A Vulpix in Lanakila's Icy Cave

Here's a WIP picture because I forgot about the signature! I swear I'm a curator! xD

Spoiler

This was done in crayon on a huge pad of paper.

An Alolan Vulpix is a medium catpure (45 pts required). The smudge was on accident--I forgot I had white crayon over the pencil and when I erased it, it created an ugly smudge. We can just say she's dirty and injured

 

Claimed!

 

Hi, Julio! We've been seeing a lot of Alolapix captures recently--it seems to be a really popular 'mon for art! I was considering drawing one, too!

So let's jump into the first thing I noticed on this one: anatomy. I realized right away what it was, but with a few caveats. The chubbiness of the Alolapix particularly struck out at me. You seem to have drawn it a little on the chubby side. I think the reason why it looks this way is because you have the line of the back rising immediately to the line of the head, without any rise or fall. This makes it look chubby because we lose the elegant shape of the slender neck that we see in the Sugimori splash. For this, I'd definitely try to drop the line of the back and define the top of the haunches a little to give that form its graceful curve. Another thing that makes it look on the chubby side is similar, but on the left side. The unbroken, outward bow of (our) left side makes it seem like there's no definition of the neck on that side, either. Making even a minucule concave slope at the top that transitions into the way you have it now would help that a lot.

I like how you've done her eyes and her little expression--those are nice. Our right is a little higher than I'd expect it to be, and from the straight-on angle you're communicating, our right side of her face is a little pressed in compared to the other side, but overall it's a pretty fair representation of her features! Her little tuft looks pretty good and in the right place. The tail you have drawn, however, looks a lot more like a regular Vulpix's tail than an Alolapix's. Tail of a Vulpix does the exact thing that you've drawn--they stay sectioned and separate. But an Alolapix's tail, if you look at its canon media, tend to merge together at the broad, fanning end. I think fading the dark lines of separation you have into the lighter shadows would be a good fix for this without having to make too drastic of a change.

I'd like to move on to the color. You've got a pretty lovely color scheme, in my opinion. It's an icy, monochromatic blue that I feel represents an icy cave and an icy Pokemon pretty well! You've done a good job at using lights and darks to bring the Alolapix up from the background, putting her into the light. On the matter of shading, I love the deep, black-blue that you've colored in the background. It's really beautiful. It also helps put your subject forward. You've shaded the prisms that she's sitting on quite nicely--you show a good grasp on light and its properties in regards to geometric shapes. Your other shading is nice and in directions that make sense, though there are some rough spots, like both lighter sides of the geometric shapes and the darkest shadow on the leftmost shape's face.

Going a bit more in-depth in shading on this one, since it's a work that relies heavily on it. First of all, I know that you said erasing the pencil smudged. I assume that this scared you away from trying to erase the rest of the pencil on (our) right ear. Regardless, I think that the pencil makes that ear look like one of the messiest parts of the work, along with our right eye. I would have liked to see it gone or at least very carefully cleaned up. A suggestion for next time is to perhaps use really light cyan colored pencil for sketching outlines, that way it's easier to mark over/erase still if applied very gently. If that's not a preferred way to do it for you, I could also suggest fully/mostly erasing parts of pencil right before you color them, so that they'll either be gone or only smudge very, very lightly when you do erase them.

As for your background: As I already said, I'd like to compliment you on your handling of the geometric shapes. However, I'm curious as to why you chose them. After looking more in-depth at pictures of the cave, such as this and this, I'm not exactly sure where these smooth, perfect shapes came from. The interior walls seem to be fairly multi-faceted and the exterior ice pieces are still irregular. I wouldn't have recognized it as Lanakila if you hadn't put it in the title. I think that next time, when doing a work like this, choosing a bit more organic shapes might better help the viewer see what they're looking at. I see you chose some more fittingly-shaped icicles/stalactites at the top. Seeing the more organic feel of that would be nice.

