[SpiralEye]

So here's a pencil rendering of a coworker as a kid,
Chico small

and the source pic I used.
Chico pic

It's finished; I'm gettin 30 bucks for it. I told him I'd have it done in three days, but I forgot that I haven't drawn many children and it ended up taking five days. What do you think?

By the way; I prefer a 3 part critique, feel free to adopt it if it makes sense to you, or ignore it.
1. What's your initial impression?
2. Strong points of the piece?
3. Weak points?

Kudos are nice, but I'm really looking for critical advice. So give me some butt-kicking. I know there are artists on this forum that can critique this thing, so if you can't find fault with it, pass the word on to someone you think Can find ways it could improve.

Okay, I'm done telling people what to do. Thanks for your time.

Royal
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[Matthew]

I think it is a very good pencil tecnique you have.
Can�t give you crits though, I guess you are better than me.

have a nice day
Matthew

[bluetraveller]

I'm putting this up for you because it's easier to compare this way:
here's the image that you completed


Now here is where you fix things:
Without making any changes to your picture you will see that even when the image darkened (all i did was check the levels in photoshop), that you can increase the effectiveness of the image just by working on dark,medium and light tones.

I noticed that your source has a large degree of variance in tone. That's what you should be striving for.

My friend always reminds me that when drawing or painting, you're trying to DEFINE the object by the lightsource. So there should always be really dark darks and really light lights.I'm constantly told this about my own work over and over again.

Overall, the drawing is well-executed and nice to look at. Your client will be pleased.

-I'm no expert but hope this helps
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"Oh what a tangled web we weave
When first we practise to deceive"

[SolarFlux]

I agree with bluetraveller. are you using a set of pencils? Use the real dark soft b's, even 8b for the darkest parts. I think you have a pretty good likeness, just darken up the eyes, ear, shadow on the neck a bit....it should be fine...leave the light parts light, contrast!

and although I think that maybe the lightness/lack of contrast may be an "angelic" quality your trying to convey maybe???? I think the client will probably be more pleased with a flat out realistic portrayal...
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SolarFlux
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I don't know much about painting but I'm trying to learn

[SpiralEye]

Hey, I totally agree that there aren't enough dark darks. I whipped this out in 2B pencil.

Someone else mentioned that it looked like I was copying value from only parts of the image and the face ended up looking a bit assymetrical. I thought that was an interesting comment.

Lately I've been having problems with drawing black in my work. I'll have to break myself of it before it becomes a habit, I think.

What I'm really trying to do is learn a better way of rendering values in pictures. Mullins' method seems to work well for him, so I thought I'd see what I could learn from it myself.

Thanks for the crits!
Royal
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