help me figure out what is wrong with my art

[tellars]

hi guys!

i need help from people who have never seen my art. for quite a while i have been feeling that there is something wrong with my art pieces and i can't pinpoint what is it. at first i thought it was a skill issue and started intensively learning anatomy, stylization, color theory, etc. i even finished a couple of online courses.

however, that feeling didn't go away. you see, i'm aiming to make art my job and either become popular and live off of commissions or work an industry job. and for all of those i need to have a certain skill level which i seem to lack..?

im going to post a couple of my recent pieces, please share if you find anything 'off' with them - be it some technical mistakes or maybe a poor choice of colours or shapes, etc. i feel like you don't have to be an professional or even an artist all together to see if something off in anyone's pieces, so that's why im asking for help here.

im sorry if this looks like im trying to farm for attention - it's not the intention i have. i tried asking friends about this and none of them said that there was anything wrong, but i feel like they might be biased... thank you so much to anyone who will comment on this thread, it's genuinely really important to me.

here are my works:

[larvapuppy]

Your art is really good, I don't see anything "wrong" with it per se. Your anatomy, shading, and use of colour are great and I envy your skill with those things as someone who is working on improving. But I have a couple of suggestions that you might want to play around with if you're looking for different results.

It's hard to tell from just a few pieces, but what I notice about your style is that you're going for a semi-realistic look, and you do painted shading. I think if you added some more detail and texture to your shading it would fit really well with your style and kick things up a notch. Also maybe adding some highlights would help add dimension and contrast, because for these pieces they seem to mostly have two tones (the local/base color/tone and the shadow, if I'm explaining that right?) and I don't see a lot of highlights. If you add sharper highlights on things like armour, characters' eyes, jewelry and zippers and things like that, it makes the material those objects are made of look more real and pop more.

Another thing (and I am also working on this) is that you can try pushing facial expressions/posing more to create a more emotional and dynamic effect. The ones you have here are good but maybe a little blank. Especially in the third picture I think you could make the character in armour look extra evil / striking if you made him bare his teeth a little and add some eyebrow action. But these are your characters and that might not be your intent, etc, so ignore me if I'm wrong!! 

Also, your characters are really cool, I'm sure we'd all love to hear more about them! 

[Corrupted Unicorn]

Alright, I'll give this a go. I'm going to be very direct to the point of risking being blunt, but this is because I want to make myself clear so it can help you.

From what I can tell, I find that, generally, there's not enough forehead on your characters. Depending of what guide you use, the forehead takes 1/3 of the face to actually half of the cranium (without the jaw). Try nudging a character's eyes a little down the face (even if it's just by taking an already-made picture and using a tool like Liquify), just to see if you like that better.

In a similar vein, I'd also try to push the lips from the first and last pictures a little more up the face, because I feel these characters don't have enough chin.

Next, on your second picture, there's this sensation of weightlessness. I don't feel the scarred character is quite laying on that bed, nor the second one is quite laying on them; they're both sort of floating. It's kinda like the second character has some sort of invisible pillow supporting their pelvis area, because I feel that part oughta sink a bit more. When it comes to giving characters weight, try to exaggerate poses - even a supposedely relaxed one like this one where they're resting and chilling together. Don't be afraid to sink them and to push those poses further down, against gravity.

Maybe I'm being extra nitpicky about this one, but I don't know how to feel about your cheeks in profile (attached image so you know what I'm talking about). The way you go about drawing this area makes me think most of the mass of the cheek is high up near the eye area, and there's quite a stretch from there to the mouth. I don't know how I'd go about it with precision, so I'd recommend you to try different ways to draw the cheeks from this angle.

With all that said, I must say that I can tell you've been studying anatomy and how to draw in general, and I'm quite impressed by your artwork's technical skill so far. Art's journey is never over, but I'm glad you came to this forum to ask, and I hope my advice helps.

[tellars]

Your art is really good, I don't see anything "wrong" with it per se. Your anatomy, shading, and use of colour are great and I envy your skill with those things as someone who is working on improving. But I have a couple of suggestions that you might want to play around with if you're looking for different results.

It's hard to tell from just a few pieces, but what I notice about your style is that you're going for a semi-realistic look, and you do painted shading. I think if you added some more detail and texture to your shading it would fit really well with your style and kick things up a notch. Also maybe adding some highlights would help add dimension and contrast, because for these pieces they seem to mostly have two tones (the local/base color/tone and the shadow, if I'm explaining that right?) and I don't see a lot of highlights. If you add sharper highlights on things like armour, characters' eyes, jewelry and zippers and things like that, it makes the material those objects are made of look more real and pop more.

