Hey @monkeyxmonkey! I’ll start with your questions: 1. I could read the whole story quickly and with no confusion, so yeah, to me, it’s pretty clear what’s going on! Even in this rough sketch phase. By the way, I personally love visual storytelling, silent films and practical comedy, so, in my point of view, this works pretty well with no speech. 2. To me, it doesn’t feel boring at all. The angles are dynamic, the story itself provokes curiosity, and not sure if you intended this to be a comic page or a storyboard for an audiovisual piece, but I noticed you also varied the proportions of the frames in the overall page compositions, so that’s cool, especially if it’s meant to be a graphic piece. Dynamic composition techniques are awesome! But not using them doesn’t necessarily mean the piece itself would turn out boring or “unsuccessful” - there’s a lot of stuff (and also a lot of subjetiveness) at play. Allan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s Watchmen is almost entirely composed in a “staccato” style (regular frames in a gridded page - for some, considered a “boring” way to compose because it uses a lot of repetition), and Watchmen is known to be an icon of success in the world of comics. 3. My spontaneous reaction at the end was to smile while thinking “Medo!” (“fear” in Portuguese) - so yeah, I guess you pulled off a good combination of creepy and funny, at least to me. As a suggestion, I’d say you could take it further and develop the drawings some more. Perhaps do a finished version with ink, and maybe even some color? Whatever you choose, as you develop it, try to give some special attention to the set and the props - establish a solid sense of perspective, use good reference and design them with care! They may not be as much the star of the story as the characters in this case (well, the remote kind of is, but the rest, not so much), but anyway, when we take some time to nicely figure out sets and props, it helps immerse us in the story and makes the final piece stronger and more compelling as a whole than when we don’t. Hope this helps! Keep up the good work! o/

@John Carter I agree with @Yngwie and I think these actually look pretty good! They feel loose and sort of quick (in a good way), but then they also show a nice solid sense of construction (and that’s not an easy balance to manage). Good job and thanks for sharing! And yeah, the guy with the open mouth totally reminded me of one of Rockwell’s illustrations too. 🙂

Here are a few more tv doodles- this time it's Vincent Price from the movie "The House on Haunted Hill." I tried to slow myself down and make more careful measurement observations, but they turned out a bit stiff as a result. The doodle on the left was an attempt at a caricature of Mr. Price. Hmmm- more study is needed :-)

So cool, Josh! I really like how you synthesize the visual patterns of the reference into your designs!

@Davi Lo How cool! This is solid work, your time certainly paid off. I think @Rebecca Shay makes a pretty good point considering the lighting, so I'd like to add up to that! I'm not biologically qualified to discuss color temperature though (I'm partially colorblind 🙈), but I can talk about the overall lighting scheme and the value relationships. Basically, what I find is that a bit more contrast on the character might help bring up the scene! So I made a grayscale paint-over on top of Rebecca's edition of your original work, and here's what I added: . I made the bounce light areas a bit more bright, especially on her torso and clothes (when I squint at the painting, I feel like this extra contrast on the bounce lights makes it more clear to read the beautiful twist of her pose); . Added a rim light on the right side of the character to make sense with the big sunlight coming from behind (and it also makes her figure pop some more); . Lightened up the background a little more, especially on the surroundings of the character so that the darker values on her could gain more power; . And I added a few tweaks to try to make the scene feel more natural: a bit more sub-surface scattering on the drapes on her shoulder; a little light bleed on the strong highlight of the sword; and a bit more blur on the background for a stronger sense of atmosphere. Hope this gets the point across! Since I'm not a painter or lighting specialist, there might be more stuff to work on... but I tried my best, and these are the things I could find right now. Hope this helps!! Let me know if you have any questions or thoughts. Best of luck! And keep up the amazing work! o/

Hey, here are my ear studies. Would be happy about some feedback :)

Hello! I want to break into the animation industry as a character designer or visual development artist for feature films. I've been learning design fundamentals from Schoolism lectures, books, and mentorships. I'd love to hear your feedback on my portfolio!

