New pencil drawing

[chriss2d]

I haven't done a pencil shaded piece in a long time. This is a commission piece I did for a friend. He's a big pencil drawing fan and specifically asked for this style. This is also about as realistic as I can draw too. I hope you guys like it. But if you have any pointers or observations about drawing in pencil, I'd love to hear from you

[David Hamilton]

Dude...trust me when I say this:

You don't need any tips or help when it comes to pencil drawings. OK?...Especially not from me.

You got a handle on it, my brotha.

Great work. Your friend should be very happy.

Feel free to post more.


David

[Noel Murphy]

Pretty good *grumble grumble*
It looks good but I would've put the quality on the jpeg compression higher than zero. File sizes on greyscale jpegs is small anyway and I don't imagine anyone here would steal it if that's the reason. I do imagine anyone doing it would become an outcast pretty quick.
The only thing that catches my critical eye is maybe you could separate the characters by either a dark outline or a white outline. They don't appear separate enough.
And the kid looks like it's got a 50's bra on it's bonce:p
The last commision from a friend I got was my Mistress Denna. She tried to rip me off which isn't too bad as she was a bitch anyway and I got a good picture out of it.
must stop ranting
Keep it up fella

[chriss2d]

Thanks for the compliments guys. Noel, your'e right about the outline thing. I thought about putting a white line there to seperate them, but I got a little rushed and wussed out. As far as the girls head piece goes, I don't know what I was thinking on that one. I kinda designed the characters as I went and didn't think too much about that head piece until it was finished. It does kinda look like those cone bras huh? I'm having a hard time with getting my images down to the allowed size. I keep trying to get a better quality, but every time I do, I get the "too large" message. Any pointers on how to get smaller files without losing the quality?
Thanks for the posts guys!

[Noel Murphy]

I've never seen anything that gives a max file size but I do know that Jon's last attach was way larger than yours. It was about 70k I think. My Ogre was 96k so I don't know what's goin' on Mekon. I saved it at 100dpi at quality 4 so you'll just have to keep trying different versions or mail admin.
:confused:

[Matt Drake]

First- who saw Little Nicky? Remember Kevin Nealon with boobs on his head? That was funny.

Compression tips:

If you have Photoshop 5.5 or later, use Save For Web. You can minimize files till they look like 90's underwear models (small, I mean. I promise no more undergarment jokes). You can see what's happening to your file while you make your changes. You could probably get this file down to about 50K, or less. I've gotten grayscale images this size as small as 25K, though I probably could not with this image due to its wide variation in gradients.

Also, you could reduce the image size. It's too tall for most monitors, unless you're working on a professional-style monitor. I can only see half of it at a time.

Second, consider using GIF compression, since the piece is grayscale. Compare the picture as an 8-color GIF and as a JPG. I am virtually certain that you could make this much more manageable, especially if you have that killer Photoshop feature.

And my final comment is: man, that is sweet. That dude is pissed. Chris, you are one Hell of an artist.

Matt Drake
www.spectrepress.com

[chriss2d]

Thanks for the heads up Matt. I actually do use the save for web feature in Photoshop, but I'm a computer idiot so maybe I just need to experiment some more. I'll definitely try the gif compression. That's one way I haven't tried yet. I apologize to everyone for the crumby scan. I'll try to do better in the future. Thanks for the compliment, Matt!
Sorry:(

[Jon H]

Awesome piece of work. I dont mind the kid's headdress so much. It has a historical feel.

I would be loath to put any heavier lines in, as I think its a sensitive piece of work. I didn't really have any problem seperating out the figures. I think your anatomy carries that.


You're a very talented man Chris, and we're sure to see you in print all over before the end of the year. All the best!

[chriss2d]

I appreciate the kind words. I probably focused less on the design and more on getting the figures to look right. That's a mistake I make all the time unfortunately. Looking at some of the art featured on the forum, I'm seeing alot of thought and work going into the layouts. I'm going to continue to try and improve on that area.
Thanks to all for your responses:)

[Pyske]

Bear in mind: I know nothing about art. :p That said, here's hoping my comments are constructive.

