Beau's Sketchbook

[beau]

Hey Beau, good stuff here!

I really like your barbarian girl concept, sensing the Akira Toriyama vibe haha.
The painting shines, the colour palette connects very well and the low saturation aesthetic is a very clever solution.

Some portions of the drawing are really captivating; right arm and hand, the sword, the collar fur, the cape, the hair and the way you detail the fur. Those are very rich spots for your drawing´s favour.

Now, what i see that breaks that harmony is the face, which is one of the most highlighted parts of every illustration/ concept that has characters in it. 
The features are drawed well but the problem is that they do not connect; the eyes seem not alligned, neither the mouth,  nose and chin. I cannot touch exactly on what it is, the proportion, the alligment, i just feel that something is not entirely closing.
The maneirisms and porportions of the girl are a bit masculine, not sure if it was the goal.

Hope that you don´t mind that i made a luce drawover to illustrate some of the points.


Designwise, a few things can increase the readability;
1. the sword base could be bigger for readability sake
2. something like an accessory for the sword to give her some personality
3. Give more shape and personality for the fur.
4. Give more form to the lef, even though covered with large pants and fur boots.



Just my two cents man but anyway, fantastic work!

Thanks for the critique. Yes, I really wanted to have her feel like a dragon quest character. It's a d&d character, a human barbarian girl, and she's tough and kind of a loner. I wanted to give her the feeling that she goes around picking up different things from places, so her gear is haphazard, if that makes sense? Her wide stance is to show toughness and physical fortitude. So yes on the masculinity, but the face gave me a lot of trouble. I'm not good with head anatomy, from the skull to the mouth to the chin, and I need to study it more, probably going to tonight. Yeah she was supposed to be tilting her head slightly toward the camera, and I guess I got confused by that angle. I couldn't seem to find the right placement for the features, so after a while I said screw it and did whatever. Should I redraw it? I probably will in any case, it doesn't feel great.

What did you mean by the legs not being connected? I've always had a problem with legs, and then with grounding the feet. Her foot pointing at us Feels weird, but it's like I can't tell where it needs to fit in the pose. Keeping in mind this is a free commission, which I agree, f*cking stupid of me to have offered (lol oops) I don't want to spend too much more time on fixing areas I've moved on from.

My thing with doing it for free is he's a friend, he has D&D friends that need commissions doe, so it's like a trade for marketing. But I didn't realize how dumb that was to not take anything, until about 16 hours into the piece lol.