Undetected Detection

Title: Undetected Detection
Target: Venonat
Rank: Medium (45+ to pass)

Janine with her Venonat and Venomoth sneaking around unseen... I liked drawing Venomoth as though it were a falcon on a falconer's arm, except Janine is a ninja and not a falconer hehe.

Colored pencils, crayons, and pastel =D

Spoiler: Proof of Work

 

Claiming!

 

So apparently I had a very long curation written out for you but then automatic updates happened and lost all of my progress. @[email protected] ANYWAYS picking up from where I left of:

Hmm it is a fun scene that you have drawn for us! It appears at least at first glance, to be very colorful, inviting and detailed! The biologist in you is certainly showing. I'm glad that you have made an attempt to incorporate people as well as Pokemon. People are often left out in URPG art because people are rather complicated, often more so than the creatures that accompany them, and generally require more effort than the rank of Pokemon intended on capture demands. Janine is also one of the lesser-known gym leader since she was introduced so late in the game in Gold-Silver-Crystal or Heart Gold and Soul Silver! I'm not even sure if she has a presence in the anime!

At first glance, I can easily tell that she is in the Kanto Safari Zone since she is the current Fuschia City gym leader, at least as of the most recent canon information. It is clear that she is taking out her baby Venonat for training under the supervision of the wiser, but more cautious older evolutionary relative, Venomoth probably giving it advice. They are all focused on the target looking like they are ready to pounce or remain in hiding.

Janine + Pseudo Sugimori Style:

I can clearly see that you used her official artwork from gens II and IV and I can tell that you wanted to continue with pokemon's classic Ken Sugimori's style and I can tell that you also wanted to combine it with the cartoonish-realistic style of your own. I'll talk about the overall unity of your work later, but I will remind you that, and especially for earlier generations it was the style to abstract out the face while maintaining proper body ratios and some sort of sense of three dimensionality, but also flattening and sharpening the face to highlight their expression, most notably their behemoth eyes. For now at least your interpretation of the Sugimori style works because everywhere else is really cartoony-- there are thick outlines everywhere. I've never understood why the shins were abstracted to be angular v's. I am a little bothered by her face's flatness demanded by the style and the surrounding scenery and every other part of her body. Her clothes and hair are all rendered in light and shadow yet her skull was somehow flattened. I know in later generations they are working more and more to give some depth to their characters but it is difficult to to merge both Sugimori style cartoon style with the three-dimensional skull which her face rests upon. Watch out for that, especially in higher ranks.

Anyway, when we look at human figures often we immediately go straight to what is the most familiar: the eyes. The cliche "eyes are windows to the soul" does hold a lot of truth in that a lot of information about a character in a scene, whether or not it be in art, literature, or theater, comes from the reading the eyes. In your drawing, you have Janine looking intensely at something off in the distance. The eyes are drawn mostly the same but her left eye is a bit wonky. That is a little detail, but otherwise good job in adapting the official artwork to the scene at hand.

The Pokemon.... Venonat and Venomoth

Onwards to the true heros of you drawing! For the most part both bugs have a fairly simple structure. They're both really big bugs and most insects carry a very simple pattern that we were taught at a very young age. Now of course they are both not without their flaws but they aren't as dire to demand that you immediately need to completely redo.

Both Venonat and Venomoth are huge and generally are larger than one would intuit. Venonat, for instance, the round purple thing is a meter tall. Whether or not that that measurement was taken with its antennae or not, still would mean that the bug would perhaps be a bit more than half of Janine's size! At least I don't expect Janine to be greater than two meters tall. Honestly, the scale you have venonat makes more intuitive sense, but if you look at their pokedex entries, they say that otherwise. For the most part though, you have scaled your bugs more adequately. I do want to say this: people will scrutinize scale more when people are in the scene since we can estimate sizes better by seeing something compared to a human rather than some abstract measurement. I also think that Venomoth is a little small as well, but the largest scaling issue is with Venonat.

