CultistLemming's art Reviews on Newgrounds

[Balrog of Morgoth]

Cool I like it, some tips with hatching though, you should have the lines curve uniformly around the objects to have a greater feeling of dimension, rather then making it feel flat on the page. I like the solid blacks used in the traditional medium, it's very bold

[Draw With Jazza's COTM : Tradigital]

Cool! I like the effort to use different mediums and graphic styling in the piece. Also like that the guy is more straight lined, wheres the girl has a looser design. The things that stick out to me in this piece are the poses of the characters, the girls dress, and the anatomy of the characters.
The poses of the characters could be pushed to be more dynamic/ interesting, an easy way to do this is to make the character have more angle and variation in thier stance and limbs, it makes it nice to look at.
The girls dress is mostly well done, but turns into a solid single line with the girls leg at the end of the line. To show the dress as taking up a 3d space it would be better to show the dress slightly overshooting the leg and then wraping around it to give it volume.
The characters all have perfectly straight limbs, to make it feel more believable try to have straights and curves on the insides and outsides of their limbs. It makes it much more anatomicaly correct.
The styling of the peice is well done, and I feel like you captured what you wanted to show, good work, keep practicing.

[Why is my pen not working?]

You certainly have the right philosophy towards creation, i'm glad you enjoyed making this. If you are unsatisfied with sketchbook, I would reccomend the app Procreate, its the closest experience to photoshop without the insane prices. The thing that sticks out to me with this piece is the perspective, although done on an intentional dutch angle, the ipad does not match with the angle of the table. This can be fixed in the future through sketching perspective lines in advance to help yourself. Nice work, keep drawing.

[Moon lit tree]

I like the colors, you should invest in some proper brushes so it doesn't look so muddy. Also you should check out the artwork of Nick Cross, i think it could teach you a lot just by studing the way he does landscape backgrounds

LinDArtist responds:

Thanks for the feedback. But Where do i find proper brushes?

[Is it worth it?]

Cool! A bit muddy, but a highly effective and ambitious piece throughout , I like the fact that unlike most entrys the axe has proper foreshortening and is not just an obvious trace over of the reference. The posing here is also challenging, and feels like you are in this to get better. That said you should make the investment to get some better PS brushes, the default brushes don't work well for the style you are going for.

Taitanator responds:

Thank you so much, I appreciate your criticism and will use your tips to get better. And thank you for the compliment.

[Lapis Lazuli - Pub Waitress]

Cool, I like the solid color shadows, and how the lines guide the eye back to her face. The thing that gets me in this picture is the deadness of her eye, which could be pushed to give a clearer expression. Overall quite an enjoyable piece, keep practicing.

IvanPANCED responds:

Thank you for your input!

[Rebels ! Let's fight for freedom !]

COME INTO DEMENTIA FIVE! Good work, and like the boldness of the character. I can see that this image was mostly scanned in, and additional painting was done digitally. When you are first bringing in scanned artwork you should make sure that you contract the selection by 1-2 pixels or otherwise you have an ugly white outline around your artwork.

Also I can see that you used a contraction gradient with transparency clipping mask to give the axe its shine. This can work but must be done without existing highlights already drawn in, as a result the shine effect doesn't match the existing highlight on the scanned artwork. To do a more effective highlight you should color it with one color, create an overlay blending layer clipping mask for basic shine, and then have a harder highlight shine layer set to a hard light layer blending mode, then use a minor blur over top of the hard light to give it a glow effect.

Sorry if this got bit technical but i'm happy to see you experimenting with the program, good luck moving forwards and keep practicing.

[LegendaryAxe]

Cool idea, but the perspective needs work. It feels like you are hiding anything that could be considered hard to draw from the image, have some more confidence and push yourself more, this challenge is for learning after all. You should consider entering the beginner category instead.

Battlebear1997 responds:

Hey man thanks for the feedback, but I don't know what you mean "hiding anything that could be considered hard to draw" if you're talking about the back, he was always gonna have a shield and also I'm more of a cartoonist, like drawing characters that don't look like normal humans so this was really a first for me, and I am an artist with a really fun T-Shirt printing job (loving it) and I focus more on logos and brand design. Also I don't think art should be determined by skill, it's the passion behind it, check out my Bēhance link in the description for more of my art and the WIP, thanks for the feedback

[The knight in the snow]

Cool, but it looks really muddy you should make the investment to get some better brushes (using photoshops default brushes is like digital finger painting), I recommend Kyle T Webster's megapack to get you started: https://www.kylebrush.com/

Also you should avoid using black shadows, they look ugly and you never see them in nature. You should try and have the shadows match the background lighting or else it looks like the character is standing in front of a green screen.

BobbyArt responds:

Thank you for the critics. I have tried to get other brushes but they wont download for me. I'm not sure what u mean for the shadows because I worked quite hard to make them match the background.

[JazzAxe!]

Cool, I like the colors, and the fact that you split the axe into the two separate pieces. As for my gripes with this image the foreshortening of the clashing sword works well and is ambitious, but the foreshortening on the main figures axe is not done to the same extent, despite the fact that the arm away from the camera. The other gripe I have is the mysterious vanishing of limbs once they go behind the main figures body. The bottom of his right leg gets cut off after being covered, and the right hand is at an impossible angle to be held from a straight arm, so it seems the right arm is also cut off. Good effort and nice use of the traditional medium, keep practicing.

artphoenix responds:

Oh I didn't even notice that! Thank you for the advice, I'll keep that in mind for my next piece :D