Just pencil roughs at the moment. I thought the provided outline looked a bit 'hippy' or dumpy so my first sketch was an attempt to make the proportions a bit more classical.
[img]http://www.carpe.com.au/home/artwork/sumea1rough.jpg[/img]
This sketch was a freehand thumbnail of an Egyptian inspired costume. It just kind of grew as I doodled which shows. The original was half the size of the images above and below.
[img]http://www.carpe.com.au/home/artwork/sumea1rough2.jpg[/img]
This was inspired by the dumpy look of the original outline. It was not classical so it suggested someone a bit more rugged.
[img]http://www.carpe.com.au/home/artwork/sumea1rough3.jpg[/img]
The first two were done in one home bound train commute (about 45 minutes) together with a lot of thumbnails of faces and heads (which were OK, but masculine).
The second was done on the following day's cummute.
Obviously (from all of these) I need to work on faces.
For the moment I have no easy way of rendering these. I am left handed but have come to use a mouse right handed... I am investigating investing in a tablet, but I want to improve my pencil sketching to justify it for myself.
Comments please...
There is some nice stuff going on here. I think with the Egyptian one you need to pay a little more attention to how the fabric flows and falls as it rolls off the curve of her torso before being lifted out again as it meets her arms but as you said it come out of a doodle so I can?t crit it too hard.
I do like the mechanic, she does look very ?earthy? and it comes across well, I think that she could use a little more in the way of personalization, unless she is just supposed to be a generic grunt. But other then that I think she looks good.
Colouring with a mouse can be a pain in the butt at the best of times, more so if you have a complication doing so (Ie left handed, using muse right handed) I would recommend that you get a tablet, just a little one, they are not so expensive at the moment. Sometimes with art it can be hard to motivate yourself to create art, having road blocks in the way make it that much harder to get motivated. Remove the road blocks and get creating, it in itself justifies the expense.
Pantmonger
all my personal stuff I do with my cheapo $90 acecad. Everything in my portfolio www.jistyles.com is done with it. It's cheap, it's nasty, but its specs are more than alright (512 shades pressure, good accuracy and sampling), and it's good for me personally since I like smaller surfaces to get work out fast.
yup - mine also has the added after-purchase value of a large crack running along the casing, the pocket pen holder broken off the stylus (I hated that little thing), and gaffa tape holding the battery case closed in the stylus. Why you may ask? well I've probably broke this tablet about 5 odd times in varying degrees because I take it places, it gets banged around, I'm not precious with it, and that's exactly what I like about it. It's cheap, it's solid, it does what I want, and it's nothing to replace once it does eventually die (I've had it for a very long time - much longer than I really expected it to last quite frankly).
One other point of note about it is that it complies with part 15 of the FCC rules - It will not output interferance, and it will take any interferance it is given. One thing I HATE with a passion about the much more expensive wacoms like the intuos 2, is how much interferance it gets from my 21" monitor at work - it makes it jitter and jump around everywhere, unless I'm sitting way back or have it uncomfortably in a position on my lap.
Anyways, enough of my tangent, I gotta get ready for that before-mentioned work :/
They are quite good considering that you don't seem to have a lot of confidence in them. It is very difficult to find fault with them as they have been kept fairly basic. I will try to give some comments though.
. It is nice that even with a simple drawing, you tried to show the pleats in her clothing. I really do like that :). Her face really does need some work though (as you said). He hands could definitely use some more detail. If you are after reference images for drawn egyptians, then have a look at some of the Medieval Witchblade comics (there are some later ones set in Egypt).
. The mechanic is quite cool. Her face is pretty much non-existant, but that isn't too bad. My only real complaint is how does her belt stay attached to her pants? (or other way around).
Overall, I do think that they are good pictures and you have a lot of potental. My advice is to make them a little larger and try adding in more detail. If you have difficulties drawing faces, then try drawing them from photos. It isn't cheating, and it really helps to capture a more natural feeling. Can't wait to see more :D