Artwork: Red Haired Girl

Drawn By: WrittenDusk 

I decided to do this artwork on a whim and took the chance to revisit my school days in art with a simple composition. Ever since I stopped taking art courses I have never really painted an artwork from start to finish again. I always feel more comfortable and confident having lines in my drawings. But this really widen my comfort zone. Things really do tend to come around full circle unexpectedly and unintentionally.

I wasn't expecting to learn much from this since I am simply painting how I normally draw. But relying only on colours, after drawing with Iines so much, really brings to light why my colouring is so weak.

While painting this I thought a few times that I "finished the shading", but after zooming out it looked flat and washed out compared to my other drawings. The colours just can't hold the drawing together by itself. My colouring is too reliant on and constrained by my lines.

An artwork in a youtube video helped me a lot in making this as good as it is now. I'll have both the links to the artwork and video below. I especially used it as reference for the eyes, colour choice, and the overall more realistic art direction.
 
There is so much to learn and much to improve on this artwork alone; I'm not completely satisfied with the eyes. But one step at a time. 

Drawing, colouring, rendering, poses, backgrounds, compositions, atmosphere, and the list goes on.

Hope you enjoyed my artwork! Let me know what you think. I'm really excited to see what I can do next after this "revelation", haha!

Links:

Artwork (Too good): http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=58543523 

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHwnFARzEp8