Tell me what's wrong with my art

[Mari]

How can I get better, how could I get better traction etc.
Like, apart from changing my core style since I've drawn this way since I was like 12 (with hopefully better technical prowess now)
With traction I struggle quite a bit, and I really hate promoing social medias all the time.

My Art from this year below v

[IndigoShirtProd]

You have good color choice and make great compositions. I think it's a matter of practice, which is really hard to hear for artists of your skill level. I noticed issues with the way your hands are constructed. More practice with where the light source is on a piece. On the first and last pieces, it's hard to tell where the light is coming from. You can work more on the human form and anatomy. Keep practicing your digital painting. I can tell you're right on the brink of a breakthrough. Something is missing from each of them but I can't tell what it is. Your backgrounds and use of depth are, for the most part, solid. Just keep practicing. Look through anatomy books, tutorials, references and do some still lifes.

[JeanGuillet]

hands and eyes are the main thing I see that doesn't quite look right. isn't that always the way though? hands and eyes. why are they so complicated? You could try doing figure construction with one of various draw-through methods as well perhaps.

[Maps]

I want you to know that I’ve always thought your art was incredible since I got to the forums. Though I’m bad at reading other works since I’m often working on mine, yours always caught my eye. I think your style is unique and your color palette is incredible. You have this really cool “foggy” hue that’s super easy on the eyes.
Now, I’m not a talented artist (I connect more with writing) so I don’t have much in the way of advice. But it’s just wanted you to know that I love your style.

[punkarsenic]

while i love your colour choices, pieces often have low contrast

this makes the composition flatter and lower impact, and lessens the visual focus. contrast is a key way that you tell the reader where to look.

i applied a simple level correction to this to show how using the full range of dark and light can help a picture pop

similarly, i sometimes feel theres an overuse of smooth, textureless blending / airbrush that takes away from the drawings sense of form and texture and leaves everything a bit too smooth and floaty.

[jahillinbox]

obviously the art is strong, but strong art is only a fraction of the equation and will mean more or mean less depending on the applied intent. are these images part of a story? I'm with you on the discomfort in pimping stuff on social media...all those beggars are kinda cringey…

THE MOST IMPORTANT aspect of getting traction and success is BRANDING. You could have amazing art, amazing music, amazing stories, but if the brand isnt established, no one will be invested in you. Have you noticed heaps of unrecognized amazing art and then you'll see someone with a more pronounced social media following getting much more kudos for their artistic endeavors. This is your long game. This does involve social media and can be exhausting...especially if it's one that you're expected to participate in consistently just to keep on people's radar.

[Mari]

The contrast thing I totally get, I have a terrible habbit of toning it way down in post, even if the painting itself has better values >:U

[nostalgicroxas]

So.... random factoid. Your brain works one of two ways. Light to dark, or dark to light. Some, very few, can operate both when painting but MOST of us fall into one or the other.

Kazuki Takahashi mentions this in his "DUEL ART" artbook for YuGiOh that was released. One thing that really changed his coloring and art is going from traditional to digital. (He used to pencil draw sketches, then a copy machine to make duplicates, then ink, then more copy machine tweaks, then would ink that. Very low tech and lots of pages of the same bit of artwork.)

Volume 1, to volume... 12... I think?

To a piece I'm 90% certain was made just for DUEL ART since it wasn't the art style or promo art for that manga volume.

Ignoring the blacks - but look at the skin tone choices for depth of colors. He went from high contrast orange and brown shadows to lighter shadows oddly enough. For that specific last image, it's done to make Yugi (the center in the image) look more washed out so your eye doesn't get drawn to him, and instead focuses on the black dragon and the person kneeling (Jounouchi). Trick of color washing ftw! His very last image he did (outside of DUEL ART specials) was this, which released on KT's twitter a few days after the ending movie aired in Japan a couple of years ago.

It's another digital piece, as you can see, but notice the color balance between the foreground and background and where your eye leads. Your eye should be drawn to the center by the colors (and lines that are made, but that's another post of mine). You could put this image into grayscale and still see the contrast as what's pulling your focus.

Just a lil food for thought on improving contrasting. I personally, can't do it while drawing the piece. I habitually like softer gentler colors of shadows like this art here

DeviantArt

And while it's cute and I love it, I recognize that the hue for contrast to be a piece that keeps someone's eye (like what a promo poster should do) I just.... can't.... get.... away... This results in my trying to alter stuff later, or having shadows on a different layer so I can manually adjust that darker. Which is partially what happened here with the skin colors.

Willypuff

Just realized I lost my train of thought there. So I work light to dark. I know this based on how I color traditionally. It's really hard for me to get stuff to a flat black, or leave spaces as pure white. KT when switching to digital worked from dark to light, and that's why some of his newer artwork appears colored so much differently. I don't know if you've ever worked with copics, but they're basically the acrylics of the pen ink world- they can be super opaque and basically impossible to make them lighter once that color is down.

[Luminosophy]

The biggest thing that jumps out to me is scattered/ randomized lighting, it's sort of bouncing everywhere and not really creating any strong cohesion that draw the eye to particular areas compositionally, and as a result mutes what would be otherwise very pretty highlights because the sense of colour is very strong. Mostly you need to focus on contrast and try to go considerably darker with some choice shadows. Your 4th and 5th pictures achieve it much better - especially the 4th. However the background is largely carrying the contrast where as on the figure, while the shadows are strong, they're still placed in a randomized pattern that isn't creating a lot of depth it could otherwise have. I can get the general gist of where the lighting is falling on them, seemingly from above. But my eye isn't being guided because there's too many "patches" of light and shadow that are equally as strong as each other, it's not really following a strict logical pattern of having the traveling path of light being blocked by objects that should be in it's way.

It's a bit harder to find good resources on this although I'm sure some industry vets have YT tutorials somewhere. Here's a basic written guide if it interests you. Some black and white studies might help, because I suspect you might be tricking yourself into seeing colour contrast (which is present), but not noticing the lack of tonal values.

Light and Dark Contrast in a Painting

How Contrasting Light and Dark Creates an Explosive Effect in Art

[Mari]

Ahhh thanks, I've been struggling a lot with how...hm... "2D" my art is. It's been a huge issue for me.

[liamnaughton7]

Yeah. A bit of contrast and this would be be the shit.

[libs]

Your gesture and anatomy is a bit off and makes the characters feel unnatural.
Studying anatomy would help but I think drawing figures is a much quicker way for you to improve.

helpful links:
https://www.quickposes.com/en
https://www.posespace.com/posetool/default.aspx