Dark Faerie

Lets see... There's a few things to talk about that I think should start happening, but I'm going to try to address the important things cause to me, being presented with a list of things to work on is daunting. I'll try to abbreviate into the most important stuff etc...

The quality of the colouring- There's a few textures going on in the picture which is some nice experimenting. The texture on her outfit I particularly like cause it has a leathery look about it (I assume this was desired?). There's two issues however that majorly deter from cool little things like that that you have. They're not too hard to fix

- Shading. I can see that you're giving highlights a go with your art which is great. There is some light shadow, but your shadows must be as dark as the highlights are bright. Like, your leather has a real sheen to it but no shadow at all, where as the skin has no highlight, but a shadow. What I suggest you do, is do some studies on shading with colour. You don't have to go hard core on it- just google Shiny surfaces, matt surfaces, high light, low light... stuff like that. Draw it once, and that'll comit it to memory. Draw it exactly as the example has it. Colour to colour. Notice how the gradient progresses in tone, and in saturation from light to dark. It'd be nice to do this for spheres, and cubes so you can see how light reacts when it gets a sharp edge and a soft edge. You don't need to do drills. Just one of each once. I feel this will help your command on lighting ALOT.

-Linearts- I'm not going to question what the lines form, but I'm not sure why you chose to make your linearts a colour that was so hidden. On the lines that touch her body I get why you'd chose a light colour- to soften the picture? This colour is over the whole picture though, even in the darker areas of her body like the hair. I like the purple lines in her hair, but the grey draws your primary attention in this picture. I think that changing the colour of your linearts is a good idea to add a bit of dynamic, but when the lineart contrasts this heavily in an area like the hair where detail is unimportant, and not in areas which are important like the face, then it's a bit much. I'd say that if you lighten a contrasting lineart to a darker version of it's surounding colour and that looks cool then go for it Making the linearts contrast in the opposite to the normal (White lineart against black) is too striking. There will be times where striking is good, but for this picture? Black linearts here would be nicer Let the highlight create form.

Different ways to make it look a certain way, for example a way to make a picture look like watercolor- I'm not entirely sure how gimp works. Try googling for tutorials with the key work gimp. The easiest way of replicating water colour is by using the real thing, but you need a painting program like Sai, Corel, or Artrage to do that properly. They have tools pre set up that work exactly like the real medium would work, but digitally. I suppose you could give it a go with a transparent and unsaturated brush. Unfortunatly GIMP isn't a sophisticated program so the features it has are reasonably basic. Artrage is a good cheep painting program. Not sure how expensive Sai is, but Artrage works very similar to real media and better yet, I live 1/2 hour from the peopel that wrote the program!! *isn't pimping Kiwi made products.... no...* http://www.artrage.com/ Artrage studio is $30USD while the professional version is $60. It's a good deal IMHO If you're keen to stay digital. Trial it, and see if you like it first of course.

Making the hair appear curly- That comes with learning lighting I'm afraid I think if the linearts were black though, you'd find that she does come across as having a good wave to her hair

Pretty much anything you can help with- Two things I think:-

- K.I.S.S- Keep it simple silly That background is a lovely pattern, but it screams attention cause of how contrasting it's colours are. Because of it, the character is lost in the chaos a little. Like her wings and antenna. I can barely see those Perhaps if you lowered the contrast, and perhaps gave it a light yellow tint to warm it up and make the purple pop it would sit back and let her take the limelight Atleast lower the contrast. A little bit of yellow like this http://www.blockmagazine.co.uk/ESW/Images/warm_grey.JPG Not a bright yellow- a complimentary colour to accent the other

- You have a christmas lights thing going on with your lineart I've noticed. Does GIMP have features in it like threshold? Or layer blend multiply? If you can, use those to change your linearts to not let white dots through. It'll polish up your final quality heaps If you ussed photoshop, I'd suggest using threshold, then selecting all the white and deleting it. I'm not familiar with Gimp though

I hope this was a help. To be honest, I wasn't going to comment about your form at all. Sure, its got flaws, but it's fine as it is. I don't feel that it's what you need to focus on. Your biggest goals to me would be learning shading (this includes what colours things turn when a highlight or lowlight), and focusing the viewer's attention to the subject of the picture.

I've attached a crit with some of my examples in it. I didn't do shading in it cause it was already very difficult to update the image without a high res with all the layers :< I've given her a golden glow on top of the mods cause I felt it could use some extra punch. As you can see though, it's alot easier to see her The background doesn't have to be this dark, but it was more to show that takign out the detail helps focus.

Urgh- sorry about the text wall T.T Again, I hope it helps! I have many more tips after this, btu these are the most important ones to me