jacksoneligray's Sketchbook

[xelfereht]

Hey there,
Did a little paint over for you to illustrate some things you may want to keep n mind

Biggest stand out is consistency of the direction of lighting
His eye area is darker than his ankles for example. how his head is lit and not his eyes is hard to justify here
rim lighting, you can do more with it than purely create a thin outline, some forms turning towards the light
will catch more allowing you to describe the forms more clearly.
again for consistency and for composition design, gotta light that rat up
also bounce light, its a thing, it can be useful. color also gets picked up in it

tangents, visual confusion by close intersection of edges or visual read connecting lines that arent related
theres not too many here but one is the tongue tentacle  coming out of the book lining up with the strap above it
you can use overlaps to ad a bit of dimension and interest to a piece.
i moved the tentacle to block his foot a bit to get an easy read that its in front of it.
i also increased the size of it to distinguish it more from the strap and increase size of shape variety in the pic
all kinds of contrast can be used to increase the visual appeal of a piece.

about contrast, you want to decide where it goes. you have fairly sharp edge rendering throughout
there are multiple bright areas to grap that first glance, coupled with this youve taken his eyeballs out of visablity
if you close your eyes and open them on your image, see where your eyes go and how they track around the piece.
for me they get torn between the face and hands equally

by pushing back the contrast in his hands and bringing his eyes to light,
try the same close and open eyes on my paint over and maybe youl find you go straight to the face

materials, the strap on his hat is great, besides that it almost all looks like hard matte material
use hard and soft edges, hints of detail and level of detail at different scales to create a more rich piece
that feels like theres more to see beyond a glance. practice pulling the eye of the viewer around in the sequence you desire.

ok, hope that helps some