Shadow's Art :) New work pg 13

[Shadowsfade]

It's been over a day so I'll just do a new post! Here's the lineart, with the addition of panthers! If anyone happens to be good at animal anatomy to critique haha...

[Rubisko]

I don't think that cats, especially big cats, have such round heads and noses. I think they are more flat on top, but you should be able to find a good reference no probs on google. I also think that one panther should be enough, the one behind her to be specific. Instead you could try to add vegetation or such in the foreground if you plan to continue to work on it.
Other than that she has come a long way since your first sketch There's still the "crab pincer" problem with the hand someone mentioned on a previous page, and I think you could gain from fixing that. Try to use your own hand as reference, someone around you should be able to help you take a picture too I hope

[Gedeon]

USE REFERENCES!!! Trust me i just started using them and its a LOT easier. The anatomy is pretty solid, the neck is too wide. And i dont think you need that line on the body of the lion. Other then that pretty good.

[Demonfyre]

Looking good I think Rubisko and Ged get the point across about using references and the panthers so I shall point out some things I noticed;

The neck is very thick, I think you could cut at least a third off of it to get it closer to normal proportions The left arm has a large dip between the shoulder and the arm, smooth it out and make it so there is less of a bump, I made this mistake quite frequently and it can lead to the feeling of the arm being dislocated from the rest of the body. The waist could be thinned down a bit if you wanted, I think this a personal and stylistic choice though

Hope that helped

[Shadowsfade]

Thanks for the comments guys. I see how the neck looks kinda thin. I think the problem is with her looking to the side like that, it kinda cuts off where the neck connects, like it would actually slope in more. Maybe i'll try moving the slope further to the right so it doesnt look so thick. Rub, thanks for the comment about the roundness of the cats - i went back to the ref and saw that the top of it's head wasnt as round as I had made it (: and i'll try removing the front one, I think it would focus more attention on the girl too, thanks!
Ged - which line on the body do you mean?
Demon - the shoulder is slightly raised as the arm is bent back slightly, but I have placed the dip a bit too far to the left, it's not what her whole shoulder will be! hopefully when i move the neck over, i'll readjust it and it should sort it out

thanks everyone!

[Shadowsfade]

I'm back again lol! I haven't really done much drawing tbh.. naughty naughty. But I thought now that Rio re-enabled uploading from the computer, I'd at least showyou guys my final version of that picture whilst I try and find something else to post!!

I know that the far background isn't the best, but I was trying to get it done for the following day, and it was late evening, so I just left it like that which I was happy enough with. I spent hours on this pic and won't be re-editing it, but I would still really appreciate comments, especially on the background, to help in the future also, hopefully I finally managed to sort out that darn neck! lol

[nisaren]

So I know that I'm really really late to the party. But I thought that maybe a redline would help you with solving the neck issue on Nidalee. I know you're done with the picture but just for future reference.



I think if you raised the head higher it would have solved a lot of problems. At any rate, hope this helps even though you don't plan on going back to it.

Edit: Sorry I just realized that I didn't really comment on the finished background. My only suggestion with this is that backgrounds take practice. Practice doing landscapes, drawing buildings, etc from reference. Build up your mental image library and then you'll be able to put together excellent landscapes because you have a clear idea of how they actually look.

Another thing that may help is to include the background when planning the initial composition. Oftentimes it's fairly obvious when someone puts a lot of effort into the main subject of the painting and then adds the background as an afterthought.

[Demonfyre]

Looking good SF I have little to add but I will bring to your attention that the leaves on the tree branches on the tree right behind the character look a bit odd. The way you have put them on makes them look like more like its a red moss or lichen over the branch rather than actual leaves, which isnt helped by the way it spreads across the whole branch. This is the same for the top of the tree where it looks like the leaves have been stuck on with glue. I'm not sure how you would go about resolving this problem as I've not even begin work on backgrounds but I would put my money on what Nisaren said, use lots of references how this helped a bit

[Shadowsfade]

@Nis - help is always welcome hehe! Though on the ref the head did seem lower down, I agree with you and think for the aesthetics of the picture I should have raised it similar to how you suggested - I shall keep this in mind for the future! Thanks also for your tips on backgrounds, I think I'm going to try and do a lot more work on them so that should help

@Demon - I see what you mean about the mossy-ness, next time I shall try and adjust that again, I've drawn few trees so lots to work on lol I only used digital ref not real pics ref which I should have really :P so next time I will


I havent had access to my computer for a week, so today I finished up a pic I had been working on before then -

[Demonfyre]

Looking good the only things I can see is that the eyes appear to be the same size even though her face is turned and that her hair begins to become a bit more tendril like on the top of the left hand side. You could also have added maybe a bit more shading on her shirt, it looks a bit flat. Nice job SF the background looks good and she has an awesome clothing set