So I'm new to this site and still sort of new to the furry fandom and drawing and have yet to get any comments on my art anywhere. I wasn't sure where else I could look for feedback on NSFW content, so I've decided to ask here.

If anybody could take a look at my posts and give me some honest constructive criticism, I would greatly appreciate it. I'm aware of some of my weaknesses (the eyes on my flygon, human anatomy, head posing, etc.), but I also want to know, is it too boring? Too mechanical? Unoriginal?

Additionally, none of my posts have been approved. I'm not sure if it's because they don't meet the quality standard, or something else? I'll let you guys be the judges.

Thanks in advance :).

P.S. If this isn't a good place to ask for criticism, might someone suggest where else I can look?

Posts merely not being approved (as opposed to "deleted for quality reasons") means something distinct -- that your art is in a grey area WRT quality, probably.

#1 crit : overuse of gradients destroys your forms. Basically, I understand if you want everything to be smooth, but that doesn't read properly. Organic forms like bodies contain both soft edges (overlapping areas of muscle and fat) and hard edges (where bones come close to the surface -- fingers,wrist, elbow, collarbone, ribs, pelvis, knees, ankles, toes). You seem to have a good grasp on the principles of consistent lighting, but you seem to apply them as if everything is very rounded.

Related: Your silhouettes tend to be overly simple -- a neck can be a simple section of a cone, but that actually doesn't look very necklike. There is usually at least some small suggestion of muscles and bones, and the overlapping of these results in a rhythm in the silhouette cycling between small, medium, and large features, as well as concave vs convex features.

WRT originality, I think the subject is generally misunderstood.
Things should be in your picture because you have worked out they make sense within your particular picture. They shouldn't be there just because you saw them in something else and liked them. Beyond satisfying that criteria, anything else about "originality" seems like a distraction to me.

Besides that, can you comment on your sketching process, eg. How many thumbnails / pencil sketches do you draw before settling on a design to render? What particular problems do you focus on solving?

imo everything else is pretty darn good except for anatomy. pretty much everything about is a bit off.

you should spend time doing some anatomy studies. learn how bodies work in real life before drawing fictional things. you are prone to mistakes if you start from stylished cartoony stuff before learning the basics. research muscle structures, bones and joints (like straight up google stuff like "dog skeleton" and "lion muscle anatomy" etc). when you draw something, even if its fictional, use references of real life things, copy the pose and anatomy from real photos (you just need to find pictures of things that are closest to what you are trying to draw, you can use multiple things as reference for one thing).

one good way learn how bodies work by looking up pictures of people or animals and simply trace a basic wireframe on top of it (like mark down location of joints, ribs, hip, head and draw lines between them ). actually pay attention how the body works. next, look up muscle chart for same thing ur drawing and then add muscles on your wireframe (doesnt need to be super detailed, just so that you get the idea of how the muscles are shaped and where they might cause visible creasing and bumps on surface and how they will affect on character's shape ). again, pay attention how the body works. then add skin, hair and fat and other details you find important. look up example pictures to learn how the skin (and/or possible fur) interacts with the muscles and position of the character.

_{disclaimer: example pictures are (as it says on tin) only examples and they are made under 5 mins each, they do not represent anything true or real. please do not look at me in eyes. also i havent slept in ages}

savageorange said:
Posts merely not being approved (as opposed to "deleted for quality reasons") means something distinct -- that your art is in a grey area WRT quality, probably.

#1 crit : overuse of gradients destroys your forms. Basically, I understand if you want everything to be smooth, but that doesn't read properly. Organic forms like bodies contain both soft edges (overlapping areas of muscle and fat) and hard edges (where bones come close to the surface -- fingers,wrist, elbow, collarbone, ribs, pelvis, knees, ankles, toes). You seem to have a good grasp on the principles of consistent lighting, but you seem to apply them as if everything is very rounded.

Related: Your silhouettes tend to be overly simple -- a neck can be a simple section of a cone, but that actually doesn't look very necklike. There is usually at least some small suggestion of muscles and bones, and the overlapping of these results in a rhythm in the silhouette cycling between small, medium, and large features, as well as concave vs convex features.

