Need Critique (and paintover)

[Duke Lawalevu]

Hi guys,

Need some constructive critiquing for this Korra piece. I used myself as reference.
Anybody wanna do a quick paintover?

Please let me know in the comments how I can improve some more on it.

Done in procreate.

[Pubic Enemy]

First of all, your shading is looking nicer and cleaner than before, so good job!

I'm not gonna do a paintover, partially because I'm lazy, but partially because I don't see anything that I would call an absolute problem. We can probably give you better advice if you tell us what's bothering you about the picture; e.g you're not sure if the hair shading works, you don't think it's pretty enough, something feels "off" but you're not sure what, etc.

[Duke Lawalevu]

Thanks. Her face does bother me. I’m not sure if I rendered it well enough compared to her arms. Like it looks pale.

Her hair as well. I mean, it looks ok but I feel like it could be better. Looking at it again now, it does look kinda flat on the right side. I feel like the rim light made that side look flat.

Does there need to be any folds on her brown cloth thing? I didn’t wanna make it too pronounced, I figured it was like a tough material like some buffalo skin/leather or whatever. I should have looked up some reference for leather material but I too got lazy. I wasn’t as invested in this piece tbh.

I also wanted to give her eyes a bit more of a blue glow but It didn’t look all that pretty so I turned the opacity down.

[Pubic Enemy]

See? You have a good eye for these things.

Regarding face: You're right that her arms are relatively dark and high-contrast compared to her face. It's not strictly a problem, but it could be made more consistent (either make the face's shadows darker or lighten the arms).

To get nit-picky about the face, what sticks out at me is that the balance of realistic and anime features doesn't feel quite right. You've got semi-realistic shading and details, but then her mouth is a black void, like you'd see in some particularly primitive anime. Having a visible tongue would probably help, but I think you may need to push everything either in a more consistently realistic or more consistently anime direction.

Regarding her leather-skirt thing: There doesn't -need- to be any pronounced folds on her skirt-thing, since it does look like a short piece of some tough animal hide. Exactly how realistic and textured you should make it depends on the style you're going for. An easy way to find references for leather garments of that type is to search for images of nomadic groups that live in cold places and make all of their clothes from animals, such as Chukchis or Inuits.

Actually, the part of her clothing that would benefit most from having more folds would be her gloves. Even if they're skin-tight, you would see wrinkles in bent elbows and clenched fists.

Regarding hair: I think the fact that the hair doesn't have any interior details and is shaded with a soft-ish brush only is making it look flat. Personally, I would do more line-work in the hair, or use a hard-edged brush to indicate some strands or masses, or just work in more details with that soft brush you're using. Regarding shading hair in general, I think it gets really dark in places where it shouldn't (such as on the top of her head), but I'm not certain. There's no way to get a good feel for hair except to study it from photos and life, especially if you're going for a semi-realistic look.


Other posters on this forum can probably give you more useful feedback than me. One problem here is that you're at a skill level where critiques and paintovers can only go so far; you have no real major screw-ups to correct, and you're going for a style where sheer technical mastery isn't the most important aspect. Which leads to my next question: Which artists do you look up to for style? Whatever artists you admire have probably already solved whatever stylization problems you're dealing with; you just have to look at their work more closely.

[Duke Lawalevu]

Appreciate all the feedback you’re giving me. Yeah, I currently follow Jetty Jet, Eddie Nuñez, Stanley Lau, Mohammed Agbadi, James Ghio and of course Dave Rapoza. Stanley and Jet are probably my faves.

[Pubic Enemy]

You have good taste. I hadn't heard of a couple of those guys so I looked them up. To me, your linework looks to be in the style of Eddie Nunez and Mohammed Agbadi while your shading is more in the style of Stanley Lau. I'm not sure if that's an ideal combo, but maybe you can prove me wrong and get it to work really well.

I am not a stylization expert, so how to practice at it is mostly a mystery to me. There's always improving fundamental art skillz, but you will definitely not become Artgerm Lau if you do figure studies for 10,000 hours. There's some other nebulous element, usually called "appeal" or "zazz", which apparently needs to come from your feelings and is impossible to capture by technical means. So keep working at whatever technical areas you feel you're lacking in and let the ZAZZ flow!

[John]

Need some constructive critiquing for this Korra piece. I used myself as reference.

The reason why it's difficult to critique stylized art is, there's nothing (and everything) to compare it against. It boils down to individual taste that you could easily dismiss.

If you want to know what people think about it, post it on social media (Reddit, Tumblr, etc.) and gauge the response from there. 

It's really difficult to know what works when you stylize things or even know if you're "improving" your style. One way to track your progress is to straight up imitate an artist and see how far you can fool everyone that it's that guy's work. Jim Lee's early work looked like Frank Miller and/or John Byrne. Brett Booth's early work looks like Jim Lee's (still kinda is). A lot of people started looking like Loish or Ilya Kuvshinov knockoffs but grew out of that grind.. Pick an artist. Copy. Compare. Repeat til you find a better way to do it than they do.

But if you want the some old school, regurgitated tired advice from years back? Fundamentals, Life drawing, Scott Robertson, Master Studies, Loomis which you can easily Google all of them or find within this forum.

Good luck Duke.

[Dahlia]

Hi Duke, nice piece you got there. 
What jumps out at me is that her face looks very masculine. The thick eyebrows, big nose, dark lines, and the shape of her brow contribute to this effect.
I did a little paintover to give an idea of what might help.

[Duke Lawalevu]

cool! Thanks,I appreciate that