Hey guys, I just really feel that I need to improve in art and my peers at school don't give any useful critique or anything. I also don't have a premium membership on dA so I can't ask for critique and everybody on dA gives really rubbish critique anyways (every critique I've ever seen on dA gives the artists 4-5 stars in every category).

Here's my deviantart account:

http://bluemarshmallows.deviantart.com/

But here are a few pieces that I'd particularly want critique on:

I'll list the mediums for you.

1

 Digital Painting (Photoshop CS3)

2

Digital Painting (PS CS3)

An attempt at realism.

3

Digital Painting (PS CS3)

Commissioned illustration.

4

 Digital painting (PS CS3)

Oh yeah, Adventure Time.

5

Digital Painting (PS CS3)

Star Wars fanart if you can't tell.

6

Digital Painting (PS CS3)

Del Toro inspired

7

Dry Point Etch and Watercolour.

Keep in mind this was my first etching I ever done. His anatomy is funny, but it's intentional just so you know.

Murakami inspired

8

Ink (dip pen).

9

Polymer clay.

He's broken but I love him to bits. His name is Alberto oAo

Keep in mind that I didn't have turpentine, linseed oil or any other clay softener when making this. So he's a little rough.

I have a bottle of clay softener now though xD

10

Mural (wall paint).

Sort of collaborative effort. I got someone taller to paint the features on the face and a few others helped to get this completed faster. However, I designed this and did a lot of painting and touching up.

11

Fireworks, ink (dip pen) and oil paint.

I don't really like this one but a lot of my classmates do. Some people even want to buy it but I hate this and I want to know why everyone likes it. I think they only like it because I used fireworks and oil paint.

I didn't even spend much time on it. I only spent about 45 minutes on this. Why don't people appreciate the stuff I spend 4-5 hours on?! D<

Cai Guo Qiang inspired

 ---

A bit of background...

As you can see, I'm mainly a digital painter and I do a little bit of traditional art. I personally love sculpting though. If I had more money and time I would love to further my skills in sculpting. So tips on sculpting are much loved. I'm very scruffy, I can never do anything neatly and would like to improve in my cleaness. 

My heroes are Cai Guo Qiang, Ai Wei Wei, Charles Avery, Guillermo del Toro, Hayao Miyazaki (isn't he everyone's hero?), Yoshi.taka Amano and Takashi Murakami (omg so Asian). If you know any sort of techniques I could learn that would help me become more like my idols, telling me about them is much appreciated.

So yeah. Rip them to shreds. Even if you can't say much I'd still appreciate a 'I don't like [insert picture number] because [insert reason]', or even 'here's how to improve...'

But really long angry ones will always be appreciated immensely xD

You can get nitpicky on artwork that I don't feature here as well but the reason why i didn't put them here is because either I didn't put much effort in them or I can find a million things wrong with them myself xD

I love adventure time, and the only thing I could possibly critique on is watercolors, as those are my passion, and what i've been striving on, but you don't seem to be using just watercolors, more of a mix.. so I can really give you much on that.

They all look wonderful really, on the second picture.. the dogs right eye looks a bit small. o.o Maybe that is just my crap resolution on my computer, but no harm to point it out, I suppose. 

I realy, really like the first picture because it seems to have so little shading yet still seems like it's 3-D to me. :)

The third picture is just awesome, since the tank seems very close to a real one. I know most people don't like drawing machines because of the difficulty to get it to look right.

I don't actually like adventure time, so I don't particularly like the fourth drawing. ^^; Sorry, it's still a very good painting. I think that you could use some more highlights around the horse-thing though, since it seems like there's very little. 

Also, Wishbelle, she asked for critique on HER art. She is not giving critique to others, or at least that's what I gather from her post.

Thanks for commenting guys, I was beginning to think no one cared xD

 Star, I'd love for you to give me hints on watercolours, I like using them, they're fun. I have a few purely watercolour pieces you could commet on, like this one:

 I did this a while ago (2009 I think?). I don't think I used them waterolours properly though, 'cause I just used them the same way I would use acrylic or oil paint. 

I think the dog's eyes are just fine. I prefer making small eyes when doing realistic paintings because I think larger eyes make a painting look less realistic. Small eyes project a sort of 'mature' and gentler look (to me at least xD); sort of like elepants and whales and stuff. So it's prolly smaller than the size of a real German shepherd's eyes in relation to the rest of it's head. lolidk why, I guess you know a bit more on how my brain works and how I design images and stuff.

Supermonky, I nevernotied the lack of depth in the Theodore (1st) painting. Now that I refect on that painting, I really wish I didn't rush through painting the concrete and made more of a vignette around the image, oh well xD

It took me so long to draw that tank. I wanted a bit more of a dynamic feel, so I used 2 point projection to draw it. That's why I didn't bother to colour it xD

Looking back at the horse, I really do wish that I did add a bit more light around the horse.

Wishbelle, I'd be happy to make give a few pointers or make a few tutorials. I'd like to help people with art however I can.

To Wishbelle and anyone else who wants to know how I paint:

How I paint on Photoshop

1

Sketch

Method 1:

Thumbnails >>  Development(s) >> Final sketch

Method 2:

Freely doodle and get a sketch you like

Method 3:

Get a square brush and make a silhouette or scribble in the shape of the character. This is pretty hard to understand but I haven't got a tablet on me right now because my sister's using it. I'll draw an example when I get it back.

