Hey Tattman

Your drawing is really coming on!

I would make a couple of small suggestions;

You need to define the mouth slightly more – from that angle it needs a bit more fleshing out.

The colouring – I know you are after that shimmering effect where the shading and colouring makes it look like the light is bouncing across the scales.

That is why I wussed out on art – I just did not have the patience. 🙂

That said try using a variety of colours that are near the same shade but are gradually light to dark. The take some paper and get get a simple object square etc.

1. First square divide into blocks and deep shade each section so it looks blocky.

2. Second paper use the colours to shade and each section but over lap each other by about a 1/3 – this will show how they mix on gradient scale.

3. Third paper – go wild fill the whole square in using light shadings of shadow and light with all the colours so it is mixed up.

Then when you keep it as reference it may help you picture the shading of a predominatly same colur piece in the future.

I can see near the edges (top fins) you have applied more pressure but it seems all to be the same height.

Don’t be frightened to try different shading techniques so it looks less uniform – fish have a lot of shade variation in their scales.

Damn fine piece tho!
Keep at it – I love seeing your work.

Take care
Matthew

Hi Tattman

More than happy to look over your work – but just heading out with the wife.

As for my own work when I was 20 I was in a car accident that left me pretty much a cabbage and I as coma’d for 3 months.

I came out of it and I had to learn basic shit like how to read and write again, tie my shoelaces etc.
The Dr’s said all the knowledge was there I just had to learn how to access it again.

When I was growing up both my father and brother’s were keen artists and inisted I learn all the theory and practice everyday.

At best I was average. After the accident I am all on drawing a stickman.

The frustration was that I know the theory but to ‘relearn’ it all to get even back to an average skill level was just way too much work for me.

Besides I only did it to get some peace from the family as they were very pushy about it.

That is why I respect other ppl who enjoy it and want to do it – so no I do not have anything uptodate.

I might scan a few pieces from my old portfolio but that is stuff from 12 years ago easily.

Take Care
Matthew

fantastic pieces of advice there from DropScience,

your drawings are coming along quite well, although attention to symetry is letting you down..
do you have a light box???? if so then use it alot, get use to tracing the pieces and then your mind wil start to remember the basic geometry of things.
i was looking at the swallow…… instantly one thing popped out… take a look at the wings
they are different from each other, one has a rounded leading edge and the other is square, its small things like that you need to pay a little more attention to if your going to be serious about drawing tattoos.

for shading, go to the local cheap store where they do colouring stuff for kids, normally they have cheap watercolour pencils…. they are great for practice work. you can blend them colours nicely with a small soft paintbrush and a little bit of water.

i normally recommend picking up a kiddies colouring book for practice, you can shade and colour the pictures to look 3D or as realistic as a pixar pictures movie screen shot … it sounds silly but its great practice.

and remember that when you take the step up to prisma color pencils, they aint cheap………. i use rowney derwent ones

i think your doing really well, keep it up 😉