Katniss Evedeen

This is my drawing of The Hunger Games protagonist. It was originally posted in my blog, but I thought that more people would be able to look at it here.

Its pretty! Just work on the heads. Or is i suppose to look that way? Anyway its cool! Whats it for your story?

Ah! Katniss!
Her head is a bit too big, her arms are a bit too short, and for some reason I can't figure out what she's holding her her right hand!
But, I see the pin! That makes me so happy! I think the clothes you put on her look exactly how I pictured it! I wish there weren't those lame binder paper lines, but all in all, I like it! Good fan art! I think I'm going to be posting my version of her, too. Nice job!
~Classy

Hey Ellie! Stella here! I never review art so forgive my lack of structure etc. to this review.

Okay, so you have some nice detail here, but I thought I could give you a few tips on life drawing:

-Measure the size of your person's head. From top to bottom, a person is about six and a half or seven heads. I like to mark in head sized areas as guidelines- their waist comes in at two and a half or three, and their hips and legs follow. Currently Katniss is about three and a half heads tall, and that's mainly because her head's too big, not because of anything else.

-With regards to the head, remember that your eyes are halfway down your face. It's true, look in the mirror! Your nose stretches down from between your eyes to halfway between your eyes and your chin, and your mouth is halfway between the end of your nose and your chin. Your mouth corners end below the centre of your eyes. There should be just enough space for a third eye between your two eyes, or thereabouts.

-Just a note to make sure you remember to give her a shadow- I was reminded of this by an art teacher, it stops the illusion that she's standing in mid air.

Other than that, drawing real people seriously helps. Trust me. If you can't get someone to stand on a table, why not take photos and try that way? Your detail is good here, but you just need practice.

Hope I helped!

-Stella x

Hey there!
First off, I want to say, I was impressed with your drawing. Good job!
But we have to get on with the review I guess right?
Sorry if I repeat anything else other people said.

Critique



Point One:
My first point is about your head. Stella was right in the accordance to the size. It is incredibly large compared to the rest of the body. You just have to work on proportions which a lot of people have trouble with. Stella was right when she said the eyes are about halfway down your face, with about room for one in the middle. The nose will extend half way in between the chin and the eyes. The mouth will be halfway between the nose and the chin.

With the eyes you will want to give them a more almond shape, but you have to make sure there are tear ducts. There should be eyelashes, but they are only small brisk marks in clumps of three. Below the eye there will be a line, then the bottom eye lashes. I see that your picture is indeed part of a fantasy book because of the pupils, but otherwise yo just need to perfect the shape of them, little else.

The nose should actually be pointed the other way due to the angle she is at. If you are trying for a more realism look with your drawing, the noses are difficult. You kind of have to draw them like a fat plump air plane. Let me draw you a quick one on paint. Sorry if it isn't so pretty:

My strategy for drawing realism noses is to have the larger circle in the middle, like the body of the plane, and then the smaller circles on the side to make it like the wings. Then you have to add the appropriate shading and lines to give it its proper shape. If you are drawing the nose on an angle, then you would have the larger circle, then the circle on the side being farther back, and the other circle barely seen to give the illusion that it is on an angle. In your picture the nose is way too small.

Your mouth is alright. All you really have to do for that is make sure that the corners of the mouth are in line with the middle of the eyes like Stella said. That would make it in proportion if you comply with everything else I said. With faces, I recommend you just draw them front wards facing the person in the beginning so that you can get all the details right, and work on perfecting the characteristics of the face.

Point Two:
I am pointing to your hair in this one. With hair you need to make it free flowing and not seem so stiff. I recommend you just draw single strands for the hair if you want to make it realistic, going darker for darker hair and lighter for lighter hair. Make some loose strands near the face. Just make it look realistic and not so clumped together. In the picture at the moment it seems like you kind of scribbled the hair on. It doesn't look bad, but I believe you could make it look so much better.

