Can’t wait to notice all the changes I want to make the second after I post! Had a lot of fun with this. Also want to note that I am indeed a member but I’ve had wonky things happen to my membership before and not been considered a member for some reason. Just want to make sure I can count towards the final picks if I make it that far!
For the most part drawing a pose from your head is a very high tier skill I think. We are all so familiar with the human form that if it is the slightest bit off it can really stand out. Because of this it is very challenging to draw without reference. For a lot of people I think drawing without reference is a big dream goal but read into the work and processes of great illustrators and you will find that they almost never go without reference. Norman Rockwell was obsessive about his references. His work is so amazing because he always had such good reference!
So my advice is don’t push yourself to go without reference too much. It can be great practice but can build bad habits if not balanced with using references. I like to start by drawing very roughly without reference and then I will pose myself for reference and see how far off the mark I was. My first reference source is the internet, if it’s a really tricky pose I’ll try to do it myself or ask someone I live with to pose for me. There are also some action figure-like tools for reference that can be really helpful in a pinch.
Hope this helps, let me know if you have questions about any of this!
This is my first character design in a looong time. I’m pretty happy with it but with that happiness I think there can also be blindness sometimes so I want you to be my eyes!
In the first few seconds of looking at it what stands out as needing improvement?
After looking at it for a longer time what are some of the more secondary things that could be improved?
Also does anyone have tips for building a good color palette? Colors are TRICKY
@Laurasketches
Oh I probably should have been more clear. This batch of thumbnails is the second stage of my thumbnailing. I did 15 thumbnails to start and then picked 3 favorites to play around with more which is what you see here. That’s why they’re all so similar, I guess the Kansas setting with the oz foreshadowing is what appealed to me the most. In any case it’s still great advice, lots of thumbnailing is key! Maybe some day I’ll be able to do 50 like Lee White talks about 
Right now my eyes are drawn to the large, grey area below the jump and the trees in the background. What I do when I’m feeling really stuck is just go back to square one, as painful as that might be sometimes. Do some thumbnails, maybe 10 but you can ever do too many thumbnails. Then pick a couple to refine and keep it narrowing it down until you have the composition you like. Next block in just the values and finally move onto color.
More specifically for you’re piece I would suggest playing around with camera angles. What are the top three or maybe just two elements that you want the viewer to look at. From there you can create thumbnails with that in mind.
Looks like others have already said a lot of what I would say. So in short, yes you should send it! I'd say this is a relatively low risk thing to do so go for it!
This is pretty near to completion, I feel like I’m in that last 10% and I want to hear what you’ve all got to say so I can incorporate as many changes as I need into this last bit. I feel like the sky and ground in Kansas are a tiny bit too bland and may need more texture or something. Same goes for the wall and the yellow brick road. Just feels like something is lacking. Let me know what you you think
@Nyrryl-Cadiz I appreciate the apology. I know you only had the forums best interest at heart, thanks for understanding 
-I think the line art is great, didn’t stand out to me in a bad way at all. I think maybe some colors could be added in the background to tie in the foreground and the background even though they are supposed to be separate I think it looks a bit too flat right. Not a huge issue but that would be the first thing I would focus on
-textures look great, not super obviously digital
Altogether a nice piece
For the most part drawing a pose from your head is a very high tier skill I think. We are all so familiar with the human form that if it is the slightest bit off it can really stand out. Because of this it is very challenging to draw without reference. For a lot of people I think drawing without reference is a big dream goal but read into the work and processes of great illustrators and you will find that they almost never go without reference. Norman Rockwell was obsessive about his references. His work is so amazing because he always had such good reference!
So my advice is don’t push yourself to go without reference too much. It can be great practice but can build bad habits if not balanced with using references. I like to start by drawing very roughly without reference and then I will pose myself for reference and see how far off the mark I was. My first reference source is the internet, if it’s a really tricky pose I’ll try to do it myself or ask someone I live with to pose for me. There are also some action figure-like tools for reference that can be really helpful in a pinch.
@thousandwrecks I don’t mind the long reply, it’s all helpful stuff, thank you!
For the past couple years I have felt a bit stuck in the taste/skill gap (not sure if there is a better term).
While I have felt a tremendous growth in my abilities I have also felt increasingly dissatisfied with the work that I put out. I attribute this to the fact that my taste is developing more rapidly than my skills, which I believe is just part of the process of growth. That being said I feel like I’m not getting much closer to the end of this chapter in my artistic journey.
Here is my main issue. I get an idea of something I want to create and I set out to do it. Then I hit a snag, I come across some aspect of the piece that I realize I am just not yet skilled enough to properly create. Initially I thought, "no problem, I’ll just practice that thing that needs work i.e. figures, expressions, environments, and then get back to it". But this just leads to me spending about 90% of my time practicing and sketching and very little output of actual finished pieces.
What are your experiences with this? Have you experienced this at all? If so how did you work through it?
@Heather-Boyd I’m not sure. I haven’t dug into those classes much yet, only some of the foundation classes so there may already be something like that out there!
@davidhohn I was just thinking of doing something like this the other day! I was thinking that I would love it if there was an assignment in a class that focused on painting the same environment in a few different lightings to change the mood.
@MOO it’s different from the other images but not so much so that it doesn’t belong. I would keep it in
@baileymvidler I would recommend you listen to the 3 point perspective episode on evaluating your art foundation. https://www.svslearn.com/3pointperspectiveblog/how-to-evaluate-your-art-foundation Here are the show notes if you’d like to skim it quickly.
I think this could give you a good point of reference. A good way to do a self evaluation I think.
I think you should aim for a couple more portfolio pieces but take that advice with a grain of salt, I am only basing this off of what I have heard and not personal experience but I’ve most often heard that you should have 12 pieces minimum.
Things to focus on:
your characters can be a bit stiff so I would recommend doing more gesturing drawing. Gesture drawing 10 or 20 poses every day I think should be part of every artist’s regular practice.
Personally I think the the piece with the boy and the bird should be removed. It’s a very flat composition with not quite enough filling up the visual space. I think the rest of your portfolio is much stronger than this piece which just makes it feel out of place.
Over all I think you’re working with a good portfolio but I would try to add a few more images. You could certainly find some jobs with this. I don’t think I can speak on agents because I just don’t know enough about how they work.
Hope this helps!
@Lovsey it’s not an extreme pose which is what makes the gesture tricky I think. He is patrolling a market to dissuade thieves and other criminals and he has just made eye contact with someone who seems a little suspicious. I actually just finished up the gestures class a couple weeks ago. I have reference photos of myself as well. I actually exaggerated the weight on the leg a bit more and I shifted his bent leg farther out as well. I found that pushing the pose in any other way just doesn’t end up fitting the characters mood. It’s tricky but great practice to capture subtle gestures!
@Jordi-Ventura @Lovsey I made some adjustments based off of your feedback. Lengthened the legs which I think helped a lot. Tried to make the legs a bit less stiffed as well as that arm.
@lpetiti I agree with @Nyrryl-Cadiz that the pose is a bit stiff. I you may want to consider turning the bird to face the other direction to balance out the composition. You have a lot of airbrushing effects going on which is easy to get sucked into being it can make you feel like you are doing tons of rendering when in reality an airbrushed look is usually not the texture needed to convey a form. For example on the bird it makes it appear too smooth and not natural like a birds feathers. I would also recommend taking out some of the sparkles, at the moment they are a bit distracting from the rest of the image.