Flower Shower

Zest takes a mid-morning rest at the edge of the forest, and turns to find himself in the mist of a shower of ripe flowers.

Some background info: I am pretty glad with the way this one turned out. All you have to do is look at my deviantART gallery to see that I never draw scenery, and that is mostly because I am not that good at it... So this is big for me!
I drew a previous background, which took about 3 hours, but had to start all over because it looked awful. But I am glad I did not give up

Also, I have never ever done cel shading before, but I felt the impulse and wanted to see if I could pull it off. Did I pull if off..?

Done in PSE with a tablet, took at least 8 hours.
The foliage brushes I used belong to their respective creators on deviantART.

Spoiler

If you do not remember my character Zest or are kind of mixed up about what he exactly looks like, you can find more poses of him here http://shiney4ever.deviantart.com/art/Z ... -316710311

Shiney!! It's great to see you back on YWS ^_^

You've certainly improved! This is a really amazing picture! I'm always blown away at how much detail you add to your dragons, and the background just took it to a whole new level I also dread drawing backgrounds so I admire you giving it a shot (also, trashing your first 3 hour design and starting over takes a lot of determination!)

First of all, the cell shading looks great, it really brings out the dragon I think.

One suggestion I've always had with your drawings is that you could amp up the dragon's expression more. The eyes, in particular, don't hold much emotion in my opinion. It looks more like a socket, since I can't see a dark pupil or highlights. Also, dragons don't really have eyebrows (which are major for showing emotion as well), so you have to work with what you have!

Another tip I'd give is to experiment more with colors. Your colors are mainly shades of grey, green, and pink. Try adding a more purply or bluish hue to shade areas of the dragon. Experiment with layers like soft light and overlay to add onto your original image.

Hope this was a little helpful! can't wait to see more from you

Thanks a lot for the critique!

You are right, my facial expressions need some work. Especially the eyes. The truth is that I am not good at drawing eyes. It's kind of ironic that the smallest pert of the dragon gives me the most worry. I am pretty much at a dead end. Do you have any resources or tutorials that could help me? I am a visual person.

And as for shading with multiple colors: I have considered it and attempted it quite a few times, but I know that I am not ready for that yet. With the type of shading I do, it would not be very ideal to use color. I don't add darkness when I shade: I add light. It's not a common way to shade, but I know a lot of great dragon artists on dA that use the same method. I also know a lot of very experienced artists that use 30 colors to shade, but I am not at that level yet. Hopefully in the future, yes.

I will look up some references/tutorials for you! It will be a learning experience for me as well ^_^

You do a very good job on your drawings, whatever method you use works well!

http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=&secti ... e#/d1wj0jh

http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=&secti ... e#/d3be2x6

http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=&secti ... e#/d2tnars

I found those with a quick search on DA, three different styles to drawing a dragon eye. One looks more cat-like or snake-like, another one is more cartoony. They all pretty much have the same idea though, a black pupil, a colored iris, and a small white highlight.

They actually look pretty large, so you might have to make adjustments when you're making your own characters. But when I draw eyes I usually zoom in nice and tight to add the details before zooming out again and it usually turns out ok x)

Hope this helped a bit!

Thank you! I will try studying these and seeing what happens with my next piece

Oh. My. Great goodness gracious. You my friend have some thing called talent. This was phenomenal. You had like a gajillion small details that make this so good so many I won’t even be able to put them all in. Just some of them are the folds in the dragon, the creases in the head, the background on the rocks, stuff from the trees, the dragons colors, the ground, etc. Some big overall things were just simple things like the size and shape of the dragon, the proportions of the different parts of the dragon. The last thing is the background. I couldn’t tell you weren’t good at this at all. Everything about it is just stunning, all of the details, I can see how much time you put into this. I actually have nothing bad to say about this, as it is so good.

Fruit

P.S: Yes this review is shorter than my normal, maybe because I had nothing bad to say lol

Thank you