Esn's art Reviews on Newgrounds

[Creepachu contemplates life]

I love it

The expression in his eyes is just great. And you chose a great background.

Jarvid responds:

I made a great background

[Dinner Time]

It really IS fantastic

Made in a naturalistic style, yet it also has these wonderful elements of stylization, on the otter's fur especially, but also in the water, that give it a real striking distinction. Could you please explain your technique a little? I'm curious, was it made with white pencil on black paper? If so, did you create a "rough drawing" first?

This work stands head and shoulders above everything else that you've submitted. "Cardinal in the Brush" comes closest (it is also quite good, although not as interesting), but the other ones almost seem like they were done by someone else entirely.

Little-Eise responds:

Thanks for the review and for favoriting my work. I would be glad to answer your questions.

Yes, I did make this on black paper with a white color pencil. I did not, however, make a rough sketch beforehand. My technique was fairly simply: I drew what I saw on the reference sheet that my teacher gave to me. Since you seem to want an more in depth explanation, I'll give one to you. To get the proportions correct, I started out with a light outline of the otter and fish. From there I really had no distinct process; I worked on the otter for a bit, and then switched over to the fish when the fur became too tedious to work on. I did that for about an hour a day for around three weeks in class, and while sixteen to seventeen hours of work isn't a massive amount of time, it is still a good amount more than what I put into some of my other pieces.

[Faust]

Ohh, yes, this is really nice

Great, drawing, great proportions... one thing, though: this should definitely be in the "pixel art" category, not illustration.

I only give an "8" because the choice of palette is a little uninspiring for some reason... there's a bit too much plain white for my liking. Also, the sky could have been made more interesting. But really, it's very impressive.

StarwolfTsuname responds:

Thank you very much Esn! I agree I really rushed the completion of this piece and steered away from strong contrasts for reasons beyond me, but now that I have a program other than Ms Paint I may edit this one and improve on it. Thanks for the comment!

[Unicorn]

Nice drawing of a unicorn

Although the lines sometimes seem a bit stilted (I'm sure that you'll get better at this with time), overall this is a very nice drawing. It's really obvious that you're putting a lot of yourself into your drawing, not simply working off instructions or copying styles. There's a very strong... mmm, essence of the creator, I think. I guess that's the right word. Just by looking at this, I immediately sense certain things about the artist. i.e. that she's a young teenage girl (it is very obvious).

Sure to repel young boys who are afraid of cooties. :) I'm long past that age, yet to tell the truth, that was still part of my first reaction when I looked at this (not the main part, but it was there). Silly, huh? I guess old habits die hard. :)

ShelzyDEMONDOLL responds:

Thanks since then i like to think ive improved :)
Apologies for the late replys :)

[Path]

Incredible tension...

There's an incredible tension in this work... that white line in the middle is like an event horizon to a black hole, and when I look at it, I feel inexorably, inescapably pulled in toward the centre, past the trees that blur with the speed, to the end of the journey, to that horrible white light that rends the world apart. It's somewhat terrifying, really. To me, this is a painting about the moment right before death.

CptBeefcake responds:

it really carries a lot of emotion for you.
.
.
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wow

[Big Ass Kadoole]

Can't see a thing

Do you think you could upload a higher resolution version of this instead? It looks like it's probably really nice, but your resolution is currently so tiny that I just can't see a thing.

IDuDe responds:

I guess you're right, I'll edit it and give a link to the close up pics over at Deviantart...

[Melting Away]

Great melting mushroom!

Quite interesting piece! Great detail on the mushroom. The sun might be a little simplistic, though. Some background would also have been nice, rather than just white space.

I guess I'm wary of scouting you because of Tom's "no pencil sketches" remark - and though some of your stuff looks like finished pencil art that I think is acceptable, other stuff does look like quick sketches which should be made private (unfortunately, when scouting, you have no idea which works are meant to be "public" and which are meant to be "private"). Anyway, this is the former.

Have you ever considered going over your stuff with pen? You know, there's such a thing called non-repro blue pencil lead (or something similar) - a shade of light blue which scanners cannot pick up if you scan in greyscale or B&W. It's explained in an article on Dave's Mechanical Pencil Blog. Anyway, it saves the work of erasing your pencil lines after you ink them - just scan it and that's it. Some brands even fade in sunlight, so you can leave it in the sun for a while if you really want them gone. Having the right type of pen is also really important - frankly, I just bought a really great one recently. The ones I was using for all of my previous "inked" artwork (i.e. all of the ones currently on the art portal) were not great. If you go to my DeviantArt (username: niffiwan), you can see the submission "Mad Scientist" in which I used this pen - the line quality is a lot nicer, and it was a lot more enjoyable to work with it.

Anyway, just a few things that might help, or not. Give it a try anyway - buying all that stuff cost me about $10, but it has already saved me a lot of time, and makes my work look better.

PurpleElephant21 responds:

thank you very much
i will definitely look in to your suggestions
thank you :D

[That sneaky one]

Exciting!

Very nice artistic direction. Balanced and great use of shape and colour.

baiost responds:

Thank you. Yes I really love the colours too.

[Baby Bunnie]

Bunny!

I love bunnies.

I also love the softness of this image, which mirrors the subject being depicted. If I may make a small critique, I think that the grasses in the background have too much black in them - it feels out of place.

bloominglove responds:

That's what I did at first is making the grass lighter... But my art teacher said that it needed to pop out more and I agreed with she so she told me to darken the grass in the background... :D Thank you for the critique though! :D

[First flight]

Really, really nice

What I like best about this picture is the warmth. It feels lovingly crafted, and something about using colour pencils just gives you a living texture that computers cannot match.

The direction of lines on the big dragon is excellent, providing a bit of a blur/motion effect. Great palette. I also appreciate details on the rocks and grass.

If I may ask, what kind of colour pencils did you use?

EchoRun responds:

Just bog standard ones really. The brand is Faber-Castell, but they are just basic colour pencils.

I have some fancier stuff - water colour pencils, ink pencils, tinted charcoal and graphite and my acrylics - that I am panning to upload once I can use a scanner again. Interesting effects, but I have no idea how my glitter-stars will translate with a scanner...

Thanks for the review!