[Harnish Studios]

Okay. This is something I've been working on on and off for a couple weeks. Would appreciate some critique asap before going further. Would also appreciate some hints on how to improve the coloring (ugh).
http://www.harnishstudios.com/images/birddrawing.jpg

- Brian

[Skagge]

Looks nice so far.. keep up the good work!
//Skagge

[Gecko]

Hey.

First of all, you should get rid of the pencil lines underneath as fast as possible. Start painting the shadows, area at a time. Only when you have painted in all the shadows there are, you may start defining the individual feathers.

What I see now is some parts are in shadow, but some that should aren't (the whole right wing, the "wingpit" as in armpit, bottom of head and neck). Check the beak, define where it ends. It also seems as if the tail has too few feathers in it (normally 10-12).

Wings look good. All the feather groups exist and seem to have enough feathers on them, but they give the impression of an old, gone-through-a-lot bird.

The utmost feathers on the wings are normally very sharp-edged and usually very pointy (the ends of the feathers usually form a nice curve), too. On birds the structure of the wings is very strong, the feathers have to be able to take a lot of beating back and forth.

The legs are funny, like some elastic rubber, give her knees :)
The head seems too big for the rest of the bird, but it could look that because the white paint has gone over the contour in the chin area.

I think this should cover it, I'll be happy to draw some pointers if you want.

------------------
Gecko
[email protected]
GeckoArt.Net

[Liquid!]

Damn. This is the 2nd time I tried to post a response to this. The first time, my entire system crashed, and the entire post went fwoosh, the second time explorer hung itself.

Anyhow, hope 3rd time is the charm. I won't go into lengthy detail here. I think you have a great start, however it seems you're being a bit timid with the brush. Secondly, there isn't really that much to critique yet, since its really just started. The main thing I would suggest is to define your 'big' shapes first. I did a quicky mockup, hope it helps...

PS: I know the lighting of the 'sun' isn't really affecting the coloring on the bird... it was somewhat of an afterthought, and I really didn't want to confuse the pic with altering the shades of color on the bird necessarily. Hope that sounds reasonable.

I'll post two versions, since the big one is a bit sloppy and the general ideas may not be getting across...

The normal size.



The shrunk size




Hope this is useful.

-c