Beautiful pieces, they definetly have an interesting relationship being presented as a group, the subtle shifts really come to life

wow! these are incredible i really like the first one its just about perfect in my option. keep up the great work 👌😉

Amazing work! Realy love the second to last one. Very expressive and love the texture and composition!

This looks awesome! I would suggest 3 things for you to try: 1- Increase the value range. You could try in a separate paper how deep you can make the shadows and how much steps you can go in the mid tones 2- Render with suggested texture. If you render fur in some strategic areas (outlines, high contrast zones, changes in form) then the brain fills the rest, resulting in a more neat result with the sensation of texture all over. 3- Draw with the texture instead of lines. I can see solid lines underneath the fur in the contours. You could draw normally, and then when it's fur time, erase the lines one at a time and make that form again but with fur. This is linked with the point 2

You capture your mood very well in these. Your hair has also been on a journey too :p To me the last two seem to say "Will this ever end" and then "that was hard but here I am."

These are really great stuff!

I really like your works! You can definitely see through your works not only how your art is improving but also the design choices that you tend to go for. These are really great stuff!

I love the May 2020 one. It's so simple yet it captivates a very interesting mood

Each iteration is more interesting than the last! You're really nailing what makes a portrait so interesting in your more recent 2... really brilliant!

Great stuff, i love the colours on the last 2!

Really nice self portraits! I can see the improvement clearly in each piece!

What a great idea - I particularly like the last two! Very beautiful!

Keep in mind that those artists spend several hours a day painting. They're not superhumanly fast (well, some may be), they're just skilled professionals. For example, think of the difference in speed and quality of your writing when you were 4 compared to your writing now. Speed sketching sessions helps a lot to improve speed. I'd sugest you try a tool like http://reference.sketchdaily.net/en and set the time per image a bit faster that what you would normally use. I've had the same questions as you, and with a lot of good practice I've been able to drastically improve my speed. At the moment, I'm more relaxed and I post when I feel like posting (although is a well known bad practice in social media).

Very nice! I really dig the style you're developing

You're doing great so far! As @ambiguity mentioned, everyone has its tastes, so I'd suggest to look for many references of people that you find attractive, and pick up what they all have in common, so then you will be able to apply those attributes to your characters. Also, pay close atention to the face and expression you want (this, again, depends on what you like), because that make a huge difference. Then, the hands may need a bit of extra work. Her right hand seems like it's pressing on a table. The hands can add ton of expression. Try relaxing that hand, even something as simple as make the fingers wrap around the volume of that leg a bit more. I would go a little further and try different positions for the entire arm and the shoulder (can be subtle and still make a lot of change in the general feeling). And her left hand is making a posing that throws me off. Try to do that with your own hands and will see what I'm talking about. Another thing to have in mind is the interaction between the bikini and the body, that at the moment, doesn't seem to press the skin.

Hey Marta! Great study! I can't tell without looking at the reference, but it seems like the likeness is spot on! What I would say stands out to me most is it feels flat. The eyes and nose don't feel like one is further than the other, the hair feels like it doesn't have any form to it, and the neck feels like it's more of a box rather than a cylinder. What I would say is to define a singular light source, and commit to it. It's extremely difficult to create form if you don't know where your light is coming from. @Marco Bucci has a great episode on Proko where he goes through the ins and outs of drawing the head from imagination. He breaks down the planes, and how light falls onto form. Painting the Head from Imagination - Lighting without Reference with Marco Bucci Hope this helps and good luck!

One thing it says in some videos on Proko is after you do the lay in and start the shading, the first thing you can do is divide your drawing in just the lights and shadows and then get shadows shaded one ever tone. Then you add the rest of the shading and you create the reflected lights by darkening the other area of the shadows and let your original two-toned shade be your reflected light's value. Then you can try to be careful to not let any of your lights get darker than any of the darks. Also, with the woman's bra the cloth would be stretched over the breasts rather than clinging to them, so the center of bra would be more flat or slightly curved rather than there being forms ending definitively at the middle. And the body is fairly flat underneath right there as well.