Warning: May contain brutal honesty. by
Ellipsis Flood
on 2012-07-29 16:02:00 UTC
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Somehow, these drawings strike me as uncanny. I can't pinpoint it, but I think it's the fact that the faces are so large. The facial features seem kinda lost in them.
Also, the varying degree of realism. You're trying really hard with the eyes while having barely any shading or dynamics. I don't think a tutorial for facial expression helps that much before you've got the face itself down. Start slowly.
Hoom. by
Lilac Lielac
on 2012-07-26 22:40:00 UTC
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(If I have been a tactless pillock and/or made dumb blanket statements at any point in this, please inform me. Concrit the concrit, so to speak.)
As an amateur artist myself, and as an artist who specializes in drawing face both from the front and in profile, I say this: Look at people's faces. For eye placement, look at people's faces. Look at tutorials for how to draw the human face written by people who show knowledge of how the body is put together in real life. Eyes are, approximately, in the middle of the head. The 'upside-down egg' way of drawing the head from the front is one I've found works, as well as drawing a circle and then the jaw. I draw guidelines through the horizontal and vertical middles and it helps keeps things in place. I look at tutorials, I watch tutorials, and I practice imitating what I see.
Specific crit: you draw eyes too high. Nearly everything else looks about right, but the misplaced eyes are the center of focus and they make the whole image look off. The eyebrows do look right, they're at about the height of the top of the ears, but the eyes are squeezed in under them.
You also draw mouths too wide to be quite right; the general rule of thumb I've picked up is that the very edges of the mouth fall squarely under the middle of the pupil when the eyes are facing straight forward, they actually look a bit smaller, and in more stylized styles mouths are often smaller still.
I say again, look at people and draw them, look at tutorials and imitate the general principles, and do what you're already doing and practice.