Lol, thx Adriaan.
The ref used for the sword was just a mixture of a few images of English Civil war swords, most were pretty intricate rapiers so I settled with something more plain.
http://images.denhams.com/391/391lot404.jpg
http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j278/ ... sic_02.jpg

Cool, like the style on that first one!

After some more staring at it, it seems the left hand might be a bit out of proportion with the right. The left thumb f.e. looks to me shorter than the right.

Yea, I noticed that as well. Thanks for the sharp eye thoough.

Oh, yeah. The hands are definitely different sizes, and opposite of what foreshortening would do.

Wow, Madmax that looks like you put a huge amount of work into it.

Worked waay too long on this one...


refs: 1, 2

Still not quite happy with parts of it, but I am satisfied enough with the overall shading and texture.
My main gripes are the shades (crooked ), mouth pull, and the right part of the jacket collar where I couldn't seem to get the contrast between the two parts right. The shades are a hard fix, since they're on the same layer (stupid ). Head is a bit long overall too. Oh well, onto new stuff.

Excellent work, Adriaan, that's a difficult expression to capture. I like the texture you applied. I think that some of the shadows are a little too soft on the sides of his face, where the strong light turns sharply to shadow in the reference, yours seem to blur. His teeth look a tad flat as well (remember sets of teeth are cylindrical). Good job overall.

Just finished this after sketching the original and deciding I wanted to color it.


on an interesting note I have upgraded from abhorent line sketches to early 2000's Flash style apparently, seeing as how that has been the remark on how my work looks with my newer stuff, not sure when this happened.

..eugh.
It's very simple, bent in parts, and the coloring is just a 2-way gradient.
It looks way too smooth, and really, really ugly. Try uh, not using the gradient effect/shader/tool of any kind when you color.

Thanks for the crits and nice one on the teeth, I'll keep that in mind. I see what you mean with the shadows as well, they do look a bit blurry in places.

I didn't. the program I use doesn't even have a gradient tool, in fact I used the exact same method I used on the last image I uploaded here.

You know what I mean.
However you managed to shade that, don't use the same technique ever for anything unless you want it to look awful.

Oh god, the memories, all those castle defense flash games.
But yeah, the subtle gradient shading is really funky, kinda makes things look like plastic rather than wood or steel. Try using a harder brush or more contrasting values.

You certainly are a negative person, just saying.