I need critical Evaluation.

[TrundleBee]

Hello I have been drawing a lot recently but I can never finish anything. My skills are severely lacking in many areas and I need your help to understand what looks off about my image.
This is just a generic girl character at the beach with a dog. I could especially use insight on color, light, perspective and anatomy. Draw overs and comments GREATLY appreciated.

[Elwell]

The face and bottle are looking pretty good. You can take it much farther than this in your own. Stop making excuses and finish it.

[arenhaus]

Be sure to know where your light source is, and where the shadows fall. Be sure to vary the color; you're making every object mostly one color with shading, which is a good recipe to make something fake. Add up the proper color of the objects with the colors of direct and ambient light, at least - and bear in mind real objects usually aren't uniform in color. The human skin decidedly has color variation over different body parts.

[TrundleBee]

The face and bottle are looking pretty good. You can take it much farther than this in your own. Stop making excuses and finish it.

Very True. I just get so over-whelmed with all the things that look wonky I didn't want to keep pushing through without some comments.You are right. Thank you for your words.

[TrundleBee]

Be sure to know where your light source is, and where the shadows fall. Be sure to vary the color; you're making every object mostly one color with shading, which is a good recipe to make something fake. Add up the proper color of the objects with the colors of direct and ambient light, at least - and bear in mind real objects usually aren't uniform in color. The human skin decidedly has color variation over different body parts.

Yes, It doesn't really look like she is being hit with sunlight ...I think I need to strengthen the shadows and add some of those tiny intense highlights ( I am just worried about making her look oily or plastic). I know my colors are too uniform I have the worst trouble with building a realistic palette for things....every time I try to add additional colors I mess up on the hue, intensity, or value and it's kind of hard for me to read what is exactly wrong with the color. This is why I am making paintings like these....to improve my understanding of color. Thank you for your words, I appreciate you taking the time to have a look.

[Giacomo]

...It doesn't really look like she is being hit with sunlight ...I think I need to strengthen the shadows and add some of those tiny intense highlights...every time I try to add additional colors I mess up on the hue, intensity, or value and it's kind of hard for me to read what is exactly wrong with the color.

The way to move forward on this stuff is to study photos. FYI: Using the eyedropper tool to sample colors from an actual photo and establish a key for the overall picture is NOT "cheating."

[anew.rafa]

The way to move forward on this stuff is to study photos.."

Can somebody chime in on this? I would like to know more

[Giacomo]

Can somebody chime in on this? I would like to know more

The basic idea is to get in the habit of seeing how shapes of color create the illusion of light and shadow. JPEG attached below...it is unspeakably crude in execution, but hopefully you can see how using colors eyedroppered from an actual photo starts to convey some sense of light shining on a 3D form.

[TrundleBee]

The basic idea is to get in the habit of seeing how shapes of color create the illusion of light and shadow. JPEG attached below...it is unspeakably crude in execution, but hopefully you can see how using colors eyedroppered from an actual photo starts to convey some sense of light shining on a 3D form.

This is really helpful!

[humboldt squid]

The drawing seems pretty good, but you're working with a very narrow value range. Push your values - lighter lights and darker darks. Also start thinking about the mood your color scheme is conveying. Right now,the earth-toned color scheme seems quiet and almost depressing - which isn't what I think you're going for.
Compositionally it seems to be okay to me, good use of rising diagonals, but then again composition is one of my weak areas.

[arenhaus]

The way to move forward on this stuff is to study photos.

Here, I'll fix that for you:

The way to move forward on this stuff is to study real life.

That's what you meant, right?

[Giacomo]

That's what you meant, right?

In my opinion, working from both photos and life is necessary to becoming a skilled realistic artist. But you knew that already.

[hitnrun]

Photo's are VERY helpful - unless you can get in front of a cougar and growl in the right way to say "stay there, I'm a human trying to draw you".

If you can get the resource in real life, check out real life. If it's a wild animal hell bent on eating you, check out a photo.

[Black Spot]

The trouble with photos is that they make skin look various shades of orange when it is anything but. Elwell gave you the best advice. You can muck about with colours later.

[dpaint]

In my opinion, working from both photos and life is necessary to becoming a skilled realistic artist. But you knew that already.

If you are going to use photos and sample them make sure you don't make decisions for large areas based on one sample color of a few pixels. The color of skin, like most other things is affected by the things around it and sampling only gives you a tiny area. You could use sampling for the difference between values of light and dark but photo values are really skewed, so again more observation from life will help.