SourCherryJack's art Reviews on Newgrounds

[Face Study 02.03.2021]

Great tones and shapes in the shadows on this one!

BastianConst responds:

Thank - you for the feedback :D

[Orange Shock]

Great color choice on this one!

BastianConst responds:

Thank-you :D

[The Red Horror Rebuilt]

So I'm finally getting around to your request, sorry for the delay. I'm just going to leave it on this submission, but I'm looking at a lot of what you've submitted.

I don't know what your long term art goals are, so I'm going to give you fairly general tips on how to improve. If I'm off the mark in any of my assumptions on what you're shooting for, sorry but it's what I got. The impression that I get from your work is that it is very much couched in darker sci-fi and comic art. You're at a point in your art where it looks like you're breaking into more complex forms and figures. I read on your page that you're self taught and it looks like you're kind of jumping into the deep end with the character design; and that is fine. However, if you are looking to maximize your learning efficiency the best thing you can do is really work on your fundamentals. It is boring work at times and can feel like a grind, but render some shapes. Sit there and draw from life, work on depicting 3D shapes on the paper or screen. Work on pumping up your contrast and value range. Do simple perspective studies in one, two and three point perspectives, and then shade the blocks in with single and multiple light sources.
This is the fastest way to improve. It takes a lot of work still, but that's how you min-max on art skills.
Now to more targeted and immediate feedback. You use a lot of black, gray, and red in your work, but it's all very muted and tempered. In illustration, particularly comic art, the more contrast you can pump the better. If you've ever watched the Spawn animated series from the 90's that is a great example of using a lot of black against stronger lightsources to create visual interest. Do not be afraid to bathe your characters and scenes in black ink.
Looking at some of your colored work (the zombie patient, melty-face etc) and your approach is pretty simple with the color. Try utilizing a series of reds greens yellows, even some violets. Really look at face references and study what colors are present.

The robot hanging here is also too perfect, he needs surface imperfections and points of shadow should get a lot darker. look at how painted metal looks in real life, any sharp edges are likely to have a lot of paint peeled off, and there's scratches, finger prints, smudges etc even on very polished metal. Don't be afraid of really pumping up the sharpness of the edges in your shading. A hole a lot of new artists fall into is thinking it's more realistic to have very soft shading and transitions from dark to light at all times, when it just makes everything look more fluffy.

You're very much at the beginning of your art journey, I can go on forever and throw a mountain of links, concepts and tutorials at you, but what you really need to do is just draw. Draw every day; and challenge yourself often. Don't be let down if you fall short of your mental vision of what the drawing was supposed to look like, don't get discouraged from lack of visible improvement. Draw from life, use references, study fundamentals, and draw what you want. Everything you draw is helping you to improve in some way.

Dilopho-Mos responds:

Holy shit, thank you. I actually thought you had missed my request but this really makes me happy. I can't thank you enough for stopping by and telling me which parts I should work on. Thank you so much.

[Circle Portrait]

Loving those textures my man

DieterTheuns responds:

no, YOU'RE breathtaking

[My Pale Hand Pet]

Love everything about this one man! The concept, design, colors just every bit of it is awesome.

AntonM responds:

Cheers Jack! Glad you like it dude :)

[Y is this rotated?]

This is a problem that occasionally pops up when uploading from photos from phones.
To fix it open the file in a photo editing progam, MS Paint works, and rotate and scale it accordingly, crop it and then 'save as' a different file name. It should fix the issue.

BryceLydick responds:

Thx for the info

[00080]

Really fun illustration, I love the details and grodiness of the monster, and you've got a really good range of values on the guy too. Also he is framed really well with the dark mass behind him.

The big thing holding this piece back though is the presentation. Just cropping it and getting that pen out of the frame would put the focus on the art itself without any extraneous clutter,
The focus should be on the art, not on the utensils.
That being said the bright yellow at the top does look really nice with the dark blue, but being that its so divorced from the piece itself it's not being used to its full potential. Maybe pulling that yellow in to frame the monster, or to fill in the white circles on the dark mass would help in bringing it all together more. The little scribbles around should also be gotten rid of, in ms paint you can just crop some of the surrounding paper and copy/paste it over, if you don't have Photoshop or a better photo editing program.

Your work is really good, well rendered and framed all around, and it deserves the best presentation you can give it. Spending that extra time to get a perfectly straight photo, cropping it correctly, maybe adjusting the lighting and contrasts in post, and/or making sure the art is the sole focus are small sometimes tedious things that help do your art the most possible justice.

MyNameIs8 responds:

Thank you so much for the detailed feedback, I really appreciate you taking the time to write this.

I must admit that most of the choices I made were conscious, like you already mentioned it would not have been necessary to crop the image as bluntly as I did and I did have the tools to do it in a nicer or more clean way. The reason I did it like this was that I wanted to show some of the imperfections that are involved in a drawing like this. Same goes for the scribbles still present above the main character, it just happened to be the piece of paper he was drawn on.