Hi everyone! I'm Arianna Calabretta from Italy. I studied drawing and illustration at Comic School of Palermo. Since then I worked as freelancer with some publishing houses. I would really like to work as character designer or as background artist. Thank you so much in advance for looking at my portfolio. https://www.instagram.com/arianna_calabretta/

Hi Stan, read about portfolio review from your instagram page. I am a wildlife artist have been full time artist since 3 years, have been working on various mediums. I mainly work with traditional mediums. When it comes to colors i tend to struggle and keep works pending for long periods of time. It would be very helpful if experts can review my portfolio and guide me! Thank you for the opportunity!

Hey, everyone, I accidentally cleared all my dashboard notifications 🙈 So I'm not able to see if anyone tagged me on a post recently (between last Wednesday and today). Please feel free to tag me again if you were waiting for a response from me and didn't get it. Sorry for any inconvenience! 😅

Hello everyone. Some ear studies from the lesson videos. Some of the shapes not as accurate as I would like but continuing to practice along with doing practice with the draw a box class. Hopefully everyone is doing well! @Liandro @Jesper Axelsson @Luigi Manese

Hey @Mark Sukaiti! I can totally relate to your concern and felt the same way for a long time. I'm a cartoonist, so I absolutely love sketching loosely, generating ideas, iterating and messing around with a creative process. For us who are more into this "fast-paced" creative part of making art (as opposed to mastering detail-oriented picture-making techniques), polishing and rendering can feel like a boring thing to spend long hours on. However, as we scroll down our feeds and see so many skillful "eye candy" artwork across the Internet, we can't help but wonder if THAT's what we should be working on instead... But from what I've learned so far in life and in art, what I truly believe now is for each one to do their own thing, whatever it is. So I'd say don't worry about making your art in a way to please what you think other people might like better - do the art that pleases you and show it, then the people who share similar interests will come to you. And there definitely is plenty of artistic value (aesthetic and even technical) in sketching and concept, so if that's what we like the most, let's go for it - let's get awesome at it and let people know that's what we're really interested in. Of course, this doesn't mean we get lazy or neglectful. There's knowledge and technique to good sketching and concept, so I definitely encourage everyone (myself included) to study and learn as much as possible, even - and, sometimes, especially - things that are out of our comfort zone. I've had a share of studies on human anatomy, realistic lighting, painting, textures... and, even though these things might not show a lot in my cartoons, I feel like they definitely create a grounding support for my process and for my art to express what I want in the way I want. Nowadays, I tend to face these as two separate activities: studying to level up whatever skills I feel I need to work on at the moment, regardless my personal creative preferences; and creating artwork to convey my own ideas in the style, medium and process that I prefer, regardless the skills or techniques involved. Hopefully this makes sense! :) And here's a quick list of some awesome artists off the top of my mind whose work is more focused on either line art, sketching and/or concept (and, in the case of some cartoonists, is also far from "well-polished") - maybe it can help inspire you: . Nico Marlet . Alex Woo . Bill Schwab . Charles Schulz . Sergio Aragones . Bob Mankoff . Shane Glines . Stephen Silver . Mike Mattesi . Diego Lucia . Taylor Krahenbul . Roz Chast . Natalie Nourigat . Andy Estrada . Laerte . Bill Watterson (and sure there are many others I didn't remember to include. And, by the way, this list is in a completely random order - they're not listed by my personal preference or by the "quality" of their art or anything, I just spilled them out erratically as I remembered). Hope this helps! Let me know if you have questions or other thoughts about this. Best of luck in your art journey! o/

Sorry, it wasn't uploading so now you get this three times!!

