Two unrelated random drawings

[ShatteredWings]

http://i790.photobucket.com/albums/yy183/InsanityLive4ever/doodles/100_5307-1.jpg

http://i790.photobucket.com/albums/yy183/InsanityLive4ever/doodles/100_5309.jpg


Please avoid comments simply consisting of "You suck", add something constructive.

only tools were colored pencils (the cheepo crayola type) and a normal pencil for outlines

Yes, I know my alien only has one arm, and it's a stub. I didn't "forget" to give it an arm that arm is gone. Same with it's leg/foot thing.

Biggest thing i notice is that it's hard to get a more shaded look with the pencils, since yu can't smudge with an eraser or anyhing like that. Do better quality ones do that better?

[HillBillyWilly]

I usually do mine with regular drawing pencils. those you can definatley shade with.


not sure about colored pencils. i guess you could do dark to light shading with higher quality ones. seems reasonable

[darkwoon]

Please avoid comments simply consisting of "You suck", add something constructive.

only tools were colored pencils (the cheepo crayola type) and a normal pencil for outlines

Yes, I know my alien only has one arm, and it's a stub. I didn't "forget" to give it an arm that arm is gone. Same with it's leg/foot thing.
On the alien drawing:

The colouring is not properly performed: too strong in the 'water', drowning your central subject (the alien) into a mess of reds - it is pretty hard to even see it.

The alien lacks any "3D feeling" - there is zero shading letting us see what the volumes are. Its hair lacks details and look very uneven in terms of colour values (the hair near the top of the head is rendered much more strongly than the hair near the shoulders).

The alien shape looks very irregular and lacks symmetry. While this may be intentional, I believe it would have looked better if it showed a clearer, more defined structure. Next time you draw a character (being human, animal or alien), always start by a rough skeleton, and then flesh it out, so it has a strong, well-defined structure.

On the flower:

It is a pendant, right? I'd strongly suggest to use a real one as a reference - the chain part at the top doesn't really look like a real chain.

Biggest thing i notice is that it's hard to get a more shaded look with the pencils, since yu can't smudge with an eraser or anyhing like that. Do better quality ones do that better?

Yes, and no.

It is true that higher quality colour pencils can allow some complex effects cheaper ones like your crayola would have a hard time to render. But I believe that in the case of your drawings, the main issue is not the pencils, but how you are using them. I believe that you are pushing way too hard on your pencils; as a result, you have a hard time controlling the resulting colour nuances.

Do not try to smudge coloured pencils, regardless of the brand/type used. This is usually a very bad idea that does no good. The most commonly used technique with coloured pencils is layering - you blend colours by overly them on top of each other. Limited smudging can be obtained by using a blending stump, but you'd want to do that only in special cases.

You also definitely need to be more patient during the colouring step. Your coloured surfaces show huge areas of white paper left without pencil, and the pencil lines are very visible. Although visible crosshatching/lines *can* be used to create special effects, that's a more advanced technique that requires time to get right.

My suggestion would be to forget using your coloured pencils for now. Focus on using a black pencil only, and learn the basic techniques: shade smooth surfaces, control the gray level, use different crosshatching to represent materials.

Hope this helps!