Point Three:
My third point is about your hands. Hands are one of the most difficult things to draw. I still even have problems with drawing hands. In your picture, you make it look like the person's fingers are just little sausages. Hands are incredibly hard to draw especially in different positions. Okay, here is another one of my ugly paint pictures displaying how I learned how to draw a hand:

It is really lousy but it will serve its purpose. When you draw a hand, the palm is like a giant circle and the area where your thumb is is like a smaller circle. Even if you look at your hand, you will be able to see it. Now your middle finger is about the length of your palm and because there is joints in your fingers, you would draw a small circle about the length of your palm away. Then there would be another circle in the middle. If you out lined the finger giving bumps in appropriate places, you would have your middle finger. Also if it helps, you can draw a circle a bit about the big circle of the palm to represent the knuckle. Then based on the size of your finger, you will be able to base the other finger sizes from there, using your own hand for help if you have to. The thumb only had one main joint circle, but it kind of has a little cushion at the end of it so you can add another circle if you want to.

With hands, I recommend you practice just drawing them larger and based off your own hand, then try to draw them in different positions then try to draw them smaller. It is always easier to draw them larger then it is smaller.

Point Four:
You need to add appropriate wrinkles in the clothing. The clothing is not supposed to just be there, one solid colour, there is wrinkles and contour lines which would affect the hading too. If it is not realism, and some kind of cartooning, the wrinkles don't matter as much, though they should be there to make it seem more cartoonish.

Point Five:
I am pointing to the dagger and the hand in this point. That is because the dagger has no parallel lines, and is not symmetric like they are actually made. I recommend you change that. The other thing I am commenting on is your hand. On this side, you would actually just see the thumb and the rest of the hand gripping around it. It is fairly confusing. Just remember, that your thumbs if just left still at your body are facing towards you.

I also think you have some kind of blood on there. Your shading makes it very difficult to see and is very hard to understand. At the moment because there is no change in shade on the blade, it looks like the blade is melting.

The dagger also needs to have a defined handle, or else she would just be holding the blade which isn't so very good because that would unfortunately hurt.

Point Six:
I am now pointing at your legs. I just find them a bit confusing. If her boots are knee high then your legs are out of proportion. Your thigh is indeed larger than you lower leg, but it is not that longer. It is only just a tad bit longer, and I believe you need to make the knees more pronounced so that the legs are easier to understand.

You also need to make more wrinkles on the pants. It would help get a notion of how tight the pants are or how loose. It is important to know. It would also be more wrinkled in areas like joints in the knees.

I am also trying to understand the pants. Most pants are a symmetric, but yours are not and I am unsure if you did that on purpose or not. I recommend changing it, or making it more pronounced that the pants are supposed to be different and beat up like giving it different shaded patches where they were ripped. Anything to give the pants definition.

Point Seven:
I am commenting on your feet here. They work, and they are easy to understand, but something about them just doesn't look right. I believe it is the boots themselves. There is no detail to them at all, no convexes at the joint, no shine as if they were jack boots. They are just there, in one solid colour. There is nothing really else to say about them. Try to fix em up, and make em look spiffy.

Point Eight:
This is just pointing to the random undecipherable thing in the picture. What is it? It is it important? Could you have tried to erase it a bit better if you indeed did tried to get rid of it? I just find it a bit distracting, but that might simply be because I can't concentrate on one thing for very long. xDD

Tips:

Shading
I like how you tried to shade this piece but I want you to make sure that you shade from one side, the shadow lying in one place according to where the source of light is coming from. You have to decide where it is coming from before you shade. I also recommend to try to blend it nicer because some of the shading in some places, like the boots, looks like it was just scribbled there, and it doesn't look so pretty.

Proportion
Your proportions are off in this picture. Stella has it right with what she is telling you, and I think you should try to follow it. Your head was way to large, your arms were too short, and it was the same with your legs. If you are unsure, just get somebody to model for you so that you can get proportions right, or find books in the library about anatomy so you can get it exactly right.

Smudginess
Try to make it a little less smudgy. It might have just been your scanner, because mine does that too, but it takes away from the actual shading, and it also makes it harder to decipher what the small details that you had added.

Practice
This is a tip that I give to everyone. Just draw in your spare time, doodle, just get the practice in. You will get better, the more you draw, and you find you will become an amazing artist the more and more you draw. I was looking back how far I have progressed since I first started drawing and there is a big different, in only a few years.

Overall:
I do really like your drawing. It was well done, just work on the few things I told you and you will be set. You have talent, that is for sure, so keep it up.

I hope I helped,
~Incognito