HOME | DD

heylorlass — Redline for Vampykit

Published: 2011-05-07 23:10:44 +0000 UTC; Views: 431; Favourites: 11; Downloads: 8
Redirect to original
Description For

Hi,
I'm sorry your picture wasn't submitted to the group, but I hope you're not too offended by this. We have a lot of art submitted to the group that even though they are quite good, they don't quite make it in. Yours is one of them here that was on the borderline, which was a shame.

But! I can try and help a bit if you like to give you a little critique.

Looking at your gallery overall, I can see you're improving quickly with every picture you do and this is great! You need to just keep at it and pushing yourself to do the best you can and try to learn something new from every picture you do.

First off, I like your background very much. The colours are very accurate as to how they would be in real life at that time of night. The sun has just gone down, the stars are coming out and there's an afterglow in the sky. I love the idea as a colour scheme. Its very pretty. It suits the picture well.


The cats head in profile can be difficult to draw. Have a look at this photograph, I think its the closest to what you were trying to achieve [link]
When first learning to draw anything you HAVE to keep looking at reference photos as closely as possible.

There are a few things that could be done to improve your Bluestar picture. Your overall anatomy is quite good. You've got the basic head shape down with strong shapes.

A few things I noticed:
*Cat's noses are triangles, not rounded like a dog's. I know you were aiming to get a triangle shape, but I think where it first went a bit wrong is in your construction lines of the face.

Basically, the rule is on any face of any animal- including humans- the eye, the nose, and the mouth line up.
If you drew lines underneath these features, these lines will all be parallel. Even though the curve of the mouth and eye don't look like they match up to those parallel lines, they still follow the general shape. I hope you can see that from above^

*The eyes could be more of a triangle shape themselves. The eye you've drawn looks as though it would fit onto a face of a cat looking at it head on.

Unfortunately eyes are one of those difficult things. They say that eyes are the windows to the soul. This is true, once you've got an understanding of them and draw them well, the rest of the picture all comes together.
Its amazing how fast it can happen . Cats eye pupils in the dark are big and round to take in lots of light. I haven't shown that in my red-line

Another thing you can work on is lighting and shading. This is also a very difficult thing to get right, I know I struggle enough with it.
The cat looks far too bright for its setting.
Even if the cat is in the moonlight, moonlight is very pale and dull. You need to be brave and put the brightness way down.
Also don't be afraid to shade darker.
The rule of thumb for shading is:
If the light source is brigher, the shading is harsher
If the light source is duller, the shading is softer.

This picture is at night, so you can get away with softer shading, which you've done here, but it would be better if the shading had a bit more contrast.

Don't lose heart! Art is a constant learning process
Keep looking at other people's art, tutorials, and looking at cats in real life if possible and videos.
Related content
Comments: 4

VampyKit [2011-05-07 23:34:09 +0000 UTC]

Thank you very much for the critique!
I really appreciate the time that you applied to analyzing my piece and I look forward to making some improvements to my picture so that it can be placed in your group!

Honestly I was a little bit upset before, but no worries! I can clearly see the mistakes I made (thanks to your critique...did I thank you yet!?) and hopefully after I make those improvements I'll be ready to try again ^^
Thank you again!

👍: 0 ⏩: 1

heylorlass In reply to VampyKit [2011-05-07 23:55:25 +0000 UTC]

Awww
Thats okay

Its really hard to try and manage an advanced art group trying to keep people from being offended
Unfortunately there isn't enough time in the day to go through most people's art and explain why their piece didn't quite make it in.
I feel bad about declining every single picture that doesn't quite make it.

Keep drawing and drawing and have a look in our tutorial section at the club! We have some amazing ones in there all about cats.
Plus I have a huge folder of all sorts of tutorials that might inspire you in my personal favourites
[link]

👍: 0 ⏩: 1

VampyKit In reply to heylorlass [2011-05-08 00:11:09 +0000 UTC]

Thank you again!

Hopefully most of the people who get rejected take it as a chance to work harder and improve their technique, rather than taking offense to it? Rejection is something that we all as artists (and human beings!) should be accustomed to.

I will be sure to take a look at them and hopefully they can help me improve ^^

👍: 0 ⏩: 1

VampyKit In reply to VampyKit [2011-05-08 22:37:04 +0000 UTC]

Are these improvements something like what you had in mind?
[link]

I tried to keep the background as close to the original as possible since you said that you liked that part ^^

Some other notable changes-
I made the nose less round and the eyes more triangular (to show that you are looking at the cat from the side)
The picture is darker overall, but the contrast between the dark and light areas is greater.

Also, as a sort of reply to your critique about the size of the pupils needing to be larger (since Bluestar is clearly in the dark) I'd like to ask you to zoom in as close as you can on the eye. Can you see that cat-like design in the reflected stars? Also please note the rays of light coming from the top left corner of the picture. The idea is that a member of Starclan has actually appeared in front of her (well...above her XD) and is casting a light on her face, so her pupils would not be huge (like they should be in the dark), but rather they are a size more appropriate for a moderate amount of light
I hope I explained that well enough >w<

Anyway, based on these improvements, would you say that it's ready for resubmittal? Or should I make further improvements before I even bother with trying to resubmit it?

👍: 0 ⏩: 0