Requesting some Critique and Information

[Just_A_Tundra]

Hello, all, Tundra here.

I have been doing art for almost my whole entire life. I have drawn on regular paper, then on school things like tests and assignments, and have been improving...somewhat. A Lot of people look at my art and tell me I am a great artist, or "Ever think of selling your art?" kinds of comments. The issue I'm having here, is that sometimes, I will look at my art, and feel like there is something off about it. I have a habit of comparing my art to others, and it kind of makes me wonder if I'm ever going to be as good as some of my favorite artists. The issue here, I know, is that I shouldn't compare myself to others, and should just draw to my heart's content, but sometimes, it gets so hard to NOT compare myself to others.

Don't get me wrong, I'm NOT trying to get attention with the art I do, BUT, I am trying to satisfy my own thirst for better art skill. I love to draw what I draw, I just want to do better. I know, I know, practice makes perfect, right? Well, it doesn't seem all that simple to me. I actually feel like I have not improved much, and that can probably be seen in the art I post on FA and DeviantART. Both places hold a lot of my recent works, so feel free to take a look if you want.

What I am posting for, is a little critique, and a little help in getting some of the things I already do to look better. Here are the two artists that I find have the most BEAUTIFUL looking art I have ever seen... Kilian Kuro and Cloudsen...These two are my absolute favorites, as of the time I'm making this post. They have some of the BEST coloring skills I have seen. I look at their art, and then I look at mine, and I think, "How the heck do I do that kind of thing?" And before you ask, no, I do not want to be a copycat completely, I still want to make things my way, but there are some of their skills I hope to learn how to do. Especially the coloring, and the poses, and some of the other things that make their art so dang nice.

I'll tell you this, though, I do think I am doing better than I was back a couple of years ago. I just think my current level is just a bit stale, and needs some dang improvement. I'm NOT saying I dislike my art because of lack of favorites or comments, but I do still want to improve so I find it more appealing.

For any extra information The things I currently use...
Huion Kamvas 13, and Corel Painter 2021.
For 2D animating and 3D Modeling: Blender

I would also like to go into doing something, like a comic. This could be seen in my recent NSFW art.

I have been drawing for the longest time, but I feel like I need to be better, in order to satisfy my own thirst for quality.

If you have anything to help with writing as well, I would appreciate that as well.

 

[Servyl]

Posting so I can edit & give some critique to this later

 

[BSporn]

You're right just practice won't make you better. You need to be practising in the right way. If we're specifically looking at your colours compared to your inspirations. I'd say a couple of things to focus on are your colour choices and directions.

So basically with colour you need to get rid of the idea that a an object is a certain colour. Take your fox girl character. You have her in the same shade of red in every picture regardless of the environment. That's not really how stuff works. Colour is perceived relative to the colours around it. If you want to create a picture where the colours feel nice. The best bet is to use a colour scheme. While you're starting and still learning I'd say find a colour scheme generator online and pick something you vibe with. Then using those hues you can pick what's closest to whatever the 'real' colour of the object is.

Secondly when working with your lights and shadows, don't pick just a darker version or a lighter version of the colour your using. Light and shadows have colours and try and keep them in mind. The shadow of an object is usually the opposite colour to the colour of the light. So an orange light will have a blue shadow etc. With colouring if you're looking to do more a cel shaded look, I like to do set a layer over the characters l, set it to overlay and flood fill it with the shadow colour. Then paint in when the light hits the character with the light colour rather then draw in the shadow. It helps me figure out the 3d shape of an object a lot more.
You can always had more then one light source to help things look more full too. Bounce light is great for this. Basically the colour of the ground will reflect up and hit the characters in their shadowed areas faintly. It just really helps to sell the character connected to the area.

Third thing is to learn is when to use soft and hard shadows. General rule of thumb is round object will have a soft graduated shadow on it. Sharp corners will have a defined hard shadow. And the further the shadow is away from object casting the shadow the softer the shadow will be.
So after I do the overlay layer I tend to go over it with a blur brush to soften up the transitions and emphasise the roundness or sharpness of various objects.

These are all just general ideas not hard and fast rules or anything more just general guidelines, and the techniques are things that I've found to work for me not nesscarily the best or only ways to do it (for example instead of using overlay layers a lot of people prefer to just pick the colours they want for light and shadow directly as it offers more control)
But hopefully it gives you a good place to start exploring more.

 

[Just_A_Tundra]

You're right just practice won't make you better. You need to be practising in the right way. If we're specifically looking at your colours compared to your inspirations. I'd say a couple of things to focus on are your colour choices and directions.

So basically with colour you need to get rid of the idea that a an object is a certain colour. Take your fox girl character. You have her in the same shade of red in every picture regardless of the environment. That's not really how stuff works. Colour is perceived relative to the colours around it. If you want to create a picture where the colours feel nice. The best bet is to use a colour scheme. While you're starting and still learning I'd say find a colour scheme generator online and pick something you vibe with. Then using those hues you can pick what's closest to whatever the 'real' colour of the object is.

Secondly when working with your lights and shadows, don't pick just a darker version or a lighter version of the colour your using. Light and shadows have colours and try and keep them in mind. The shadow of an object is usually the opposite colour to the colour of the light. So an orange light will have a blue shadow etc. With colouring if you're looking to do more a cel shaded look, I like to do set a layer over the characters l, set it to overlay and flood fill it with the shadow colour. Then paint in when the light hits the character with the light colour rather then draw in the shadow. It helps me figure out the 3d shape of an object a lot more.
You can always had more then one light source to help things look more full too. Bounce light is great for this. Basically the colour of the ground will reflect up and hit the characters in their shadowed areas faintly. It just really helps to sell the character connected to the area.

Third thing is to learn is when to use soft and hard shadows. General rule of thumb is round object will have a soft graduated shadow on it. Sharp corners will have a defined hard shadow. And the further the shadow is away from object casting the shadow the softer the shadow will be.
So after I do the overlay layer I tend to go over it with a blur brush to soften up the transitions and emphasise the roundness or sharpness of various objects.

These are all just general ideas not hard and fast rules or anything more just general guidelines, and the techniques are things that I've found to work for me not nesscarily the best or only ways to do it (for example instead of using overlay layers a lot of people prefer to just pick the colours they want for light and shadow directly as it offers more control)
But hopefully it gives you a good place to start exploring more.

I very much appreciate your input. Thank you very much. The only problem, I do much better when there is also some visuals, rather than just words. So, do you have any videos that can help with this? Something like a tutorial? I don't necessarily like the time lapses as much as an actual tutorial, because the speed on those things can be rather quick, and I miss a lot of details that could help with my understanding. I have tried slowing down the speed of the playback, but it still runs by pretty dang fast. I guess I could try using my video editing software to slow it down even more, but I don't want to be considered stealing any content done by the artist involved. I wouldn't try to re-post the videos, or edit them and re-post them, or anything like that, but I think I need permission from the artist to just download and make the video slower in my software, and the best ones are usually pretty busy, and i don't want to waste their time.

 

[BSporn]

Not sure about online content I learnt most of my colour stuff from this book