I do want to say that your choice of tilting the shape in the back was a good one. It helped give some interest to the smoothness of the shape.

One small nitpick I have is the sharp division you have between the head and the ear tuft. The canon media of Alolapix shows that tuft blending into/protruding from the cheek fur, so the lighting would be more of a blended gradient from that dark shadow on that side of the head into the spot where the extended ear barely catches the tail of the light over the Alolapix's head.

Another thing I'd like to point out is the perspecitve you have going on here. Fortunately, nothing really seemed too "off" at first, making it seem pretty minor. But after looking at it, I'm curious as to what perspective this is aimed from. We have the geometric shapes at the bottom arcing upward, insinuating that we're looking up with our eye level perhaps a couple of feet below. But the Alolapix's body doesn't really show this at all. The level of its head and the angle of is face is what we'd see from straight-on, and its body seems to be viewed from relatively straight-on as well. I can't tell if it's looking down at us or something similar. To make this more intentional, I think I'd really assess what angle you want us to feel like we're looking at it from. If it's being viewed from below, I think we'd see more space beneath its belly when it's been slimmed up, and more of its legs.

Overall, I like this piece, and I think it's really close. Since the tails are a really signature part of the breed, I think I'd like to see those groomed a little more toward anatomically correct. Even just softening the divisions near the top would help it resemble more Alolapix vs normal Vulpix. Finding a way to slim it up a little would be great, also, since its grace is also pretty signature to the breed. If you could try to gently cover or erase the messier pencil lines, like around the eyes and that one ear, it would also really help. However, I'd: 1) do this change last and 2) take pictures after correcting each line, just in case one smudges in a way that you can't really stand. Worst case scenario, just come back with the other changes and let me know if erasing the pencil lines didn't work out.

Before the above fixes, I'm giving this a 42/45, Alolapix not quite yet captured! It's super close, and since we have a fairly simple background, the anatomical portions of our subject are really important here. Fixing the smaller shading spots I mentioned previously would also bring you even closer!​

 

As a fellow curator I would have to respectfully disagree with your decision not to pass this drawing but I'll see what I can do. Also, this isn't pencil... It is crayon. I cannot erase anything.

 

@K'sariya "Messy" pencil lines comprise the style. It isn't about laziness.I'm actually a bit annoyed that you're frustrated that when photographing this that the light pencil outlines under the crayon become exaggerated in its darkness compared with the drawing in person.

 

This isn't my place, so if you take offense send me a message and I'll remove this post and we can pretend it never happened.

Spoiler

can you link another piece of art that shows what you were going for with "messy pencil lines" as an artistic choice? (for the record I definitely understand being docked points for something I actually wanted in the piece.) Also (keep in mind I'm not a curator) did you realize that nothing casts a shadow? The shading on the Pokemon is good (i'm specifically looking at the legs and front of the body), everything looks round, but then there's no shadow cast on the back block of ice. The light source appears to be coming from below and to the right... and I assume it's pretty stark lighting, since background (the cave ceiling) is very dark. Wouldn't it throw some pretty drastic shadows up?

Take a look at the placement of the facial features in relation to the angle of the head. If the face is tilted down, low enough for the nose to be where it is, the eyes are lower, the "hair" is lower (and seen more from the top) and you won't see the mouth. If the face is seen straight on, (the eyes are still lower-- smack in the middle of the top and bottom of the skull,) the hair will be where it is now, the nose will be higher, and the mouth slightly higher but not as much as the nose.
The eyes (apart from being different heights) have different rotations. Canonically, the inner corner of the eye will always point to the nose. If you draw a straight line between the corners of the eyes, those lines will cross at the nose. You can use that both to guide nose placement and to keep your eyes rotated to the same amount. Of course I could be wrong on this, I just did a google image search and that's just what's apparent.
Also, the light spots in Vulpix's eyes are reflections (again, based on lighting?), as Vulpix has "pupil-less eyes" according to Bulbapedia. Truth be told I thought they might just be cool inverse pupils, because they always give the illusion of Vulp looking forward (as though they were pupils), but there you go.