@Jo Sheridan Hey, Jo! Things have sure gotten more exciting around here, haha! I thought I had an idea of how much a newborn would demand from us parents, but, wow... you only know once you experience the real deal. Anyway, I've been slowing down on work a bit, it's true, but still trying to find a little time to show up here now and then. So let's get to it! I think your composition looks good, I really like how you managed the contrast in his hair's textures on the different sides of the portrait, as well as the values on the background. I think you achieved a great degree of likeness, and I'd even say you enhanced his facial expression (I like the expression in your drawing better than in the reference). Two things that call my attention as areas that could have adjustments made are: 1) The nose: I think its lacking a little bit of structure. I see it lacks structure in the reference too - the photo is a front view, and the lighting isn't helping show volume on the nose. So maybe you could go beyond the reference a little bit and give a slightly stronger hint of the anatomical planes. 2) The eyes: it seems to me they might have gotten a tiny bit too big. I really like how defined the edges and contrasts are though, it really helps draw our attention there. One more thing is I think you did a great job designing the shape and forms of the hair mass with all these loose strands and thin locks - definitely not an easy part! Hope this helps. Let me know if you have other thoughts! Keep it up o/

Hey @Jonas Gezels! Looks like all your questions orbit the core of perspective basics - Vanishing points and horizon line/eye level are the most crucial concepts to undserstand perspective. I think it's great that you're having these doubts, it means you're in the middle of the learning process. I'll try to answer your questions as objectively as possible, although what I think will really help you is that you spend some more time studying these subjects until you feel them making more sense in your mind and in your drawings. . Yes, "horizon" and "eye level" roughly refer to the same thing - it's the height from where the viewer views the scene. An image in perspective (be it a drawing, a painting, a photo etc.) is always an image that represents a specific point of view - it's like where seeing the scene through someone's eyes. If this someone is a person standing up on the ground and staring straight ahead, we'll get a perspective that is close to the ordinary human experience of sight in daily life; but if the person goes up or down (ducks on the ground, flies on a hang-glider... or whatever), their eye level (a.k.a. the horizon of their perspective) will change accordingly. . Can objects in the same drawing have different horizon lines? No! For each scene in perspective, there's always only 1 horizon. I like to think of the horizon not as something "out there", but as a property of the viewer's eye. Also, rather than a line, I prefer imagining the horizon as an imaginary plane that crosses the viewer's eye level and divides what he sees into upward and downward, as illustrated by Phil Metzger in this first image I attached. (The words in Spanish read: nível de vision = "eye level"; "this part of the tree is above eye level"; "this part of the tree is below eye level"). . And is it possible for objects to have different vanishing points than others? Yes, totally! In a scene in perspective, the horizon is just one, but the vanishing points can be multiple! Actually, it's more common that each object will have their own set of vanishing points (rather than all objects in the scene follow the same points all the time). A simple way to think of it is like this: if two different objects are aligned in the scene, they will have the same vanishing points; but whenever they're unaligned, each one will have their own set of different vanishing points (see second image attached). Now imagine a scene with several unaligned objects and you'll see that the amount of vanishing points in a scene is pretty much unlimited! Finally, I have to recommend two of the best perspective resources I know of today: - CtrlPaint's Perspective sketching series: https://ctrlpaint.myshopify.com/collections/foundation-skills/products/perspective-sketching-1-the-basics - Marshall Vandruff's 1994 perspective series: http://marshallart.com/SHOP/all-products/all-videos/1994-perspective-drawing-series/ Hope this helps! Let me know in case you have other questions. Best regards o/