WRT originality, I think the subject is generally misunderstood.
Things should be in your picture because you have worked out they make sense within your particular picture. They shouldn't be there just because you saw them in something else and liked them. Beyond satisfying that criteria, anything else about "originality" seems like a distraction to me.

Besides that, can you comment on your sketching process, eg. How many thumbnails / pencil sketches do you draw before settling on a design to render? What particular problems do you focus on solving?

Thanks for the feedback, man. I appreciate it. I think my work process is a bit unorthodox compared to a lot of other artists. I usually just get an image in my head and then just try to translate that into an outline sketch. I typically only make one sketch, redoing parts of it over and over again until it looks right to me, though I often make further corrections later on down the process. I realize that probably isn't a good habit, but it's how I've been doing it for a while.

I agree that my shading is too smooth. I think I tend to underestimate the strength of light sources, so I make all the shading diffused and shy away from hard edges. I know my anatomy skills are still fairly weak as well and I think I haven't been confident enough to practice it, especially on pokémon. Overall, the main things I think I'd like to improve on are texture, natural-looking poses, expressions, head angles and perspective.

Also I'm lazy and basically never practice, so I probably should start fixing that lmao.

Montsirrat said:
Thanks for the feedback, man. I appreciate it. I think my work process is a bit unorthodox compared to a lot of other artists. I usually just get an image in my head and then just try to translate that into an outline sketch. I typically only make one sketch, redoing parts of it over and over again until it looks right to me, though I often make further corrections later on down the process. I realize that probably isn't a good habit, but it's how I've been doing it for a while.

TBH this doesn't sound particularly unusual, although it does seem to me to skip over 'working out what exactly it's doing', instead going straight to design (outline, in this case).

natural-looking poses, expressions, head angles and perspective.

Given the information that you begin with an outline sketch, I'm pretty confident you could improve all of these by doing gesture study . Personally I learnt gesture sketching from Nicolaïdes' 'Natural Way to Draw' ; Alternatively Proko has some good free material here and on Youtube.

Nicolaïdes' also has a modelling exercise which should help with texture and also light distribution.

There was another thing I was going to post, about wireframing (related to modelling), but I didn't find the exact one I wanted, only this small demo within a hair demo

My quick 2 cents to drop in here: theres' some SUPER good advice in here already, so I'm only dropping a penny or two:

some of you pictures could be a lot 'tighter'.. like:

post #1504482

Most of this picture is empty space. It's not dynamic or interesting. she's not in a neato jungle or something where the background is interesting: she's in a void.

Cropping the image to something more "like this": https://gyazo.com/a6c3ddf96e088e4da1b4912ecff71d10 results in a more interesting image.

empty space can be used very effectively-- like I think this image is very good:

post #1504784

(though, it could be BETTER) because it has some interesting aspects to the background.

ultimately, though... practice makes perfect and you've got a REALLY good basis here.

And, I will tell you this: I've never met a good successful pro artist who said "learning the basics were a waste of time" -- though I've met plenty of amateurs who said they didn't see the point of it.

SnowWolf said:
My quick 2 cents to drop in here: theres' some SUPER good advice in here already, so I'm only dropping a penny or two:

some of you pictures could be a lot 'tighter'.. like:

post #1504482

Most of this picture is empty space. It's not dynamic or interesting. she's not in a neato jungle or something where the background is interesting: she's in a void.

Cropping the image to something more "like this": https://gyazo.com/a6c3ddf96e088e4da1b4912ecff71d10 results in a more interesting image.

empty space can be used very effectively-- like I think this image is very good:

post #1504784

(though, it could be BETTER) because it has some interesting aspects to the background.

ultimately, though... practice makes perfect and you've got a REALLY good basis here.

And, I will tell you this: I've never met a good successful pro artist who said "learning the basics were a waste of time" -- though I've met plenty of amateurs who said they didn't see the point of it.