In a way I like to embrace this messy reality of a character that sort of came to me out of nowhere, scribbled down on a notepad containing (classified) information that, when completed, just laid on the desk for a bit until one day I decided he deserved some exposure.

Having said all that.. If this approach makes my art less attractive or makes people feel like I just don't care about what I do, then I would really reconsider the choices I made. Because that is of course not what I am going for (I care deeply about my monsters). So again I really appreciate your comment and I will certainly consider this when going for messy edits again ;)

[Callsign: Taskmaster]

A simple drawn background is better than super imposing a drawing onto photograph. You're design itself isn't bad at all, but its clashing so intensely with the photo, and its being brought down because of it.
That being said if you're interested in exploring photographs as backgrounds: generally speaking, if you're going to be using a photo in a part of a drawing you should try and match the style of the photo to the style of the drawing. In the future, should you go this route, try dirtying up your character more, or getting a cleaner background image. Right now Taskmaster is looking way too clean for where he is. The level of polish and shine on his armor is at odds with the dusty city he's in making it feel even more disconnected. A good way to get around this is to use stark black and white photos and do your designs in black and white. Or you can use a specific coloring/shading technique and use a filter to adjust the photo to match your drawing, cellshading, comicbook style Ben-day dots (would fit if you're continuing with comic characters too).
Also a good rule of thumb is to take the photographs you're using yourself, because of licensing issues. Failing that, you can look for public domain images to use. (not saying this isn't, I don't know).
Hope this helps in some capacity!

HeartisttheArtist responds:

Hey, thank you very much for your honesty! This helps out a lot!

[ghibli's army]

This is really beautiful color work! I love the little spots of red interspersed throughout with the hot points. That ink brush work also goes a long way to sell an old story vibe.
I'm not terribly familiar with Miyazaki's movies but all of the figures are pretty visible. though it looks like Miyazaki himself is a bit pushed back and out of focus.
Also the framing itself can probably use some work, the frame break on the right side is a bit too substantial for the lack of 'visual weight' on the left side. This can be fixed by shifting that framing rectangle toward the right to make the unevenness more balanced, or by adding a frame break and more visual weight to the left side. Also the cutoff at the top definitely isn't ideal, but isn't breaking anything; It's just something you could watch out for when sketching out work in the future
However there is a glaring issue and that is your documentation and placement. The lighting in the picture is taking a bit away from the beautiful colorwork you've done. On top of this the framing is slightly off which can sometimes be fudged, but when you have a square frame like yours it makes it much more noticeable that the framing is off when the lines don't line up with the edges of the image itself.
To fix this I recommend waiting until daytime to take your picture, if you don't have good lighting in your house. Also try taping the paper to a wall with solid indirect light on it. Also take a bunch of pictures and adjust your angle and choose the best ones.
Also in post most basic photo editing programs (even default ones on phones) can do pretty well with adjusting lighting and shadows. If you're not tech savvy, or lack photoshop skills or program, you can ask somebody in the art forum if they can do it for you (I'm available to do it).

Hope some of that helps!

julhe responds:

Thank you so much for having taken the time to write all this and given me those advices 😁😁they are very important to me as I will be going an art school I'm September and I really want to improve 😁 so thanks a lot

[Just aimless doodles]

Lined paper is going to significantly bring down the quality and viability of anything you post up into the art portal, unless the lines are cleverly implemented into the drawing itself.
Invest in a proper sketchbook, they can get pretty cheap if you know where to shop and use coupons when buying (provided you have an arts and crafts store around you. Also higher quality paper will accept marker and inks better than lined paper.
As for the drawing itself, I understand its a doodle, but even doodles can be a time (possibly the best time) to push your understanding and form, the thing that stands out most to me in this is the lack of dimension in the back especially. The fur feels like it is cutting into the spine of the wolf, giving the structure the feeling of awkwardly being cut into.
The fur should sit on top of the back curve and pile on itself. Even in a graphic drawing like this it'll help to better define the silhouette and structure. Also the inner leg's nonexistence is very noticeable and makes it look very flat. A good method is to draw it in and just shade it in to make it pop less and it saves you having to draw any detail in it.
Looking forward to seeing the redraw!

Ambrux responds:

I understand what you're saying. I get that lined paper is a bit of a sin in the drawing world unless you do something with it and I get that the dimensions were a bit weird. I was trying to make it look a bit gaseous and as if it was disintegrating but I couldn't achieve it with paper which I was using since my iPad had died and I couldn't use my actual drawing tablet either since my computer is broken. I am using it to go back to in the future to redraw since I was just using it as a reminder so I didn't forget to draw it again soon. A bit like what groundbreakerquik said about a bank just it was more of a bad scribble. Thanks for the feedback though it really helps. I hope I don't sound like I'm just giving excuses since there aren't any.