Banebow Portrait

[Morgoth]

Hi,
I'm not a Master of Arts, but I'm trying to paint a portrait for the Banebow.
At the moment I'm stucked on painting the clothes and so I want to ask if you could give me some tips and critiques.

(P.S.: The fletching is missing, I'll add it later)

[Gambit]

Better lines will equal a better finished project. I think you should spend more time on step one before you move on.

[Morgoth]

Do you think vectors would do the job?
My drawing is better than the inked one, I had some Problems with scanning it.

[Gambit]

Vectors would be less fuzzy so that is a step in the right direction. But you'd do just as well converting your lines into paths.
Also skeletons require a great deal of anatomical knowledge. I imagine they'd be harder than regular people.

I'm not an artist so my advice only goes so far.

[Morgoth]

Also skeletons require a great deal of anatomical knowledge. I imagine they'd be harder than regular people.

-I did my best with the skull, the arms and the hands.
-What do you mean with harder?

[Gambit]

More difficult.

[Zigg]

This is a very minor nitpick, but bows are usually draw back past the ear. Also, the arrows should be the same color as bones, because they are made of bones.

[StDrake]

I'd suggest looking over human skeleton anatomy - the skull isn;t bad though it could use more detail (still too flat even with the colouring) but the other parts suffer tremendously, especially the arm that pulls the string..in fact it seemsit doesn't actually pull it but just pats air behind the arrow, maybe holding the shaft - that's not how proffesional archers do and would maybe fit a lev 1 unit but a banebow should be rather experiencedin that manner. Another thing is that that one half of the arm is higher than the other while they're not lined up to meet, - half goes down, another half starts higher. I dare you to try twisting those bones like that too (better don't). The 'belly' part is beyond comment..well maybe not - i'd probably draw the spine similarly which is NOT a compliment (I'm a horrible drawer xD ).

This topic could go on and on and..Overally - check out skeleton anatomy

the best parts of the picture are the bow lines and the hood shading, i'll even risk writing that the bow is quite neat..cause it is!

[zookeeper]

I'm not a Master of Arts, but I'm trying to paint a portrait for the Banebow.
At the moment I'm stucked on painting the clothes and so I want to ask if you could give me some tips and critiques.

Well, any decent tutorial, book or some other thing on how to learn to draw. I feel it's kinda pointless to point out individual details when frankly almost every part of the drawing has more or less obvious faults and it's your overall approach to drawing that necessarily needs to change (and which will automatically fix most of those faults, too).

Jetrel has some good posts on that, I'm sure someone can link to those.

[solsword]

This is a very minor nitpick, but bows are usually draw back past the ear. Also, the arrows should be the same color as bones, because they are made of bones.

Minor in relation to the other stuff, but I feel that I should point this out: when doing archery, you normally draw to the cheek/chin (at least, that's the way I've always done it/seen it done). Some quick google image searches show that this isn't always the case, though: kyudo (Japanese archery) uses a specific kind of bow and a draw past the ear. However, using a recurve and/or compound bow, I think that drawing to the cheek/chin is more realistic. Youtube (I searched for "archery longbow") indicates that the cheek/chin draw is also used for a normal longbow.

The portrait as-is would have to have the draw a bit farther back and maybe a tad higher to be a realistic full draw. Also, the head would have to be turned further to look straight down the shaft of the arrow: without turning the bow, only one eye would be visible.

[xtifr]

Also, I've said this before and will probably say it again, but, when you pull back on the bowstring, it does not stretch! The bow itself bends! The total length of the string should never be longer than the bow itself, which it clearly is here (although I've seen much worse). The amount of curve on the top of the bow is pretty good, assuming that this is a straight bow; the bottom should be curved more to match.

[Morgoth]

Thank you all, I'll try to fix this drawing.

to:

Also, the arrows should be the same color as bones, because they are made of bones.

Please notice, that this part isn't colored yet. My fault. I forgot to say...

Also, the head would have to be turned further to look straight down the shaft of the arrow

You're right in this point, but I prefer the actual version.
When the head is in the actual position, the banebow is looking to you and poses a rhetorical question like "Shall I shoot?" (The answer is already given: "yes"). The banebow is laughing at his victim.
When the head is turned, It looks like it's hard for the banebow to hit his enemy and he must be concentrated.
This is my opinion. What do you think?

[thespaceinvader]

Don't want to rain on the parade here or anything, but this is not mainline quality, and is unlikely to become so. You're welcome to continue to practice in the Workshop =) Moved.

You have potential, but to draw for mainline (skels in particular), your work would need to be of significantly higher quality.

[Jetrel]

Don't want to rain on the parade here or anything, but this is not mainline quality, and is unlikely to become so. You're welcome to continue to practice in the Workshop =) Moved.

You have potential, but to draw for mainline (skels in particular), your work would need to be of significantly higher quality.

Yeah. No offense, but you need to build a few more years of art skill to be able to contribute portraits.

We'll probably move this to Art Workshop fairly soon. Feel free to continue; working on this is great practice, but you need so much more experience that you can't fix this portrait by learning a few new tricks. You have to get vastly better, and start from scratch.

[thespaceinvader]

I already moved it