Overall, the work is exceptional, easily interior art quality for an art-heavy, high-budget book such as Nobilis or the D&D core (I feel comfortable saying this despite the resolution). I'd be curious to know how long this took you.

In my opinion, the strongest areas of the piece are the facial expression of the angry / shouting warrior, and the hand & arm proportions for all three figures. I only know second-hand how hard hands and arms are, but I see are a LOT of professional pictures where the length of the arms looks subtly wrong).

I suspect that the weakest portion of the image is the face of the woman. The shadow on the left side of her face (her left, image right) seems to imply that she is turned farther away than the angle of her nose and eye position would indicate. Of course, I could just be wrong here. :)

Overall, absolutely excellent. The shading and shadowing is otherwise consistent and well executed, the proportions are well done, the faces are animated and evocative, and the clothing lends well to sense of the personalities. (For example, I found the child's headgear to add to the innocence of the facial expression, b/c there was no sign of embarassment or self-consciousness.)

Not sure why I felt the need to post my uneducated opinions, so I hope they were not unwelcome (& I apologize if they were). Good work!

. . . . . . . -- Eric

[Storn]

gorgeous Chris.

Good critique Psyke.

[Eric Lofgren]

Apart from this pieces beauty and the points mentioned previously, what sticks out for me is the shoulder piece (?) of the larger male figure directly behind the angry man's head. Design wise this sort of thing works, but in this case, there may be too much detail in the gear and I'm finding it distracting. Perhaps a more abstract depiction of the man's shoulder piece would have the angry man's awesomely done face jump out at you even more. Just my two cents. For heaven's sake keep posting more, please.

Thanks for this,
Eric

[Steve T. Laws]

Well, it's absolutely gorgeous. Ain't nothin' I can add to what the other fellers have already said.

Psyke mentioned that the gal's face is a little lesser, or something of the like. I think it's simple case of the shadow rendering her nose is the same darkness as the shadow cast by the nose, they're seperated by a thin line of highlight but that might not be enough for some people. Fixing it is eay enough, lighten the shadow rendering her nose.

Course only an uptight jerk would notice something that small . . .

I was mesmerized by the folds in your clothes and the texture on the largest fellow's crown, helmet, whatever.

[chriss2d]

First, I'd like to thank everyone for your upfront opinions. To Psyke....are you sure you don't know anything about art? Very good observations on your part. I too felt that the woman's face was the weakest area although I could never figure out what it was. It probably took me a good 25 hours to complete, but I wasn't on a dealine. Thanks for taking the time to reply. I can tell you really studied the piece.
To Eric, I know what you mean about the shoulder piece. It probably wouldn't be a problem if the warrior's face hadn't come out so well. To be honest, I didn't think it would. Thanks for the kudos, Eric!
To Steve, good call on the nose. I thought it might be too dark. I was wondering if anyone was going to mention that. That's the difficult part of trying to render realistically. If you don't do something just right...it can really effect the piece. I enjoy the nitpicking because it means there are no really large or obvious problems.
Thanks to all!

[Jeremy McHugh]

Here I am posting after the thread seems to have closed. Product of coming home late from work.
I hope it is not too late to toss my two slightly tarnished bits in.

I think the layout is great. well balanced. The anatomy is well done. Makes me jealous, actually!
My only thought is to the final rendering.
The other comments and suggestions aside,
I would recommend an even wider tonal range-- white all the way to black( use of an 8 or 9B works great for this). Perhaps the scan bears some responsibility, but the image seems to linger in the middle tones. This of course is just my old-fashioned schooling and tastes. Feel free to ignore and keep putting out this awesome stuff!

[Jocelyn Robitaille]

Originally posted by Steve T. Laws


Course only an uptight jerk would notice something that small . . .



Or someone who knows that constructive criticism is the best source of potential improvement, yeah.

Of course, only a clueless loser would fail to notice the value of criticism...

[Kat]

Pencil was never a strength of mine, so anyone who can master it they way you did is a hero of mine. Hehe, my solution was to go to charcoal on large format paper because it was so much more forgiving in terms of detail...

I agree with Jeremy that it tends to linger in the middle tones, and would like to see the contrast stepped up a little bit. That would give it the extra punch for an otherwise spectacular piece. :)

Kat