"Art" for Mon [APR]

Here is my capture attempt for Meowth, including the April theme of Taxing. I don't remember the last time I drew something x3 so be gentle.

Spoiler

Target: Meowth
Rank: Medium [45+ points]

 

Claimmiinngg for when I can get to this lol

 

First Impression:

I think this is a really cute and funny picture of Meowth I assume doing his taxes? They do like shiny things after all hehe. Alright, onto the curation!

Form:

I’ll focus a bit more on our subject Meowth in this section and the first thing I notice is that the whole pokemon isn’t depicted in this image. Once you hit mediums and higher, its generally expected to show most of the pokemon and if that isn’t the case, surrounding elements have to make up for it. Now, I didn’t need a reference at all to tell me this was a Meowth so you really nailed on getting its shapes and anatomy down.

You even incorporated the monthly theme brilliantly with Meowth, so well done on that as well. First off, the basic shapes look pretty good and you managed to capture all the details on its face. It’s pupils are meant to be a bit more slitlike or cat shaped, but the way you have it here fits the expression of the Meowth. The only other things off are extremely minor, aside from the left (our left, its right) side of it’s face being shaped a little odd. That side of the face being shaped that way also is probably what caused the whisker on that same side of the face to also be drawn differently from the rest. However as this is traditional and I imagine thats not pencil, there isn’t much to be done about it. Aside from that, You did a great job on Meowth!

Briefly I’ll mention the colors here real quick. It is hard to see its main body color, but from what I can tell, it appears you choose a pretty close color, so thats fine. The outside of the ears, the coin on its head, the tears and the mouth all look pretty spot on. The only thing that appears to be off is the color for the inside of the ears as well as the tip of its tail. Both appear to be a reddish color rather then a lighter brown color. I’m going to assume you don’t have access to colors aside from what you used and its not too drastic, so it’s okay for this image.

Background/Foreground:

There isn’t really a background here in this image, but you do have a very simple foreground with the coins, tool, paperwork and desk. Some parts of them are colored, but they lack any real shading. In fact, there isn’t really any shading prevalent in this picture. All the items on the table are capable of casting shadows depending on where you wanted to establish a light source. The table also stops randomly on the page rather then continuing to the edge or being given corners. It’s just a little weird for the lines to suddenly stop in space. Aside from that, I think the speech rectangle above is a pretty great addition, so I suppose I’ll consider it part of the foreground? I like that its colored too and that the “Meow” part of the pun is in bold. It really catches your attention as soon as you look at the page.

However, the reason I bring up these things regarding your foreground and well, background, as its considered white space, is that since this is for a medium pokemon, a little more has to go into it. While something like this would be fine for an easiest and even a simple, for a medium, usually you either want a nice little background. Alternatively, you could go for showing the whole mon with some shading and have a simpler background.


Line:

The lines are pretty clean throughout this piece. They are also clean enough for me to see and differentiate the different parts of the Meowth and the foreground.

Technique:

It’s very hard to see the technique you’ve used in coloring this piece as I imagine it was scanned in from a scanner. In the future though, some scanners have settings in the program you save your scanned images. You can usually make slight adjustments and bring out your colors a bit more. However, from what I can tell, I believe this is done with crayons themselves or perhaps crayons with some marker use in some areas (the coin?). From what I can tell in the picture, most of the coloring is pretty even and neat, so great job on keeping the coloring even and not all over the place.

I’ve already mentioned shading when it came to the foreground/background, but there isn’t any on Meowth either, which for a medium, there should be a little of something. If not the background, the pokemon has to have some minimal shading. Though in actuality its recommended to have minimal on both. This is a step up above simple, so a little more is expected, but its nothing too drastic. It’s good practice too for seeing how light wraps around and hits objects and living things.

Pick a spot where you believe light would be coming from and give it a quick shade. You could even draw a quick window with some lines to show its on a wall and have sunlight coming through. It might be a little harder since this is traditional artwork, but just a little bit of shading helps bring things out a bit. It gives it dimension and makes it seem like it’s a living, breathing thing, doing its taxes of course haha.

For example, here is a medium I’ve done in the past. Now, you definitely don’t have to do anything that drastic but see how there’s darker shades on the left sides of the pokemon? Thats because I chose my light source to come from the top right, so the shadows are placed to reflect where I think the light won’t hit as much or at all.

Overall:

Overall, its a pretty simple piece and while the Meowth is cute and expressive, there’s just a slight lack of detail this picture needs. I really like what you have, but I know you can definitely put out some amazing stuff. I’ve seen the other stuff you put up and while that has no bearings on how I judge you here, as this is a separate stand alone piece, I know you’re completely capable. I’m going to give this piece a 35/45, so Meowth is unfortunately not captured. However, if you fix a couple of things, like the floating never-ending table and add some much needed light shading to this, I’m sure you’ll pass it next time!

I totally believe in you and I am, in no shape or form, saying anything is wrong, but trying my best to give you pointers to improve. You did do a great job on applying the theme here so go on ahead and claim your 5k!

Feel free to ping me to come and reevaluate your piece if you decide to make those changes.

 

Mkay I can def give it the detail to bump it up to be appropriate for a Medium piece I'll just edit this post when I get to it!