Ghastly

How ugly does a person have to be to scare a Ghost Pokémon? I think that's best left to the imagination.

Pokémon: Gastly
Difficulty: Hard
Medium: Colored Pencils!
Proof: I guess it's not a tramp stamp if it's on her arm... gotta keep it PG after all.
[On DeviantArt] - If you're not a curator but you've got a comment.

 

Claim

 

@Elrond 2.0;

Ghastly Curation

Form

Everything looks good here anatomy-wise. I like that you used a bubbly-type effect for the smoke instead of the normal boring, flat plane. It adds a little more interest to the Gastly. I think maybe the outline on some of the smoke trailing behind is perhaps a little too defined compared to the seemingly lack of real outline around most other things. It makes them look a little like actual bubbles more than a smoke.

The same thing happens a little on the person too, around the hand and the darker outline around the bottom part of the hair. It's not a super big deal, but it does draw my eye to hit once I'm looking at the person. The human, however, has great form despite that. People are hard to draw, and the specific way you drew this lady(?) fits great with the theme of the piece.

What really sells the entire thing is the expression on the Gastly. The startled look on its face based on its mouth and the shape of the eyes reflect the whole point of this piece of art.

Technique

Great job on the coloring here, especially since you had vast spaces to shade in with the colored pencils, and those can be devious indeed. There are only a couple places where I can see lines that go against the normal grain of the surface you were coloring, mainly in the door, areas of the bed, and on the wall along the beam of light. On the whole it looks very smoothly blended, though.

I'm a little split on that beam of light. I'm in agreement that there is definitely light coming from the hall, as the bedroom seems slightly darker. However, I don't think it's going to be just this narrow of a beam—that would mean that the light in the hall is more like a spotlight, and if that were true, the light in the hall itself would be a lot different too. The concentrated beam makes the patch of wall under it, as well as part of the bed, seem slightly awkward. I also agree that depending on where the light in the hall is, that maybe there would be a slightly more concentrated beam coming in at that angle, but there would also be residual light that fills the rest of the doorway and falls upon the bed too, just in a more faded way. Sort of like the way you did your wall light source in the Darumaka image.

Shadows on the Gastly look good, curving around and reflecting the light from the hall on top/back. But what about between the lady(?) and the mattress? The same applies to the mattress and the floor. Remember that the darkest place is between two objects, and we'd be able to see a thin line if nothing else, even if the room is darker.

Background

The background is my favorite part. There are some great details here, and it's especially hilarious that someone is watching from the house across the street. It's the little details like that that make a piece for me. All of it builds on the story, which also is added onto by the title.

I think the hallway is a little too angled from this POV—it should be slightly flatter. If the vine detail is a floor border, it could be slightly more upright from the view we get from the bedroom. Is that also a door jam running alongside the blue carpet? If it is, it's a little far away from the actual door, and the frame on the left side actually runs past and below it so it looks a little weird. I can't really tell what it is if it's not a catch for the door.

I was also wondering about the bed. Aren't those usually sitting on some sort of box frame? It could just be a mattress on the floor, but then how is the person supposed to see this figure through the window? It'd be a little too low to the ground to get much sight, as the window looks to be 2-3 feet from the floor. The door also looks like it would hit the mattress if it tried to close, so the spatial relationship is a little skewed there.

Result

Spoiler

I wish I had more to say, but I'm so tired that it's hard to think XD That being said, if you have more questions or something I said was unclear, holler at me.

I like the tie-in to the theme with the expression and details of the piece. Most of the technique is fine, although there's some questionability about the beam of light and some spatial details. Still, I'm scoring this 55/55 which means Gastly is captured!