Postby The Hitman » 18 Jan 2009, 10:00
If you'd like feedback, I first recommend that you not try to draw in an 'anime' style, that you not outline objects, and that you rough out the basic anatomy of people before you start drawing them.
99% of attempts to draw things that look 'anime' always end up looking really, really phony, because you're basically trying to draw another person's art style, rather than trying to render an actual object. I find this is often a crutch for people who are new to drawing, because they learn to draw one eye or one nose or something from a very simple template and then simply repeat that, but really it will hold you back from learning to render arbitrary shapes, and if you don't understand what the stylized forms are based on, they will end up looking like a bunch of symbols stuck together rather than, say, an actual face.
While, for some cartoony drawings, I think selective outlining (where you outline in a slightly darker and more saturated version of the same colour) can look all right, black outlines around everything generally do not look very good. The only reason to outline a figure is to make it 'pop' more against a background, but really there are much better ways to distinguish foreground objects from background objects (aerial perspective, depth of field, etc.), especially when putting together a drawing with more subtle gradations of colour (notice outlining tends to be used on cartoony figures shaded with large blocks of colour, where it is less obtrusive). Black outlines around every object in your drawing, particularly when you're trying to use a more painterly style, will look really weird.
Regarding anatomy, you might want to work on doing really quick roughs of figures in a variety of poses rather than putting a lot of time and effort into a single picture. While the little details in your picture, like cloth folds, look fine, some of the gross anatomical details are a bit wonky (what is happening to the neck of the girl on the left?). My recommendation is to work on drawing actual, non-cartoon figures. That way you can work on drawing from reference and get your general forms behaving correctly.
"Just another Sunday paddleboat ride on a man-made lake with another lady stranger; if I remain lost and die on a cross, at least i wasn't born in a manger."