For backgrounds, I'll admit it's more out of laziness than anything. Whenever I do draw one, I usually end up spending more time on it than I'd like, so I often just keep it simple. As for dead space, I think it may be because I haven't been confident enough to bring the character front and center where you can see every little mistake.

I guess what I'm saying is that I've been pretty lazy and unmotivated, so it's probably time to kick myself in the ass and actually start practicing and put in more effort. Thanks for the feedback.

I don't think that backgrounds are necessary, as long as you have an interesting character. There are plenty of highly rated images which have a simple color or gradient for the background.

I actually encourage new artists to mostly forego backgrounds in most of their art, because the most important thing for a character artist is practicing the character work itself rather than being distracted by scenery.

What I would suggest to you is to try to draw from a photo or a real life model. Trying to capture exactly how an image looks, and being able to compare them side-by-side, is very useful for understanding how light and shadow works. Right now, you rely too much on smooth gradients, and it causes the art to look flat, particularly where there would be sharp contrast on a real object.

As an example, on the Leafeon image, where the foot would contact the ground.

But again, I think the best thing would be if, rather than trying to work on individual features, if you did what I suggested and tried to copy a real object as accurately as possible. Ideally you'd even do it in greyscale - that way you're not distracted by trying to figure out color at the same time.

Montsirrat said:
For backgrounds, I'll admit it's more out of laziness than anything. Whenever I do draw one, I usually end up spending more time on it than I'd like, so I often just keep it simple. As for dead space, I think it may be because I haven't been confident enough to bring the character front and center where you can see every little mistake.

Well, I love a good background myself, but I totally understand comfort zones-- just remember that It's good to push yourself once in a while :)

That said, I totally get your worry about making the character more up and center-- but the dead space makes it look really... unprofessional.

It makes me think of people who start drawing with a canvas of a certain size and it just.. never occurs to them to resize it, y'know?

My suggestion might be to work at a bigger size (if you don't already) so you feel more comfortable reducing it's size, and pulling the 'camera' in closer. :)

Clawdragons said:
What I would suggest to you is to try to draw from a photo or a real life model. Trying to capture exactly how an image looks, and being able to compare them side-by-side, is very useful for understanding how light and shadow works. Right now, you rely too much on smooth gradients, and it causes the art to look flat, particularly where there would be sharp contrast on a real object.

Something a lot of lil artists need to learn: There's no shame in references. There's no shame in copying. The shame is in posting the copied artwork as your own.

But geeze, if you like something, wrap your artistic fingers around it. We learn through doing. And while making your own work is composing your own song, there's nothing wrong with playing through scales, or playing other people's songs.

most artists can and will fill pages with sketches and doodles for the sake of practicing. Copying an artist's work can help you wrap your mind around how something works., just like touching something can tell you more about an object--it's shape, it's texture, it's size. When I was a little weeaboo, I would fill PAGES upon pages of my sketchbooks with eyes and faces and hands copied from my manga, from screenshots, from pictures I saw that I liked... when people would be still long enough for me to doodle them, the trees, the cat...

SnowWolf said:

Something a lot of lil artists need to learn: There's no shame in references. There's no shame in copying. The shame is in posting the copied artwork as your own.

But geeze, if you like something, wrap your artistic fingers around it. We learn through doing. And while making your own work is composing your own song, there's nothing wrong with playing through scales, or playing other people's songs.

most artists can and will fill pages with sketches and doodles for the sake of practicing. Copying an artist's work can help you wrap your mind around how something works., just like touching something can tell you more about an object--it's shape, it's texture, it's size. When I was a little weeaboo, I would fill PAGES upon pages of my sketchbooks with eyes and faces and hands copied from my manga, from screenshots, from pictures I saw that I liked... when people would be still long enough for me to doodle them, the trees, the cat...

Oh believe me I know, I totally agree. That's how I started out, copying drawings online in my sketchbook. I had a rhythm of doing it for awhile, but stopped for the most part after I started drawing digitally back around August, so it's probably time to bring dust off the ol' sketchbook and pencils and get back to work.