Bad Artist Seeking Advice

[mars 4,861]

 

Hiya! So this is a drawing I worked on for pretty much the entire day (I kept changing things).
I'd like some advice on how to make it better. I don't know anything about shading (I guessed, I know, that's probably NOT what you're suppose to do) so maybe you can tell me how to fix that?   
Also, ugh, I've been practicing my hooves but they STILL look awful.

 

Any advice please?  

 

edit: this topic was my 200th post!! yay!

Edited March 5, 2014 by Creativity

[Mlpfan185 1,763]

Something was here. Something was here. Something was here. 

Edited October 10, 2018 by NONAME

[dedacct6 2,591]

Definitely a great start, I pretty much would have said the same thing as Detective Butler.

[ErBoi 498]

What Detective Butler said.

The shading in particular is a little all over.  The light direction is different on some parts of the body than others.  For instance, the shape and bulk of the shading on the front left leg almost makes it look concave.

Hope you don't mind that I've scribbled all over your drawing, but I gave a shot at outlining how I would shade it:

It's always good to consider how certain overlapping body parts will cast shadows as well, like the belly over the back right leg.

 

Aside from that, I would say the most noticeable flaw I see is your back legs are a bit too thick.

[mars 4,861]

 

 

1. Drop the 'bad artist' mode of thought. It is an acidic mindset that will lead you to quitting. Remember, you do art to make YOU happy. If you are having fun, that is all that matters.

 

Sorry, sometimes I do find little self-worth in my art.   I'll try to get rid of that mentality!
I will also follow your advice. Thank you so much your input!

 

 

What Detective Butler said.

The shading in particular is a little all over.  The light direction is different on some parts of the body than others.  For instance, the shape and bulk of the shading on the front left leg almost makes it look concave.

Hope you don't mind that I've scribbled all over your drawing, but I gave a shot at outlining how I would shade it:

It's always good to consider how certain overlapping body parts will cast shadows as well, like the belly over the back right leg.

 

Aside from that, I would say the most noticeable flaw I see is your back legs are a bit too thick.

Thank you! I really do have to practice my shading. I'm a visual learner, so thank you for taking your time to show me where I made my shading errors. 

[Simon 4,556]

Okay, first of all disclosure: I am not an artist and have no artistic ability myself.  What my knowledge of art comes from is being surrounded by art and artists my entire life.  So on one hand I sort of have no ground to speak on, and on the other hand I can give some unique insight because I'm unbiased and disinterested.  So you can feel free to listen to the actual artists instead of me, but I thought I'd toss out my advice anyway.

 

Anyways that aside, I think you have a lot of potential.  I know potential can be an ugly word, but it's good, especially coming from me.  Some people, like myself, have no artistic talent and will never have potential to be a great artist, but you do, so that's a good thing.  Once you refine your skills a little more, you'll be producing wonderful art.

 

That being said, there are of course some areas to work on.  First of all is shading.  Shading is an area so many people tend to gloss over or not think about in depth, but it really can make or break a picture.  You see, we're all exposed to shading on a constant basis in our lives.  People are so used to shading that on a subconscious level, we can almost instantaneously notice when shading is wrong in a piece of art.  The thing is, since it is something we do at more of a subconscious level, instead of actually noticing mistakes, we just get a feel that something is off.  If you've ever heard someone say that a piece of artwork was so good that it felt real, that was because it passed that subconscious test of things like shading and color that tell our brains whether or not something looks right.  The problem with artists is it can be difficult to recognize the actual mistakes you're making.  So like others have eluded to, you need to change your way of looking at shadows, and actually recognize what the shadows are doing so that you can understand what is wrong.

 

The best way to do this is to start to really understand how shadows and shading work in real life.  You mentioned you're a visual learner.  One thing I would recommend that any really good artist does is use a live model.  Do yourself a giant favor and go out and buy a pony figure... something like one of the funko figures.  Then using a flashlight or other light source, take pictures showing lighting coming from different angles and compare them.  Don't just try and duplicate the shadows in your art... instead understand how the colors and shadows change so you can begin to understand shadows and do them naturally.  The problem with a lot of artists is that they'll do shadows good, but they learned by replication, and can really only draw shadows from a few angles for that reason.  The problem comes into play when they start adding in backgrounds and there's a light source in the drawing itself like a lamp or the sun.  Then they have to make the shadows make sense in the picture, and it all goes down the drain.

 

Besides shading, I'd work on refining your style.  I think the big issue here is you have two contrasting styles going on in the same picture.  The body is done with a more refined look with shading and flat colors, where the mane and tail are done with more of a rough sketch work with unfinished lines and white bleeding through.  I think what you were trying to do was replicate the look of hair, but the problem is that it needs to be much more refined to do that properly.  If you look at a picture of someone with long hair, you'll notice lines and unique shadows, but what you'll also see is that for the most part the overall area of the hair looks solid.  In your picture on the other hand, there is white mixed in with the lines which gives it that feeling of a rough sketch.  If you're trying for a refined style, I would start with a flat color for the hair and then add in the texture afterwards to avoid the issue of having white bleed through unnaturally.  On the other hand if you want to draw in a rougher style, that's fine too!  Both are perfectly wonderful styles of artwork.  You just need to choose one and be consistent throughout the picture so that it doesn't feel like part of it was finished and part of it wasn't.

 

The last thing I'd say is study the anatomy of the characters a bit more.  I think overall your anatomy was pretty good, but there were some areas like the neck, hooves and horn that feel a bit off.  The neck for one seems to narrow too much towards the top.  You have a drastic angle showing on one side that isn't reflected in the heads positioning or on the other side of the neck, so while we can't see the top of the neck because of the mane, it would end up being far too narrow if we could see it all.  The best way to solve this problem is to finish the lines and then erase them later.  When you end a line where it is covered by hair, it makes it more difficult to imagine whether or not the neck looks natural.  So draw the entire body without hair so you know it's right, and then add in the mane erasing lines as necessary.  Similarly with the horn, I think the positioning and angle are a bit off and don't connect with the head naturally.  I actually don't think your hooves are that bad, the biggest thing is that they feel like they're different sizes slightly.  I didn't measure them myself, but I recommend you do.  Again, when you take pictures of the figure, you can measure the hooves from different angles and understand how they change in size due to depth perception.  Then you'll naturally begin to have better sizing as you continue to practice.

 

Anyway, those are my thoughts.  I always feel a bit odd giving advice to artists because I honestly have no talent of my own, but I hope that it helped anyway!

 

And as a final note, you're not a bad artist at all!  I know it's easy to feel bad about your own accomplishments, but you really do have a ton of talent and need to remind yourself of that so that you don't get discouraged!