I took the liberty of doodling out some examples of what I mean both with the eye tilt and the shadows I think would be cast. I also adjusted the placement of some of vulp's facial features. (If k'sa will pass it like that then I'll send you a version without all the sketches.) Everything was already there, I used your elements only.


Edit: actually looking at it now in a slightly smaller version, I realize the light source is a bit higher up than I guessed it.

edit: and also I think I understand more where the colors of the eyes were intended, now that I compare this version to your original. Rotating the eyes changes where the light hits them and so, where they color should be brightest. I didn't take that into account.

 

Hi, Julio. Thank you for your concerns. I wasn't frustrated, merely recommending other solutions for the next time you work with crayon over pencil. I discussed the curation with higher-ups of the section and they agreed with the score that I gave you. Please remember that three points is a very slim margin that can be easily reached, so as of now, your score is still a 42/45, Alolapix not quite yet captured.

You are correct, it is really unfortunate that your photography brought the pencil lines up more than they are in actuality. I had no way of knowing this--you only gave me the image you showed. Presentation is important in physical works. I can only see what you showed in the initial post, and the initial post showed dark, monochromatic pencil lines that clashed heavily with the lovely saturated blues around it.

However, I did overestimate the work-ability of your medium at the end of my curation. This was my fault. So as a compromise, some of the things you could do to fix your score:

• Truly actually did have a fair point with his mention of the shadows. I wasn't going to touch on it since the anatomy issues were more glaring, but that is definitely something you can do to help improve your score. Whether from a light source that's from the right or from the right at a lower diagonal, some parts would still cast shadow.
• Clean up the lighter shading. You've received curation advice from a couple of curators in the past on the messiness of your shading, but you may refer to that at your leisure. If this is your style, the lighter shading you had still does not match it. The rest of your shading fills completely out to the lines while the (what I presume to be) blue on the light shading barely touches the edges it fills. Fixing this would also help bump up your score.
• If the pencil lines were as light and unassuming as you said that they were, I'd suggest getting your hands on a scanner or perhaps something similar, or try retaking the picture with a different light source that might show them a little less. I've never scanned crayon, so perhaps this isn't the exact solution, so I'd try to experiment with what looks the best. Perhaps in this case, a bit of a glare where there are pencil marks might help fade it out while still maintaining the integrity of the crayon. I'm not sure, especially since some crayons are more waxy than others. I'd suggest experimenting and seeing what works best.

Thanks so much,
K'sariya

 

@K'sariya what do you mean when you refer to "lighter shading," is it the shading on the body? I think it's maybe stylised but very good: it gives shape to the body without needing hard lines be drawn in (which would look out of place.) It doesn't match the shading on the blocks, maybe, bit those are simple cubes in the background of the piece, not a complex, round, warm body that is the focus. Particularly, look at the shoulders and where they blend into the body. That technique is where his shading is best.

 

Thanks for the question. I mentioned the lighter shading of the blocks in the curation, so that's what I was referring to there, though I could have been more explicit, so thank you. I agree that his shading on the body is his best. Fixing that would, of course, be a lower score boost than fixing the larger shadows. These are the fewer compromises due to the medium--I wish it was easier to color over pre-existing crayon, because fixing the anatomy would yield much greater results. If you have anything else to suggest, please feel free if you have Julio's permission to do so, unless he's already expressed that he's alright with additional public critique. If he's cool with it, feel free to suggest additional changes here. C:

 

Hmm, I see what you mean now, Pegasus the style he was going for could have been more... Could have been better demonstrated by a small block of fat marker lines in the middle of each cube? Giving an impression of colour without actually colouring most of the object.

Unfortunately I am not in contact with Julio. If he wants me to remove my comments or refrain from them going forward, I'll respect that want.