ProgressForths Art Thread

Mom Cosplay by CatCandle on DeviantArt

Mom Cosplay? This is what happens when a kid REALLY loves his mom.



I want Oddish (35 pts)

Proof: In the deviantart description it says my name.
Medium: Tablet

 

Can someone grade this?
I had a medium art thread, but I decided to make a gallery thread so I could do Medium and Simple.

 

Whoa, hold the phone there. I'll go ahead and claim this because at the moment you and one other artist are the only people (aside from myself) who are waiting to have pictures curated, and I've just graded one of hers. In the future, however, I'd ask for a little more patience, please.

 

@progressforth: Oddish curation finished!

Progress,

This is a very cute picture! I like the idea behind it, where Oddish is dressed up like its mom, the Bellossom. Let me start off by talking about some of the other things you did well.

I like how every piece of this picture has a clear attempt at shading, with light and dark areas. I think the best bits are on Oddish’s… um, belly? There’s a dark region that’s just dark enough to be a shadow, but you faded into it from the lighter areas really smoothly, so it actually looked like a real shadow, cast by some sort of soft light. The lighter, almost-white area on the left side of the picture was good for establishing exactly where the light source is. I think it could have been just a hair darker, though. Such a bright white makes it look like the light source is very close by, while the softer shadow makes it look like the light is farther away. I think there are a couple shading inconsistencies elsewhere, too. In particular, the leaves have very hard shading lines, unlike the softer fade on Oddish’s body. On the leaves, it goes from light to dark, then from dark to almost-black, with hard boundaries between the two. I would have liked to see the same sorts of shading on these leaves as you used on Oddish’s body. Furthermore, the highlights look a little out of place. I think this is because your leaves go from a middling green shade, to a sliver of very bright, and then immediately to very dark, with no fade in between.

More on the subject of leaves—their base really isn’t realistic. The green just kind of gives way to blue with no outline or boundary of where the leaves actually end. I also noticed that the two leaves at the front look like they’re attached to each other in the middle, whereas they should probably otherwise be two separate leaves. I think overall your work could have used an extra pass at the line work. I think it would really benefit from having some sketching done first, so you can really figure out the shape of those lines before filling it in with hard black outlines. When you make outlines that thick, any extra bulges or other blips in the line work become really obvious. It looks really good on the blue parts of Oddish’s body, where the lines are clean and properly rounded. On the leaves, which have more intricate shapes, I think you might have benefited from using smaller lines and giving it some extra time.

I like a lot of the small details that you added into this picture. For example, Oddish’s open eye looks very well done, even though it’s only got a couple shades in it. While the REC symbol and the timestamp are both hand-drawn, they add a playful touch to the picture. I also like that you took the extra second to add a gradient to the background. On that subject, though, the background could use more detail. At the moment, it’s a gray ground with a purple sky. Or a charcoal rug in front of a pink wall. Or, well, I don’t know what, because there aren’t any really defining features to suggest any kind of setting. I think this could have been a cool opportunity to place your subjects somewhere in the world. Playing outside, in the living room, etc. It doesn’t have to be too detailed, because you don’t want to take attention away from the star of the picture, but the lack of background here doesn’t help either.

Overall

Hmmm. This is a tough one, because while I think you did well with Oddish itself, the background was really lacking. I think I’m just barely willing to award this a 35/35, which means Oddish is captured. Keep in mind that if you attempt anything harder, especially in such a small image, there should really be some more details in the background. I may also be less easy on some of the other basic details, like outlines and shading, in the future. I really encourage you to practice using extra layers (if you’ve got a program that can do that) to sketch outlines and that sort of thing and help keep your pictures clean. Anyway, good job, and I hope to be able to keep watching you grow.

 

@Elrond 2.0
Thank you. I had never drawn anything like it, since I usually keep to felines-canines, and mammals in general.
The leaves, I rarely actually draw individual leaves, so they were hard for me, I constantly erased and redrew them. I'll try harder on them, and get a bit of practice for them.
Also, the background was meant to be a grey floor and a purple, surrealistic background when I made it, I'll make a more defined one next time.
Thank you for the curation!