@Lea There's this thing Matt Kohr (the guy from http://www.ctrlpaint.com) calls "contrast creep" - it's when the spots of value contrast are spread across the piece without any stronger concentrated area, which results in the feeling that the piece looks distracting or lacks a focal point. In one of his courses, he shows an example of this with a painting of his own, then shows a remake of the same painting fixing that issue and achieving a more balanced global contrast (see first image attached). In your painting (which is actually pretty cool already!), when I squint my eyes and look at it, that's exactly what I notice: a lot of bright little areas that kind of diffuse the eye from a defined focal point (just like @Jan D. also noticed). An effective way to solve this would be to organize your composition into "areas of value": each part of the painting could prioritize a certain range of the value spectrum so that the different planes or spaces wouldn't compete with each other, and the overall contrast could feel more balanced and organized. In the second image I attached, there's a couple of examples of paintings where this technique is properly used: the one on the top is by Caravaggio, - although its crops with the overlaying histogram were also taken from one of Matt Kohr's courses - and the one on the bottom is by the man himself @Stan Prokopenko. An interesting thing to notice is that, in both paintings, although the value range is neatly organized according to the planes or spaces in the composition, the part of the painting where there is actually a wide value range (where lights and darks contrast more strongly) is the focal point (in Stan's painting, the bears; and in Caravaggio's, the face of the character to the left). Hope this helps! Hope it gives you insights on ways to improve your work. Let me know in case you have questions! Best regards o/

I did some 30 sec gestures. I’m not sure if I’m doing good or not; let me know if I’m doing alright or not. @Liandro

Hey @Jesper Axelsson, @Luigi Manese and @Liandro Just posting again to let you know I haven’t dropped off the map! I noticed this course doesn’t have much assignments … so it’s kind of choose your own adventure 😆. Anyway, here are some eyes I did. I didn’t really measure on these, was just trying to get a feel for it based on the video. Hope you all are doing well! Others feel free to comment as well. Thanks.

@Geert-Jan Hendriks I agree with @Nicole Lee 's shrewd feedback! You asked if there was progress since your older post, right? Well, in my personal opinion, yes, quite some progress seems to have happened between the two posts! You seem to have gained greater control of your linework, and the overall value contrast seems more balanced in the newer drawings. Your rendering skills also seem finer and richer when it comes to halftones and textures. The earlier portraits were already pretty cool (personally, I like a "sketchy-rough" look), but, in terms of control of your medium and your technique, I'd say you've definitely progressed a bunch. About the proportion issue of the head on the second drawing Nicole noticed, I THINK it might be due to a subtle incongruency between the angles of the facial feature lines and the upper wrinkles and bone structure on the forehead, which might make it feel like the perspective would be slightly off. I'm not 100% sure there's all there is to it, but that's what I can notice right now in order to add some complement to Nicole's observation. In the image I attached, I attempted to illustrate some possible adjustments. There's also a little extra thing I see: on the second drawing, while the entire head is in 3/4 view, the nose feels a little bit like it's being viewed from the side. This is a tricky bit, but perhaps shading the minor planes of the nose more accurately and adding a subtle hint of the right wing of the nose might help give it a more coherent construction with the overall head. By the way, just in case you haven't watched How to Draw a Nose – Anatomy and Structure, Stan gives some valuable tips about drawing the major and minor planes of the nose, which might be helpful not only with this perspective thing I mentioned, but also with making the nose look more 3D in the first drawing, as Nicole pointed out. In the image I attached, I included a rough draw-over of the nose too (sorry that my anatomy is not as awesome as Stan's, but hopefully, seen along with his video lesson's thorough explanations, my draw-over will make sense). As for the lips, a quick view of How to Draw Lips – Anatomy and Structure could also come in handy regarding this "making it look 3D" business. One more thing I'd like to risk suggesting is that you consider getting an overview on How to Draw Ears – Anatomy and Structure - I feel like the ears (both in your older and newer drawings) could have a little more anatomical/structural development. Draw-over of the ear also included in the image attached. Finally, by reading Nicole's clever mention of "shading eggs / round surfaces", I couldn't help but remember Dorian Iten's videos, so I'll leave the inks here in case you haven't seen them and would like to check out: . Mind-Blowing Realistic Shading Tricks . Fix Your Shading Mistakes - Egg Challenge Critiques Hope this all helps! Feel free to let me know in case you have any other questions or thoughts. Congrats on your progress so far, keep it up! And best of luck in your art journey \o/

I'm new with graphite...