Individually, they are both drawn fairly well and accurately. The biggest issues after comparing yours with the official artwork is that Venomoth's wings could be longer and its eyes bigger and that Venonat's eyes seem a bit small, too thin, and slightly off center. I can't really find many other technical errors of that sort but I do want to say that the way Venonat is holding onto Janine is cool and really emphasizes the scene of the drama, but at the same time you forced its arms to be off-centered to work with its position. What should have happened with Venomoth's pose is this:


View: http://imgur.com/a/9oLBQ


If you were to draw nenomoth, he would have his both completely hunched over her arm. If you wanted to portray Venomoth more realistically at that angle you would also have to have each arm wrapping around hers at differing lengths. Also Venomoth's wings are really big and when they are as widespread as you are telling us, don't you think that would get in Janine's face? I think so. It would be fine if you pushed them backwards a little kind of like how butterflies do that when landing on flowers. I think for a wise Venomoth trying to set an example for the young one would do that.

Scenery, Background:

Besides the flurry of solid lines, which I'll delve into more detail in the technique section I think you have had a lot of fun coming up with this scene. It is very engaging with all of the swirling colors and dense underbrush. The trees are multicolored and interesting, and the environment in which such a serious moment is happening is coming to life. There is , however some issues with some parts of it and I do think they take away slightly from the drawing. You have managed to keep viewer fixed on our subjects but I do think you could do more to let us wander around the scene more. Have you heard of the French Painter Henri Rousseau? He was considered a naive painter but his sceness of jungles really do captivate the audience and excite the imagination. Gauguin is another artist I think would be worth looking at. He is a master at blending flatness and 3-d rendering of forms in lush, tropical environments in a flashy, color-filled adventures!

Rousseau:

Spoiler

or

Spoiler

http://biblelessonsite.org/images2/rous3.jpg

Rousseau plends his subjects in the scenerey where they become just as important as the fighting animals. That was pretty crazy to do, but I do think you can certainly step up what you have a notch in your drawings!

I would recomend that you Google Search Gaugin because most his paintings contain partial nudity and I don't know if the mods on this site would approve of that! His work is certainly more impressionistic, but I've shown you him because you can totally use arbitrary color in you works to enliven it even more.

I do think that you could have done the trees in the background with less detail and I am reading the holes like stickers, as you could have definitely filled out some detail in them.

Spoiler

I do think you could have concealed your little Venonat better in the grass. The two bushes look kinda random, but its cool.

Technique:

Overall for a medium work, I think the level of graphical unity is OK. In some places you're moving beyond outlines while in others you're holding tight. It does give me a little sense of unease but you are definitely figuring out where the harsh outlines should go. Honestly, if you want all outlines go for it or if you don't want any visible outlines then go for that. Right now I think there is an uncomfortable stasis, and I think for you as an artist which way to go. I think if you want to choose the outlines then I would recommend playing with line quality, let some lines break the form, have some be thick and weighty, have some be light and airy, have some that are random and squiggly, or bent and uptight. Right now where you have outlines it appears that you are rigidly following subject A, subject B, subject C, etc. rather than loosening up and letting your hand be freer. With pencil it is easy to draw from the wrist, but I definitely think you can play around with line-making with arm as it will forcefully loosen some of the stiffness up. When you have even, unchanging lines it begins to look more like coloring book drawings. I mean they're fun, but you'll be rewarded more if you start to break loose from their grasp.

If you want to go the completely free route with no outlines keep the level of rendering you have on Janine (besides her face), the bushes, and oddly enough, that boulder in the background and carry it throughout the work. You can of course lightly pencil in with a super-hard or fine pencil at the start and work your way from there.

Conclusion:

I think that this was a rather ambitious drawing. You've included one figure and two Pokemon and an incredibly detailed scene all for a medium mon. I think there is a lot going for you and I think you are tapping into something good. I do think that you should start playing with different lines if you want to continue sticking to outlines or go headstrong without them as I feel that this drawing is torn between going. Regardless, Venonat is a medium mon and you have clearly met the requirements and then some for your work. 50/45 Go have your bug!

 

Astounding curation julio! Thanks for curating, as always. And yep, I had the Safari Zone in mind while drawing this. I did struggle a bit with Venomoth's positioning; I wanted it to look hawklike but insect anatomy doesnt translate into that well, haha. You're definitely right about the linework too--usually for scenes like this I just wing background stuff, but for this piece I tried doing outlines on pretty much everything. Thanks again! Claiming my bug too!