A quick character sketch

Amber and Aoife...

Spoiler

I drew the character figure by hand then took a pic of it, did a little light editing in Picasa then I uploaded it into Windows paint where I added the color and background...no photo shop sadly which would have made this drawing a thousand times better, but pretty good I think.
Any and all critique is welcome, especially any tips on shading and clothing, which you can see I need a little help in

it's alright. A bit rugged. What program do you use? Because some programs are just imposable to make something look real. The background is kind of blahhh, Not to be nit pickky but when do you honestly see just grass and mountains. What about the shrubberies, and the messy dirt piles, and the fallen leaves, and the itty bitty bugs. But I suppose your concentrating on your character, and I respect that, I do. Just, don't let the background fall behind- for lack of better words. Also the bangs on the girl are not exactly the same style as the rest of the hair, you might want to pick either spiky or wavy. Also you might want to give her a bit more curves- it is a her right? well, that might be why I can't tell. . idk, sorry if this was mean I do like the overall profile of the character though, also the little animal on the arm is cute. Good Job! I could never draw this well!
Love, Little Lion Woman

Yeah, I used windows paint, the ancient out of date windows paint...it is very very difficult and time consuming to do anything with this program...a real headache if you know what I mean >.< The whole time I'm sitting here thinking, "this looks soooo freak'in 2'd!" I tried, I really did, but there is just no way to add depth with it...its literally impossible...*sniffle, sniffle* I MISS PHOTOSHOP!!!

Oh, and yes my character is female, a youngish female...maybe 10 or 12...I couldn't figure out how to draw curves on a young female, mostly cause I don't draw humans very often, if at all. Most of my art in the past has focused on little cute animals, horses and dogs, mice and birds, flowers and vines, trees, simple stuff like that, so you could say this is my first attempt at something like this...


Edit: Awww...I thought the bangs looked cute *pouts in corner*...

Edit Edit: Thanks sooooo much for the review!

Her legs!!! They're bending towards the left and make her look like a macaroni noodle! And are also a bit too short in proportion to the body. I like the coloring. It's done pretty well for MS paint (I despise that program so much). I agree with LionWoman. You should choose wavy or spiky. You have spiky hair so you can try side-swept bangs. I think they'd complement her. If you want to improve your human drawing skills, you should google pictures of people/models and use them for reference. You can also flip through magazines for images or use your own photographs. That has helped me to improve my people drawing skills.

-Crescent

O.o I can't believe I didn't notice that...she really does look like a macoroni noodle XD

I think I'll go back and do a little editing, actually the whole "side swiped bangs" advice gave me an idea, I've already got a nice little mental picture, so Thank you so much!

I'm gonna give the whole google images thing a try, though you have to admit with google you gotta be careful when looking up images of "young feminine figure" -_- ...XD Thanks again,

-Justlittleoleme

I like the background here. The mountains look pretty well drawn. And what is that cute little animal on the person's shoulder? It's so adorable. You colored it wisely (I mean your choice of colors is pretty good). As for the tips on shading. You just have to decide which direction the light is going to come from and then place shadows on the opposite direction to it. For example, if the sun is in front of a tree, then the shadow of the tree will be behind it. Coming to the clothes. I'm sure you'll get a lot of ideas if you search for it on google images. Hope that helped. Goodluck!

Aww, Aoife looks so cute I really like this, it's good for paint *grumbles about fails on said program*. The earthy colours work well, and her face is good, her lovely red hair too (aside from the bangs thing ). Still, I think this could be much better. To me, the positioning of her face is a little akward, it looks like it's sticking out (forward and to the left) I think that she's supposed to be /looking/ to the left, but her head's placed too high on the neck. And like crescent said, she does look a bit like a macoroni noodle XD you should probably make her legs a little longer, and to fix the curve problem - make her waist thinner, like an hourglass. That way she won't look like a stick . I don't think there's a problem with the wavy/spiky situation with the bangs/hair, it's just that the bangs raise a little too high from the head, like they're defying gravity, heh. Oh and LLM's right! the background could be more interesting, at the moment it's too clean cut for the scary world Amber's just found, I think the plants should be more wild ^^.

Keep up the drawing,

~Tinkem

Thanks for tha review! >.> in fact I was just thinking of this art work the other day, I FINALLY HAVE PHOTOSHOP and all the lovely opportunities for creativity that implies...now I just need to find a jump drive so I can move this off of this old crappy computer and to my newer, faster, lovelier, photoshop containing computer ^ ^ ...

So, I haven't read all of the other critiques given to you, but i saw your confusion for how to draw a "tweens" body. Because the girl is maturing, you can add a slight curve to her waist. Nothing drastic at all, but just a small curve at the waist. When you have that base down, you can add the clothing over it. However, it's the fabric look of the clothing that really matters. If you don't want the fabric to hang loosely on her, there's no point in really worrying about how her body would look. Otherwise, if the fabric is slightly conforming to her, I would just add a small wrinkle to the fabric dipping inward to hint at a slightly more feminine body. The only other thing I can think of to make her look like a girl, is to add a couple lashes.

Otherwise, I don't have much to say. I generally don't critique pictures that I see too many things wrong with (and I don't mean this in any disrespectful way) proportion wise. To go into so much detail is meaningless right now because you still have more to improve on with your skills. Of course, this could just be your style own cartoonish style now, which ultimately has no rules according to proportions and not much in the way of perspective.

I do want to add, though, that it's definitely good for being done on the computer. I can't draw for the life of me on a comp XD

i think this is good but if im being completley honest it looks kind of childish :/ your shading could improve around the clothes area, also the clothes look really straight up and down as does your character maybe add hips and stuff to give your character that agressive and kind look if you know what i mean. When drawing the clothes add wrinkels and creases and shade around the areas that would be dark the best way to learn how to shade is get a top and spread it across the ground and look at the dark areas and transfer it to your picture :) I really like it and maybe you should draw a childrens book for this character also the back ground takes away from your picture unless it is important don't add a background I don't like being mean sorry if i offended you in any way just offering constructive critisim :)

XD Tis not mean in the least. I moved past this piece about...I'd say about a month or two ago. If you want to see the improved version check out this: viewtopic.php?t=89806

I'll admit its not much of an improvement but its a better indication of my skills than this was. As it was this was just a quick cartoony character sketch, not much to look at but cute in its own way XD