Hello!

I've been enjoying the courses on this site for a couple of weeks so I figured I would present myself and see if the forums is something for me as well. My name is Morten and I live in Denmark where my day job has nothing at all to do with art - unless you call software development an art (which I guess you could ).

I've always liked the idea of being good at drawing but it never really got anywhere. I tend to lack patience for the part of learning a new thing where you're not very good at it, which turns out to be a bit of a show stopper. However, last summer I figured I would give it a serious go and see where it would lead me. I've had the opportunity to have a day off from work each week for the past 15 weeks, which has helped a bunch.

Apart from an evening course in classical drawing, I've been completely self tought - mostly from watching youtube videos. The amount of great resources freely available has been staggering to say the least but this has also lead me to jump around between all the different options, never settling on one approach or direction. I followed the draw-a-box course for a while but it felt a bit too time intensive for the limited amount of free time that I've had available. So far SVS has provided a great way to structure my learning and I think it works better than combining a disparate collection of videos and tutorials into a study plan.

While it seems to be a primary focus for this site I'm not particularly into children's book art - but then again, I'm still quite new at all this art stuff so who knows which direction I'll end up taking. Either way, this place seems to have lots to offer.

I'm looking forward to checking out all the great art in here and maybe get in on some of the competitions as well.

I'll leave you with the closest to a children's book drawing I've made so far If you'd like to see more, you can find my instagram account at @mortenchristiansenart and my DeviantArt account here.

@TheArtBard
I like the improvements you've made so far.

You mentioned that you didn't like the face on the guy to the right, so maybe you still have a plan to change it. Regardless, with your most recent change, I feel that the face does not fit with his gesture. The pointing hand indicates surprise but the face is too passive to match it. Maybe a slightly open mouth would do the trick.

There are a couple of things that do not read well for me.

Firstly, I was surprised when you mentioned hills since I had totally read those as waves or a way to create depth in the water/ocean. Looking again I can see the trees but I guess I had just considered that "texture". I'm not sure how best to fix it - maybe change the color ever so slightly away from the color of the water or maybe add some trees at the top to clarify the silhouette of the hills.

I'm not sure whether the tentacle on the left is touching the edge of the boat or not. The position seems to indicate that it does, but the shadows (or rather lack of shadows) indicates the opposite. If the tentacle is supposed to touch the boat, maybe make it go slightly into the boat. If the front edge of the boat hides a bit of the tentacle then it becomes clear how close it is to the viewer. This could further be established by adding a bit of shadow on the boat edge near the tentacle. If the tentacle is not touching the boat, on the other hand, you may want to raise it slightly up to clearly separate it from the boat edge.

The last thing is the ice on the water. I'm not 100% sure if it is ice or not. I would guess that most of the water is covered by ice and show, since the front tentacle seems to come up through a crack. However, the edge between the ice and the water is very soft, causing me to doubt the conclusion. The small white clumps of snow/ice on the far side of the boat are separated from the general surface in a harder fashion which seems strange if they are both supposed to be snow/ice. I hope it makes sense - its a bit hard to explain. If not, I can draw over you image to clarify.

@Casual-T Cool concept. A couple of random thoughts that struck me:

• A bit of liquid could seep out where the cord attaches to illustrate the nutrient aspect.
• The wood part has clearly been created with a tool. Depending on the story background for this it could make more sense for the wood to be processed by the teeth of the mouse, thus being more raw.
• The perspective of the wire does not seem to align with the perspective of the wooden stand. I think the 'S' curve at the right should be flattened a bit vertically for it to fit.

Hi. None of them seem to take advantage of the subject matter. Do you have any thoughts on how you would like to use the yeti theme? For example, what does a yeti eat that normal people do not? How is a yeti kitchen different from a normal kitchen? And maybe consider some sort of story element - something happening more than just the yeti hanging out cooking. I think it would help your thumbnails if you have some specific things which you want to communicate. Then you could look at how well the thumbs help with that and the general mood you want to establish.

@TheArtBard
Sorry about the face I think it works better now. The direction of the brows communicate anger more than surprise to me though. I'm not sure thats what you intended. Unless you want the person to be yelling at the tentacle. In that case, you nailed it

@Valerie-Light
Thanks for the input. Now that you mention it, I definitely agree that there was not enough focus on the boy. I've tried to highlight him, and make the dancer's hair point back towards the boy again for a bit of two way connection. I also pulled back the rightmost musician a bit. I'll get some more time to work on the piece tomorrow, maybe try it with a few more musicians. Also straightened the tilt of the diagonal which does seem better.

