otterling

^__^ I'm so glad you were happy with the critique. Your art is just stunning and I always look forward to it. I can't wait to see where you grow from here as an artist.

This needs to be a fic right the hell now.

Ahem.

So anyway, I love the whole thing. I think you did fantastic with the portrait work, which is always hard, and the city scape is great. It's never easy to work in detailed backgrounds so kudos on that. The wings are fantastic, the shading on the palm is just spot on, and the proportions look great. Can't think of anything I'd say to alter without being nitpicky and I think this piece deserves better than that. You hit a great range of color while keeping to a night/dusk palette, and you have great tonal range from brilliant lights to deep pitch blacks. Your anatomy looks great, there's definite motion in the piece and the texture in the lower closeup of the face looks great. If I simply had to utter something to fix, I would say it's that there's this lovely realistic shading on his face, torso, hands, and hood but his jacket feels like it's lacking the same treatment. There's also a heavy line around his boots that make them feel more like animation where his face is very painterly. I would say maybe narrow that line and try to put more range of shading into the boots and jacket. Otherwise, this is just stunning.

I have to say, honestly, bravo on tackling a subject matter as difficult as Jensen Ackles face covered in water. Not only Jensen notoriously hard to draw but illustrating water with nothing more than pencils is extremely difficult as well. You pull off both beautifully. The water coming off his chin is excellently rendered though I would like to see the same range of darks in the water as you show up in his hair. You have this lovely monochromatic palette but the water is a tad more pale than it maybe should be. Having not seen the original image this was based on it's harder to really say what's missing but water usually offers some pretty sharp lights and darks. I would love to see those dark spots brought out more. The hair line, the eyes, the water, the ear are all fantastic. You got a good range of shades in there and rendered it wonderfully. I think the background could stand being a tad darker simply because we lose a bit of Jensen's face on the left and it begins to blur in quite a bit until it's a little hard to tell where the tile ends and his skin begins. Again I haven't seen the original, and the photo may look like that, but for the sake of the art itself, I think just a shade darker on that tile would help make him pop out from the background more. I LOVE the water coming off his eye. Photorealistic and just gorgeous. You easily cast aside the idea of this being a drawing in that section and the result is just stunning. The freckles also make me deliriously happy as you manage to capture them perfectly without over doing them in a way that would have detracted from his face. You conveyed them being there without making them the focus.

Overall, this is a gorgeous work that you should be immensely proud of. The hard work you put into it is painfully obvious and the result is a drawing that shows immense skill, patience, and an attention to detail that will take you very far.