Tips

Use action lines (google it up if you don't know what they are)

Make loads of thumbnails

 Use reference photos. Referencing is not the same as copying, it'll help you get to know how to draw certan things and get ideas for poses

2

Prep the painting

 Get the sketch (scanned or whatever) and enlarge it, make it pretty big. I dunno how big, just make it pretty big. Its too small if it's like 400 by 300 px. You'll regret making it that small.

 NO LINEART D<

Even though most digital painters make linearts, I don't because I'm bad at it and I'm too lazy xD

 Make a new la
yer on top of your sketch (you can change the opacity of the sketch if you want) and block in the painting on the new la
yer. I like to make it sort of transparent so I can see the sketch

Then make a new la
yer and set it on multiply. Get the gradient tool out and change the settings so that the gradient is like, half transparent and half the foreground colour. Pick a colour (like gray or purple or blue or red, depending on what kind of tint you want your shadows to have) and then uh.... use the tool I suppose. This is to give the image more depth and stuff. Sometimes I don't do this.

 Then merge the colour and the gradient la
yer together. You can merge the sketch with them all as well if you want.

Here is an example of what I mean (done with a mouse)

http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg100/HappyVeggies/prepwork.png

Tips

 Use the blocking out la
yer as a colour key. So you can sort out how you want it to look and stuff

If you made anatomy mistakes (ie something is too long or short or fat or something) get the lasso tool, select the part and move it.

Study colour theory. I'm not too much of an expert on it but I know a little xD

3

 Paint

Yeah, not really any way to explain it. 

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I paint on 1 la
yer. Sometimes I use multiple layers but that's only when there are multiple components (like maybe there's a bucket and a carrot in the same picture)

 Tips

Knowing how to paint with real life paints like acrylic and oil paint will help

Use Paint tool SAI if you don't understand how to paint using photoshop

If you don't understand SAI or Photoshop, use Corel Painter. But I don't understand how to use Painter either.

I like this brush pack (by Dan LuVisi, author of Last Man Standing)

 http://adonihs.deviantart.com/art/My-Brush-Pack-118954791

Don't use all of the brushes if you don't know how to use them.

Use references to help you with painting textures.

You don't need Photoshop CS3 to paint. Any version of photoshop above PS 7 is great.

For more advanced photoshop work, you can look at my tutorial collection on dA "Brain Food". That's in my favourites.
Or just click this.

My thought is you should focus on anatomy and lighting, your solid shading techniques are fine, much better than mine- I prefer painty style.

There is a tutorial in that collection that shows you how to turn pencil lines into digital lineart, which obviously works for ink lines too. Just make sure to scan it before in case you make any mistakes with your traditional inking....o_o

Morbid, I used to turn pencil lines into lineart. However, I grew to like it a lot less over time. In fact, I grew to like using lineart in general a lot less. But I'm always in a bad situation once a customer needs a lineart piece rather than a painted one xD

I love inking traditionally though. I have a set of traditional inks and brushes from China (though it way sound fancy, it only costed me about 4 dollars in total). However, I prefer to let inkings I create with them stay completely traditional without any interference with computers or whatever because the lineart tends to be too thick. Sometimes I use fineliners, butI always over do the lineart.

I've seen many of those tutorials and I've been working on anatomy a load. Recently, I've gotten very interested in the work of comic art (American mind you, mainly Batman and Sandman), and I've learnt how to draw muscular figures. However, my problem is that I wasn't very good at drawing humans in general when I started my interest in comic art and ended up making women look butch and children look like aliens. So I'm working on it.

Staryulynn, okay, just so you know. I did that piece on cartridge paper and I used cheap watercolours I got from the supermarket. I had no idea what I was doing honestly. Right now, I have some watercolour paper, it's really thick and rough and it cost me a ton (but I only got 10 sheets D<) so it might be good watercolour paper? lolidk, sometimes I take some watercolour paper from school (because I'm scared to use my one), it's not as thick as the one I have though. I also have some watercolour paint (from Daler Rowney, I suppose it's good. But I'm questioning the quality of Daler Rowney products because their acrylic paint sucks). I recently did a better watercolour painting (of an ear of corn) but I lost it, so I would show you if I knew where it is.

I personally like to use a mix of both wetting the paper and leaving it dry. For a base coat or background, I wet the paper and do a colour wash, sometimes it makes interesting patterns and textures. I usually wait for it to dry and then do the detailing with a size 0 brush later. But I hardly use watercolours because I'm cheap and bad at it xD

OMG ICE KING IS IN THAT THAR HORSE
 D;

Lovely art, though.
<3

Yesh he is >D

I really wished the Ice King wasn't really in that horse so that it could appear in more episodes though D;

Sugar, you don't need to be jealous! You're making me feel bad oAo

Provided you enjoy drawing, you shouldn't beat yourself up and compare yourself with other people. If you enjoyed yourself whilst drawing and doing art, that's enough to have something to be proud of ;D

Okies. 'Nother probrem. I'm starting to accumulate and pick pieces for my portfolio to submit for university (I'm applying for Bsc architecture). I've got only one piece so far that I'd most certainly put in. It's this one:

Oh yeah

Earl of Lemongrab

...lemongrab.

;D

bump

I still kinda need some advice for that stuff about portfolios and stuff. I'm attempting to apply to UCL (University College London) and my parents told me about how they rejected a load of students with awesome marks. So I want to try and persuade them using my portfolio. Also, ideas for portfolio pieces would be awesome xD

I'm applying for Bsc Architecture mind you xD