Poetry's drawings and stuff

After revisiting that maplestory 2 knight drawing I assessed what I think I need to fix and improve, will do this for every non-study piece from now on.

 Spoiler

++Knight Assessment++

Observations:

-Poorly done metal texture, esp on sword where it makes no sense
-Poorly done stockings (the lit area)
-Still reliant on lineart, painting didn't feel good enough to stand on its own.
-Blury, smudgy and undefined in areas (legs in particular), need better actual edge control

Main Weaknesses:

-The face, took too long to fix it and I still feel unsure of it.
-The hair, no idea how to render hair in light, still reliant on the same guess-and-check method I used for old pics
-Not giving enough pineapples to finish it, became..bored/discouraged.Need to harden the pineapple up next time and end a pic
properly, its still not even rendered properly in some parts.
-Lack of contrast and real'pushed' values

What I like:

-The hands, best hands I've ever done (I haven't done many hands)
-The dress bit, never really rendered something like that before.

WHat I discovered:

-Pulling down the saturation of a color, and then applying it next to similar color (e.g. blue-grey next to blue)
creates a sense of its compliment (the grey took on a yellow-feel), from this I can work out lighting (the light
was yellow) of stuff, I think.
-Lasso tool can come in handy for setting down patterns (see side of the dress)
-Metal is uh, high contrast (common sense 101 zzz)

What to study/focus on to improve:

-Facial construction, being confident in putting down something that I know will look correct. Back to hampton
and loomis, as well as self portraits, photo break downs and observation
-Life studies of metal, of different textures
-Photo studies of hair, research into methods (ribbon method?)
-RENDERING ABILITY. Look into the ctrlpaint videos you have. + Still life painting

Decided my digital painting/rendering ability was nonexistant so I practiced a bit first. I still have no idea how to handle SAI.


Exams are over (for now), my final set of school exams are in 5weeks, and then my final HSC is in...2-3 months? So I'm just going to take all of tomorrow off to draw *-*