Another thing (and I am also working on this) is that you can try pushing facial expressions/posing more to create a more emotional and dynamic effect. The ones you have here are good but maybe a little blank. Especially in the third picture I think you could make the character in armour look extra evil / striking if you made him bare his teeth a little and add some eyebrow action. But these are your characters and that might not be your intent, etc, so ignore me if I'm wrong!! 

Also, your characters are really cool, I'm sure we'd all love to hear more about them! 

thank you so much for this comment!

about adding more detail to shading - could you maybe give some examples to how it can be executed? i think i slightly understand what you mean, but not completely

i totally get the point about facial expressions, but in the piece with the knight it wasn't my intent to make him look evil ;; i think i might try making more stuff where there are characters with more expressive faces since i think i mainly work in 'half-tones' in that regard, if i can say it like that

thank you so much again for the nice words i really appreciate that 

[tellars]

Alright, I'll give this a go. I'm going to be very direct to the point of risking being blunt, but this is because I want to make myself clear so it can help you.

From what I can tell, I find that, generally, there's not enough forehead on your characters. Depending of what guide you use, the forehead takes 1/3 of the face to actually half of the cranium (without the jaw). Try nudging a character's eyes a little down the face (even if it's just by taking an already-made picture and using a tool like Liquify), just to see if you like that better.

In a similar vein, I'd also try to push the lips from the first and last pictures a little more up the face, because I feel these characters don't have enough chin.

Next, on your second picture, there's this sensation of weightlessness. I don't feel the scarred character is quite laying on that bed, nor the second one is quite laying on them; they're both sort of floating. It's kinda like the second character has some sort of invisible pillow supporting their pelvis area, because I feel that part oughta sink a bit more. When it comes to giving characters weight, try to exaggerate poses - even a supposedely relaxed one like this one where they're resting and chilling together. Don't be afraid to sink them and to push those poses further down, against gravity.

Maybe I'm being extra nitpicky about this one, but I don't know how to feel about your cheeks in profile (attached image so you know what I'm talking about). The way you go about drawing this area makes me think most of the mass of the cheek is high up near the eye area, and there's quite a stretch from there to the mouth. I don't know how I'd go about it with precision, so I'd recommend you to try different ways to draw the cheeks from this angle.

With all that said, I must say that I can tell you've been studying anatomy and how to draw in general, and I'm quite impressed by your artwork's technical skill so far. Art's journey is never over, but I'm glad you came to this forum to ask, and I hope my advice helps.

thank you so much for this detailed reply! it was genuinely very insightful

i had similar problems in the past where i couldn't figure out what was wrong with my anatomy bc for me it looked different (i. e. i tended to draw the eyes to close to each other, despite knowing that there should be enough room for another eye in between them) so it really helps that you pointed out some details that are off.

i completely agree about the piece where two characters lay together - i was definitely struggling with the pose and ended up using a 3d model, which slightly helped, but i needed to exaggerate the pose more for it to look natural

thank you so much again! i don't find this comment rude or blunt, it was very much needed ahah

[larvapuppy]

about adding more detail to shading - could you maybe give some examples to how it can be executed? i think i slightly understand what you mean, but not completely

I just mean that you can use shading to show the texture of the different materials more. Like the metal/armour example I mentioned- smooth shading with a lot of contrast, reflectiveness and sharp highlights. For things like clothing they usually are less shiny but they might have a rough texture, a fluffy texture, etc depending on what kind of fabric it is. For example, the jacket in the 4th image could be a hoodie or it could be a rain jacket, we can't tell because there isn't enough visual information about the texture. For hair you can try showing some of the individual strands and doing more layers / values of shading and highlights. The way you are doing shading now is fine but I'd consider it more similar to cel shading (even though you're using a soft brush) as there is minimal texture. I think things like these would go really well with your style.

(again this is something I know I have to work on too so don't take this as preaching, but as a suggestion    )

[tellars]

I just mean that you can use shading to show the texture of the different materials more. Like the metal/armour example I mentioned- smooth shading with a lot of contrast, reflectiveness and sharp highlights. For things like clothing they usually are less shiny but they might have a rough texture, a fluffy texture, etc depending on what kind of fabric it is. For example, the jacket in the 4th image could be a hoodie or it could be a rain jacket, we can't tell because there isn't enough visual information about the texture. For hair you can try showing some of the individual strands and doing more layers / values of shading and highlights. The way you are doing shading now is fine but I'd consider it more similar to cel shading (even though you're using a soft brush) as there is minimal texture. I think things like these would go really well with your style.

(again this is something I know I have to work on too so don't take this as preaching, but as a suggestion    )

ohh i get it yeah
yeah i generally tend to oversimplify my shading due to the fact that i usually am in a hurry to draw (thank you adult life and work...) but i totally agree giving more attention to detail is key