♥Farouche's sketchbook [update 3/8]

[Mlle Farouche]

[SCROLL DOWN TO MY LATEST POST FOR LATEST ART STUFF. ;D]
Hello!
I'm very new to this guild, and would greatly appreciate some critique on my work.

I'll begin with something I did fairly recently, a self-portrait.
A couple of them, actually; the first turned out really horrible, in my opinion, so I made another one a couple of days later which I am fairly pleased with.
Both were drawn from life (I used the bathroom mirror).
Here's the new one
And here's the older one

I am for the most part just interested in critique on the new one, since I've already noticed many of the errors in the old one, and I don't care about it anymore. It's just there to show...improvement?

Thanks!
♥Farouche  

[Errol McGillivray]

The handling of the hair texture is amazing. If my clothed figure teacher saw this, she'd fail me right now. Haha.

There are places where you see you're cartooning though. The mouth and eyes in particular. The mouth drops true form for symbols of "mouth" and you drew the pupils where you thought they should be. You make yourself cockeyed. The pupils both focus on the same point, so from dead front, they point toward each other juuuuuuuust a little bit. If it's too much (noticeable) then you'd be crosseyed.

The bridge of the nose is lost behind the glasses. It doesn't carry up to meet the brow.

Lovely work. Far better than what I can do right now as far as control of the media and studio skill goes. BUT there is one major failing in this image. It's empty. There's no idea or opinion being presented. (In fact, you're just kind of there, frozen with no thought in your head. Vaguely wide eyed, like a robot whose been shut off for the night.

So, here's a challenge for you. You say it's a self portrait, but besides sharing your face, what of your "self" is in there? Do another self portrait using the reference for this (if it was a photo) or this itself for your reference, but put an idea behind it. Who is Farouche? What is she like? Are we peeping in on her going about her business or are we invited into her world with body language?

Studio skill is amazingly important, but you can have all the studio skill in the world, but you only have visual voice when you're communicating with the viewer.

Edit: Ah, improvement. You've gained control and grace with the media, but you lost the expressive quality as you were working for more perfection. The first one engages me to wonder what her expression means. The second lacks expression entirely.

(So... while I'm here, do you have any tips for working with charcoal? I'm terrible.)  

[Mlle Farouche]

Errol:
First of all, thank you very much for the in-depth critique! I really, really appreciate it. biggrin

And you're right, looking at it again, it does seem sort of empty. :/ I'm just kind of looking forward. I suppose I should work on that, though it will certainly be a challenge for me since I don't like using photos; I prefer using the mirror.
I've been trying to stop using symbols in my drawing, as well (the whole "draw what you see, not what you know" thing, right?). But yeah, I see where I failed there now. XD

Now, about using charcoal? I don't, usually. Both of those were done with graphite; I've only used charcoal on this one, which I did a month or so ago.
So as far as tips go, eh...sorry, but I don't have a whole lot of experience. ^^'
Though there is a particular brand that makes charcoal that I am starting to like now, Derwent (along with all their other pencils, haha)- the charcoal pencils are mixed so they don't make as much of a mess everywhere like normal charcoals do.  

[Mlle Farouche]

Some more art today. ;D
Criticism would be appreciated from all.
Click image for larger dA version.