabric for the allotted space. Another good rule of thumb is that everything has a thickness. So show that plane... unless its like paper. Though i'm sure there are times when you want to show even paper thin side planes haha.
Fabric doesn't need to be hard, it follows a lot of general rules most of the time, which you can find online(being super lazy right now so I don't have any links for you lol)
So that's basically all that I did here, I added that thickness plane and took out a bunch of wrinkles in the hood. I also have a little bit of light showing through the far side of the hood on the inside, not sure about it but its there. The rest of the wrinkles are interesting in an abstract way, but they are in no way how fabric actually falls(for the most part). So do some more studies :)
Now that I've said all those mean things, I would like to add that I am very jealous of your textures.
Hope I didn't ramble too much, and I hope that all was helpful.
Nice lighting and texture! Besides the reference and fabric thing, I'd say that your facial anatomy and planes aren't quite as good as they could be. You seem to be having particular trouble around the eye sockets and mouth/chin area. Maybe try and analyze the forms in simplified planes first, then model the forms with value accordingly. Better yet, draw the skull underneath first, then layer everything on top of that, and if course reference up anything you need to.
The next step is to start adding design elements and detail. The design is very plain at the moment...but ine thing at a time perhaps...just nail the fundamental issues first since you're already some way ahead, then play with design.
