Criticize another art piece

[Demy]

I could have done some things better...like the trees and the campfire.

Drawing a fire with pencils is kind of difficult.

[Heliox14]

I don't mean to be blunt, but I really didn't think that it was a fire until you said it...
I guess you could also work on the eyes. I mean, eyes aren't just black orbs. There is also some white stuff in there...

[Demy]

No like in the Mother/Earthbound style the eyes kind of are black orbs. There aren't really any highlights. Here I'll show you.

I can draw realistic eyes if that's what you're wondering: https://www.instagram.com/p/BZAH_MdlLas/

Though I see what you mean. It does look kind of flat though that might just be how the style for those games would transfer over to a 2D platform. Maybe I should have put in a highlight in the eye anyway to make it look more 3 dimensional. It might look kind of weird though. I was trying to stay faithful to the style.

And yeah, that was my first attempt at drawing a fire with a pencil. Not happy with how it turned out. I probably should have used a pen to outline it or something. Or maybe I just need to get better at drawing fires.

[sprakdesigns]

Hey! My advice is too not be afraid on pressing hard with the pencil, and making dark lines. You've got some nice lines in the main figure, but the background and your fire you drew very lightly, maybe in hope of not taking away from the main figure, but really all you do when you do that is make the background elements seem invisible/not clear in what they are. Don't be afraid of dark lines! It will make the white contrast you've got going in some sections even stronger. Nice character pose!

[Demy]

Yeah I had a similar criticism on one of my other artworks. The "background being too light" issue is mainly on the grass right? Cause that's where I did it a bit too much.

For the campfire, I think I might just use a pen for that next time. Not too sure how to approach drawing a campfire with a pencil. Though I might just need to get better at drawing fires.

So basically you're saying that I need to work on making my shading varied?

[Hodge]

The composition is not bad, though the shapes of some of those trees are a bit funny. Yeah there's not enough contrast in values, especially for a campfire drawing. The background and foreground values are too similar so they blend together, though I can tell that you want to lead the eye to the character and not the background. The anatomy is a bit off, but I like that you're going for a stylized look. Now you can take all of what I said with a grain a salt since I don't know what your vision was, but would you be ok with a digital redraw if that would help?

[Demy]

I could try to do a digital redraw. That would probably solve some of the issues I had when drawing a campfire. Not the best at digital art though. Doing that might be good practice though.

In what areas is the anatomy a bit off? Is it the hands? Its probably the hands. They're drawn a bit poorly now that I look at it again. Had a strangely difficult time with the hands for this pose even though I used a reference.

Yeah I need to work on my value contrast. I seem to be okay with value contrast on the character but on the background I kind of screw up.

[lilydusk]

Not a drawing crit per se, but how about doing some post-scanning edits to clean up the levels, so the image is cleaner and sharper.

[Hodge]

Oh I meant I could do the redraw, I'm horrible at traditional mediums but I could better explain my points visually with a quick digital painting. I often see you asking for critiques which is admirable and I'm always willing to help. Also, I think you might've struggled with the hands because of the perspective. With this kind of stylized drawing I think focusing on 3D shapes would be really helpful.

[shazzbaa]

The main reason the fire doesn't work is the lighting of everything else, to be honest!

If you grab any photo of fire, even during the daytime, and turn it grayscale --

you'll see that the fire is the brightest thing in the image. In a grayscale image, it's going to be defined by the shading around it.

I printed out the image so I could kinda show you what I mean (on the left):

this is really rough shading without thinking about texture or anything, but just adding dark shadows without changing much about the fire, it suddenly looks, well, like a fire! You have to make the shadows of your image very dark in order to make the light parts look bright.

As for the bit on the right, there's some notes about drawing an environment and hiding the horizon line, and also really rough anatomy tweaks -- I tried doing this pose myself, and discovered that having your knees spread that far apart while kneeling is, uh, really uncomfortable. It felt more natural to be closer to this:

with one knee sort of pointed right at the camera if the other was going to be pointed away.

In general, I think the biggest thing I'd advise as crit is to look up what stuff looks like! Even if you're not going to Reference A Photo Exactly, it can help your brain a lot to double-check and make sure you know what something looks like. Strike your characters' poses in the mirror real quick to make sure they're comfortable. Google "campfire" just to see what it looks like. Google "forest." Google some kinds of trees! Not assuming that you know what stuff looks like and taking a look at it before you try to draw it, even for simple stuff, is a really good habit to get into!

[sprakdesigns]

Varied shading would be great to practice! But even on the fire, you can see how light the lines are. One the guys shoulder, the outlines are very dark and defined. Try to make all elements of your drawing as strongly outlined as that shoulder.

I'd also suggest to look at how other artists draw fires with lines! These are all black and white campfire, no weak soft lines, some a little more simple then others, but all clearly fire!
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[XzynderVexymous]

Nicely done! I like the eye design.

[Hodge]

Man fire really is difficult and I'm so lazy lol. So I did a quick digital painting to demonstrate I suppose what I was talking about values. When I think of a scene with fire, I imagine high contrast in values and using lighting and shadows to add volume to objects in a piece as well as to highlight the focal points. Anyways, pay no attention to my shitty anatomy haha . . . hopefully this helps a bit, other people have also given great advice that everyone can use, and I also had fun~