Welcome to Gaia! ::

My name is Stephanie (aka Call Me Stephanie). I don't like introductions, but let me make it quick. I'm a 20 year old student who attends a local community college for Early Education. I want to be a daycare owner some day. I have a wonderful boyfriend Brandon who is my best friend. I'm VERY open minded and you can usually see that in my art. I was abused enough in the Art Post and was SO glad when Errol came in to help. I instantly went to the guild in his signature (this guild) and was so happy to be accepted.

I can't wait to start learning and bettering my art.

Just in Case

Well, I was about to do some critiques for you, but the 'pay yo bill' nazis just shut my phone/internet off. Because of some issues with my paychecks, I won't have money until next Friday to pay them. Give me some time and I'll write one up for you.

First off, I really like your style. It's unique and works with your drawings quite well. You also seem to have a decent grasp on proportions and facial expressions-- I love the bitchplz look on your newest one.

One thing that I notice that you could improve on is your knowledge of color theory. Right now, it seems like you're shading by using different shades of the same color... your rendering would 'pop' much more if you mixed similar (but unrelated) colors to make up your base, highlights, and shadows. Buy a color wheel, and experiment using primaries, secondaries, and tertiaries in your composition, paying close attention to which areas draw your eye, which seem closer, and why.
For instance, if you take a look at this, you'll notice that the base color Tobiee uses is a bit of an unsaturated peach, the highlights are pinks and almost whites, and the shadows are blues and purples. But your eye still registers all these very different colors as a 'skin' tone-- even though there's no such thing as a human with blue or purple skin.

Another thing that I notice is that your poses tend to be a little stiff. This is something that is fixed through practice. Try doing tons of doodles of proportionate stick men in tons of different positions doing tons of different activities. Make sure that they are not made up of straight lines, but that they curve in the natural way bones would (if not exaggerated moreso just a teensy bit). Once you feel comfortable, try incorporating this into your initial guideline stage-- this helps loosen your characters up.

I also think that the way you render hair would look better if you didn't draw it line by line, but instead paid more attention to the direction / intensity of light and the texture of the hair... This tutorial describes it much better than I can. It's kind of like how, when painting a tree, drawing all the individual leaves one by one looks unnatural, but drawing them in clumps looks good...

Hey. You have a great ary style going for you, but I suggest working on the anatomy a lil bit. Also try cleaning up the lines wink

It is good that you are trying out guidelines of individual volumes for your pre-drawings.

Your proportions are pretty good in your WIP, but there are a few areas that are just a little bit off. Some things I see in particular are that the shoulders are a little thin, the hands are too small, and the hips are too low.

To fix this, remember that each shoulder is as wide as the head; the hands (from the bottom of the palm to the tip of the middle finger) are at least the length of the face from chin to eyebrows; and on females, the hips start to fan out at or slightly above the navel. It is different between males and females because, in addition to having wider hips, females' hips are more bowl-shaped than males', so that they can support the weight of the uterus during the heavy months of pregnancy.

If the human body is 7 head lengths tall:

-There is one head length between the chin and nipples.
-There is one head length between the nipples and navel / elbows.
-There is one head length between the navel / elbows and the crotch / wrists.
-There is one head length from the crotch / wrists to the middle of the thigh.
-There is one head length from the middle of the thigh to the middle of the calf.
-There is one head length from the middle of the calf to the soles of the feet.

The 7-head measurement is good for drawing stylized people of average height (particularly females). However, many people also use an 8-head measurement, which I've found to be better suited for tall, medium-build males. Really skinny males look kinda stretched out at eight heads. sweatdrop

Once you get comfortable with proportions, feel free to experiment using them to accentuate character. Les triplettes de Belleville did this particularly well. 3nodding