Crow's nest of things and stuff

stunning! dedication and it's paying off!

I think it's over 4000.. Each image is 5 sets of 3 30 minute sessions. There's 8 images so that's 40 sets. The ones with just small figures should all have 60 minimum with maybe 1 or extra. There's 9 sets that aren't made up of them so that's 31 sets of 120 figures which is 3720. (might want to check these figures since I'm not using a calculator..) The first 7 sets are made up of 3 x (8+4+2+1) = 45. So 7 of them is 315. So far the total is 4035. then the last 2 sets are made up of 3 30s so that's 180 total. So that should be 4215 plus a few where I did a couple extra.. I think The maths could very easily be off. I always was one too make stupid little mistakes in maths..

And here's some more gesture from the last week and a bit.. That puts the total now up to ~4215 + 162 + 162 = ~4539 ........I think. Plus 30 form imagination.

Those sketches are far more organised than I ever manage! I just have post-its here, half-finished sketchbooks there. Lol.

good job on the latest gestures, although I wanna see some more stuff from you

But I can give you some critique on your ones from imagination. So it seems like your poses are very unbalanced, there are some very vague rules about balance that some artists have talked about in their respective anatomy books like in Hampton's anatomy book or Loomis' Figure Drawing for All it's Worth. But what has been helping me the most with learning to get a balanced pose is actually learning more about the pose I want to do.

So lately if I've had to do a certain illustration and I decided on a thumbnail and know what kind of pose I want for the image I'll do loose gesture/figure studies of people in that specific pose. So like I had to paint Poseidon ready to throw a trident ( forrestimel.deviantart.com/art/Poseidon-460584331 ), so I hopped on to Google and did some gestures of people about to throw javelins. And then I took notes, keeping in mind things like how their body is twisting, how much they're twisting, how far back does their arm go, etc. etc.

The same goes for simple poses ( forrestimel.deviantart.com/art/Lilith-464511972 ), like I just did a character in a simple pose just standing but with most of her weight on one leg causing contrapposto with her pelvis and clavicles. But I wouldn't know how to place her legs and feet and body if I hadn't done some research and gestures of those specific poses. So from doing research I learned that in a tough girl, not going to take shit from you, waiting for a fight kind of a pose generally the spine is upright, head slightly tilted upwards to give a feeling of superiority, one leg planted flat holding the most weight, other leg is further from center of body and acting as a support for weight, the leg with most weight causes the pelvis to tilt which then causes the upper body to balance it out by moving that side of the clavicle down.

So I really recommend trying to work on characters or illustrations with characters that will require a variety of different poses and taking the time to research them and why those poses give off a certain feeling to us, I think it would be very beneficial. But only if you do it for something specific, because you need to apply that knowledge to something

Thanks for the suggestions Forrest, I'll try and get round to putting that advice into practice shortly.

These are a couple of banners I'm working on for a Magic the Gathering card selling site. I'd like to get these pieces really up to standard so any advice would be greatly appreciated. At the moment obviously the second one is still very early stages so it's mainly just the first one I'm interested in.






The two should hopefully look similar to their designs in this image by Brad Rigney when I'm done:

Did you paint the last image?

I wish.. No perhaps I should of made it more clear. The last image is by this guy. Brad Rigney

I've also now edited the previous post so it's more obvious to the next who come..

I wasn't sure, but there is obviously a style difference, so I wasn't sure if it was in the coluring. They look good.

Well, the Rigney one is looking absolutely awesome so that's really something to strive for!
Regarding your own images, they're rather small so I find it hard to go nitpicking, but I think maybe the girl's torso is a bit short? (or waist area, rather - but it might be due to you having more fabric over her hip than Rigney's version)
The big guy is also recognisable, but I don't get the feeling of his overly huge bulk from your sketch, yet. You might want to emphasize that size of his. Hope this helps