Please help me to improve my drawing

[Alyce Natalie]

Hi guys, I'm back in this forum. With my absence for several weeks for mainland priorities, I have improved a lot in my art. I really love and enjoy playing Pirate101, and I draw my Swashbuckler Pirate on a piece of paper.

I like to play in 'surrealism' and 'realistic' style of drawing, and I'm planning to make a new drawing with combinations of pencil, pencil colors, water colors, and artist pastel colors. This time, I will show you the steps of my drawing (I draw in front of my computer) and the descriptions of my drawing.

1. First of all, I begin to sketch the shape of the drawing and color some part of them in grayscale.


2. Then, the surrealistic effect starts here. I begin to color the hair in brown, and the clothes in pink. Also, I color the rings, the blue sleeves (or what should I say), and the red ribbon belt.


3. I begin to color the grass ground in green with Water Color.


4. After my previous color dry, I begin to color the grass with dark green (combination of dark blue) and add some details with black color.


5. The magic tricks starts here. I use my artist pastel color to color the grass-shadow in black.


6. I'm starting to color the skies first (because pastel color texture is transparent and softer than pencil, so I believe pencil could cover it up) in blue. I got pretty messed up with the sky, so I decided to color the feathers branches in blue (to make more surrealistic effect in my drawing).


7. Finally, I color the tall-like grasses and add details, and it's done!


Thank you for reading everyone, and I really appreciate for taking your time to comment my drawing.

[_Stormy_]

First off I just want to say welcome back to the forums, Alyce! It is so great to see you again!

Your drawings are absolutely beautiful, Alyce! You did an amazing job! I love all the detail you used, especially in the outfit and hat. I love your drawing style!

[Coconut Tulippetal]

Flitterific drawing, Alyce! I love the background you created as well as the the amount of detail you used.

[Rainbowswirls]

Welcome back, Alyce, and also amazing background!

This is sort of off topic, but I just wanted to say that I've been a little inactive on here lately, too. I'm back now, though!

[56GreyJars]

Great to have you back Alyce!

The title of this thread says to help you to improve on your drawing, I'll just assume you're looking for critiques..? If not please disregard x.x

I think the area that could use the most improvement is your coloring method. Let's take a look at the hair. Don't get me wrong, it looks great, but there's always room for improvement. The sketch is fantastic. The gray scaling looks great. However, if you're planning to both grayscale and color on the same piece, they could throw each other off, you know what I mean? True, grayscaling is a great way to get an overall idea of the lighting and texture, but putting color on top of that (please don't take this to offense) damages all the work and time you've put into gray scaling because it masks your original values. I would choose either grayscaling alone or coloring alone.

I'm just going to assume that for you, grayscaling is a way to get values into your piece. But don't worry, there are other ways to do that. Just a suggesttion-- you could try using colored pencils to achieve depth, light, and shadow when you fill in your linework, instead of graphite pencils; the colors will be more vibrant and the piece will be much more crisp without the grey meshing with the colors. Instead of pressing hard/light with one base color, try a range of colors. For example, for your pink sleeves, you could try adding a hint of red/purple for the shadows and a tiny bit of yellow for the highlights, in addition to the pink.

I hope that wasn't too hard to understand @.@

Overall I think you've improved so much. It makes me so happy to see young artists making significant and noticeable progress. Keep up the great work!

[Night Wish]

It's great to have you back, Alyce!

Wonderful artwork! I love the detail you put into her outfit and especially her hat. The background you drew is flitterific as well.

[carolite]

Alyce! You're back!

Your drawing is absolutely gorgeous! I like how you left some parts gray.
You must teach me how to draw! I need to know this!