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I've been working on this image for a bit now, trying to take it slow and get it done with all the details that I wish for it to have. I'm having some issue with the hands and the jeans.

I think I may have the hands figured out, but I'm still struggling with the jeans, even after digging through various collections of reference... nothing seems to be setting up right.

Hmm... that helps alot, really. :3 I admit that I'd been trying to do some rather baggy pants, but I like what you've done here.

As for the type of image... it actually started as a character concept sketch for my co-author... As I'm trying to work on paying attention to details I might attempt to do a minimal bit of scenery, but I don't anticipate including much more than I have.

Looks good. My only concerns are that:

1) Her anatomy looks like it's expanding as you move down the drawing.
2) Her hair looks more like wires than a long, soft body that is connected at one end.
3) She lacks a consistent volume.

1) It's a good idea to check proportions as you draw to make sure this expanding or shrinking doesn't happen. Here, the head is a certain size, but you're not checking the other parts of the body against the head, so they are out of proportion with the head.

Immediately I notice that her wrists look about the same thickness as her neck and her palms alone are about the size of her face. Her torso seems a little long for the head and her pelvis seems a little long for her torso. I like to look at my guidesketch before I start working on any lines and just make sure the guides are in proportion.

2) You've got so many strands that you're losing focus on the fact that the strands attract each other and pretty much move as a single mass. (Which is why we use conditioner. Shampooing ionizes the hair and it sticks together really hard. Conditioners even that out so they don't flying apart, but they stay apart enough to slide around and you can sweep it around like in those shampoo commercials.)

Focus on the mass of the hair as one piece, then add some directional detail so that people can tell what the style is after you've got that down. It will look more natural. Right now, it's doesn't look like it's blowing in the wind and it doesn't look like it's following any motion she could be making.

3) Because her ground plane is flat on, she looks every flat. I like to try and make sure that I illustrate that there is not only space between the legs from side to side, but the width of the hips exists. Making a rectangle in perspective on the ground (with the feet as the short sides) helps that a lot. Once you see the space taken up on the ground, you tend to naturally consider the depth of the parts of the body too. (Like the side of her hips.) That's the great thing about us artists. We percieve a lot more than we realize. Sometimes little tricks help you remember to show it.


This last one is just a thought and something I personally like to do. As a cartoonist I almost never set the figure's weight evenly distributed on both feet. (Unless I have a reason to.) It's very immobile and takes away from the motion of the picture. Even for figures and objects that aren't moving, there is motion in the composition. Use the distribution of weight to your advantage to keep static figures and objects moving.

Agreed. (As long as you use what you learned in the next, you're moving forward. No point in reworking the same one.)