Needing Help Identifying Common Problems

[jeshields]

I recently came into digital painting less than a year ago, despite the fact that I had been using Photoshop for years. Most of the art I have done over the years has been line work and greyscale and very much comic book influenced. Because I was mainly interested in pencil work, I never focused on color until I wanted to start coloring my work. Even then I kept the two separate in my head. Until these past few months, I have been alone as an artist, not really realizing there was a community out there that I could TAP into. Now, here I am, diving straight forward into the art world and realizing how far behind I really am but feeling so full of potential yet with so little time to develop myself. As a husband and a father of four, I am trying to finish my masters thesis (that goes slowly, btw) while doing correspondence courses while trying to work freelance art (which we all know takes more than the standard 40 hour work week) while trying to improve as an artist (and still have SOME time for myself - a few hours every other week or so).

I would really like some help identifying my weak areas. My progression as a digital painter can be tracked from December to now in the attached images. Save for a handful of images, they are the only works of digital painting that I have done in that time frame. If you want higher resolution of any of the images, swing by jeshields.deviantart.com.

Any feedback is welcome.