NDA Art Critique Message Boards

I'm glad it helped! I can't wait to see this finished!

Ok, This is done! Thank you weasle for your redlines. I messed up on inking so his back leg is a little weird, but I'm still very proud of it.



And of course randomness...



C&C are welcome!

Well, I haven't been drawing lots of full body dragons for a while, but heres a new WIP! It going to be somewhere along these lines:



I want him to be powerful and muscular. I looked at a bunch of Neon's dragons and tried to base his legs on the way she draws but they don't look the same. I'd love any help you guys can give me, redlines, critique, a link to a tutorial, maybe a comment. I would like this to be a step up from the past dragons. So please help me!

It's been a while since I posted here...! But anyway, uh...! I did some redlines for you, which I shall show and then explain! Gasp! Oh no!


I made the neck less curvy, following the rules of cat/dog/whatever anatomy rather than the bird-like anatomy curvier necks seem to follow since that implies power (you did say you wanted a powerful/muscular dragon) whereas a curvy, bird-like neck probably suggests delicacy and grace and things like that...! In dogs and cats and horses and whatever else, the neck doesn't really bulge before it reaches the ribcage, but sort of flows more smoothly from the head to the chest or uh... something. o_O

Anyway, I also put the dragon in a box with a horizontal line through it. This was to show how the knee, elbow, and chest line up and how the length of the legs from elbow/knee to toes are approximately the same length as the torso is tall (at least the tallest portion of it around where the shoulders are), placing the deepest part of the chest approximately half way between the ground and the animal's back...! In many cases anyway. You can get a better, more detailed explanation of this sort of thing from this tutorial by Cedarseed, if I haven't already linked you to that before. It's been so long, I can't remember what resources I've given out to whom. o_O

To make your dragon look more muscular, adding some width to those front legs to make them a bit *chunkier* will help! Uhhhh... Other than that, it seems like you've positioned the wings well (I only sort of scribbled lightly over that area with red, though you'd only really need to make changes if you wanted to widen the elbow-to-wrist segment of the wing arm to make it a bit more muscular-looking) and the length of the body seems good! So hurrah!

If you wanted to learn more about muscles and where to place them correctly, it seems that this thread has a number of references in it that could be of use to you, and if you really wanted something you could have handy all the time for referencing muscles, you could look for a book called An Atlas of Animal Anatomy For Artists. Some of the linked images in that thread are actually pages from that book (the lion chest and head images, for example) and the rest of the book is filled with detailed diagrams like that of musculature, skeletons, even fur direction from different angles of various different animals!

I hope that all helps you out with your drawing (and future ones) though!

Ok, I really like how you did the legs, but about the neck didn't really cut it for me. I'll play with it but I don't really know if I'll change it much. The legs I will definately change a bit, although I was going for something like this - http://neondragonart.com/Art/display.php?img=Frost%20Dragon espesially with the fronts.

Thank you very much for the tutorials, I never could find any good ones myself! What do you use to find them?

Update.



Anymore help? I could still use a lot!

Also I did some of his expressions and experimented on colors, so here it is:



C&C are welcome on both!

Many of the tutorials and resources and things I know about are probably things I've just accidentally bumped into or found links to during my time browsing the internet without me looking for them specifically...!

But anyway, that's a definite improvement over the other version! I like the smooth curves of the belly and the new legs are looking good! I noticed you also changed the frills/fins/whatever-they're-called on its head as well. They look better at that size and you drew them with such smooth lines too...! It's good that you're drawing different expressions and angles and things (something I need to do more often). It can be challenging drawing things from different angles, but it's a good way to learn all the details of your subject's appearance and make you more flexible when it comes to what sorts of poses and angles you can draw things in. I apparently like that colour scheme you did with the green/yellow/pinky orange. It feels bright and tropical or something...!

I feel like I'm not alert enough to give much well-worded critique, though I'd be careful about widening the neck too much as it gets closer to the body...! (I used to do the same thing though until I caught myself doing it and tried to 'tone it down' a bit... o_O) I see you're paying attention to details though like adding wrinkles in the neck where it bends and would bunch up, so yay! Attention to detail!

Oh, but another thing maybe...! His wing fingers are awfully thin, but to keep the wing rigid (rather than all floppy or something) during flight, he'd need some bones in there (a wing is basically an arm with long, webbed fingers anyway). If it's an intentional part of the design that he has sort of delicate, thin wings or something, you can just keep it as it is, or if you're going more for 'realism' or something, you could thicken the wing fingers. Unless they're just blending in with the wing membrane so you can only really see the paths the fingers follow rather than the actual width of the fingers (if that's clear at all) or something...! It's easy to misinterpret these sorts of things. o_O

Ok, Thanks, FireQuill! I see what you mean with the neck. lol I'll try not to make it too thick! I guess I should thicken the wing fingers... I've never really thought about them being too thin. Well, I know now! Thanks again!

Didn't so much. Just fixed a few things up. Tell me what you think so far!



Also I'm starting another WIP. It's going to be Senka and another night dragon in the backround. I'd really like help on the backround dragon lol. Here's the sketch -



C&C are wanted!

No updates on the WIPs, but I did make this -

http://i927.photobucket.com/albums/ad11 ... Hydroa.jpg

C&C are appreciated on this and the others above^