/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

>>4288624
Hay man, I'm not the best, but I hope this helps. I ended up spending a lot of time on this paintover but it was fun.

I think you're on the right track. Like the other anon said, for hair, you don't want to define every strand, you really just want to imply it. Especially for straight hair, you should think of it like thin, long ribbons. I changed the hair to black because it was easier for me , but I hope you get the idea. I don't know what reference you're using, maybe her hair really had that much volume, but I didn't find it appealing so I flattened it a bit. I think James Gurney had a good post about it on his old blog if you want to find out more.

The face is pretty good, if a bit long. If you're trying to draw a pretty girl, less is always more, you don't need to define the the nose nostrils, chin and lips with lines, let the shading to that for you. Admittedly, I changed the way she looked a lot, but you're the artist, you get to choose what you want to change and idealize. Maybe study the planes of the face more.

Push your values a bit more, try starting on a toned canvas that's a mid tone. It gives you the ability to go up and down in value, and really helps to make your highlights and shadows pop. Your eyes work by using the surrounding context and values to determine the values of other things within the image. A value surrounded by a darker value will look much brighter than when that exact same value is surrounded by a brighter value. Use this to your advantage, and never forget that everything you draw is simply an optical illusion. It's a trick on the eye, and it's important to understand how the eye works if you want to fool it. The first few chapters of Harold Speed's old book The Practice and Science of Drawing has some good info on that sort of stuff.