@erinrew
I'm still just learning while maintaining a full time job, so this is only for myself. I recently did the Creative Composition course and I'm trying out some of the practices here. So I guess my goal is to create a drawing that works well when viewed without any particular context. The decision about how to "cut" the dancer was just what came out of the thumbnailing session - it felt like something that could work for the image.

@TheArtBard
For what its worth I think the face ended up hitting the right emotion.

It seems slightly cramped space wise, since a lot of details touch the edge of the image in this last version. Is this intentional? I would try to add a bit of space at the top and bottom of the image - not much, just enough that the hooves, hat, wing and tail do not touch the edge.

It seems slightly cramped space wise, since a lot of details touch the edge of the image in this last version. Is this intentional? I would try to add a bit of space at the top and bottom of the image - not much, just enough that the hooves, hat, wing and tail do not touch the edge.

Here is a couple of variant dancer placements including audience. As I'm posting this, however, I realize an issue that has been bothering me. The dancer is not in the same perspective as the rest of the image making her disconnect from the rest of the scene

@Niels @erinrew
The reason I changed the musicians to be sitting on chairs is actually based on feedback on how such events are performed in the real world, at least for Egyptian belly dancing. I know what you mean and it was some of the reason why I chose to initially make them sitting on the floor. I'm still not sure how I wan't to balance realism vs creative freedom, but I will keep it mind. A working drawing should trump a correct drawing.

I'm definitely aiming for a light hearted piece, so if it ends up feeling like the boy is ogling her I will have failed in achieving my goal. I have very little experience drawing people, so I don't know how well I will be able to hit the proper emotions to communicate the point, but maybe this is also the reason I have gravitated towards hiding some of the dancer. I suppose it is something of a pitfall to hide essential details because you as the illustrator have a clear understanding of the subject.

Thank you both for your comments. It's great to get feedback from someone unfamiliar with the subject. I'll consider sharing compositions without an explanation in the future, to get the raw impression of what others see.

@erinrew
I'm still just learning while maintaining a full time job, so this is only for myself. I recently did the Creative Composition course and I'm trying out some of the practices here. So I guess my goal is to create a drawing that works well when viewed without any particular context. The decision about how to "cut" the dancer was just what came out of the thumbnailing session - it felt like something that could work for the image.

Cleaned up the sketch a bit and fleshed out the background. Will probably need to move the two front pillars so they are clearly visible. I'm actually not sure what instrument the kid is playing - I do think that he has forgotten all about playing it though

@TheArtBard
For what its worth I think the face ended up hitting the right emotion.

@Valerie-Light
Thanks for the input. Now that you mention it, I definitely agree that there was not enough focus on the boy. I've tried to highlight him, and make the dancer's hair point back towards the boy again for a bit of two way connection. I also pulled back the rightmost musician a bit. I'll get some more time to work on the piece tomorrow, maybe try it with a few more musicians. Also straightened the tilt of the diagonal which does seem better.

Hello everybody!

I've been working on a composition featuring a belly dancer. I would greatly appreciate it if anyone has some thoughts as to how well it works and what your first impression is.

The story of the piece, if you will, is that the three people to the left are the band playing for the dancer. The middle person is a young boy who is playing with the band for the first time and he is very entranced by the woman. The musician to his left is smiling down at him knowingly, remembering his own first time. The last musician is off in his own world. There may or may not be one or two additional musicians behind them.

Does it seem weird that you cannot see any audience? They would probably be in the direction of the camera.

Does the angle of the background work with the foreground or should it be more level?

@TheArtBard
Sorry about the face I think it works better now. The direction of the brows communicate anger more than surprise to me though. I'm not sure thats what you intended. Unless you want the person to be yelling at the tentacle. In that case, you nailed it

@TheArtBard
The updated background really helped a lot. There is a hint of something that could be land within the mist, which I like. While the new face is definitely better, I see two issues with it. It is hard to tell if the mouth is open or if the person has full red lips Also, the shadow kinda looks like black hair going down over the person's eyes for some reason. These two things has the side effect that I now clearly identify the person as female where it was clearly male before. The mouth could perhaps be fixed by darkening it a bit and making the teeth stand out a bit more clearly. You could embrace the hair thing and draw some highlights in a couple hairs. Otherwise, it might help if you show a small bit of the face breaking the solid darkness, such as a brow.