Looking to imporve my art in any way. Any constructive criticism is welcomed.

[irisosx]

This was all done in pencil , its a spin on a octopus/human. He is a supper villain. If any one has an suggestions as to what else i could do with this guy let me know.



This guy was a thumb nail sketch of the above drawing.




I got the idea to do this guy after i looked at a women wearing a Japanese mask.



This guy i am not really too sure about , it was a school project that i had to do , its suppose to be a dragon.

[JTown]

Here's my thoughts:
1) Start a sketchbook thread on this site and continue to post in it. In time you will start to get feedback as long as you continue to post on the site.
2) Try to only post 1 pic at a time. Ofcourse you can always post a few pics dealing with the same subject or topic... but too many and it makes my job tougher to crit your work. I hate giving a list of 1001 things to fix.
3) You have a nice start with you sketches but you need to work on completing your drawings. Since you did a few of these in pencil, get an art pencil set which has some softer (b) graphites. This will help to finish your drawings.
4) Your octapus man is difficult o understand. I don't understand the shape or structure of the character. I think this needs to be figured out. What does his underlying bone structure (if any) look like?
5) You dragon is the next to most finished picture. The drop shadow and the digital coloring work well... but the human legs look poorly drawn and colored. While you used a nice gradient for the dragons body, the humans legs look all fouled up.
6) Most of all - don't quit! And start that sketchbook!

I hope this helps.

[Artem]

Hey irisosx its great that you want to get into art and this is a good site to be a part of when it comes to developing your skills. I would agree with the comment made by Jtown . Start a sketchbook thread and post there. The best advice I can give you is just to keep sketching. Sketching from imagination is a fun exercise but you will get more out of it if you have a good foundation. Sketch a LOT from life. Sketch from photos if you have to. If you are thinking about getting into digital art then I would suggest first learning a traditional medium like gouache. This will force you to learn to mix your own color and observe how color works in real life. Once you have that base it will be so much easier to apply that to your concept work. I’m telling you all this because I learned the hard way. I saw awesome concept art and just jumped right in and tried to duplicate it and always ended up frustrated. I have recently decided I am not going to attempt any more color pieces using a computer until I have learned to control oil or gouache. I know I’m just rambling and this is only my opinion….this may not suit you. But I can tell you that should be working from references (life, or photos) in order get a good foundation. Hope that helps. Keep it up!

[Hexokinase]

Welcome to CA!

Regarding the octopus man, it's great that you started with a thumbnail, but you didn't utilize it to it's full potential. Typically, you'd want to do several thumbnails where you flesh out your concept and try out several compositions. It seems to me that you jumped from the thumbnail to the illustration too hastily. Some the lines were interpretted much too literally - such as the confusing contour where his left eye should be.

Why not get some references of faces and octopi to base your design. What features will remain distinctly human? What features will be heavily influenced by an octopus.

You'll find that with great characters, their personalities are reflected in their appearance. Aladin's Jafar was an unmistakable villain in appearance alone. Figure out what personality traits you want to show through in your design. What are his beliefs, motives, and experiences? What emotion can best summarize this character? Does the illustration portray this emotion effectively. These will dictate their appearance and action.

[chaosrocks]

learn 2 proof read?
imporve?