Looking for critique/advice on my artwork

[raustuart]

Howdy, folks! I've been looking for a good website to show off my work and get some good critiques on them. Any advice at all will be helpful, so feel free to speak your mind openly. Thanks!

[malcom]

Welcome to the forums. I like this. Are you a fan of DBZ?
Nice powerful pose. It seems your going for more of a cel shaded look. Few things I would recommenced is using some reference for the anatomy. That's the first thing I noticed that could use some fixing. It feels like he might be missing a collarbone. Shoulders are a bit low as well. The hands are good. I would add a little bit of the thumb. The arm anatomy need a bit of work. Mainly the look of the triceps that are showing. The shading makes them look a bit off. Adding a back rim light could be nice. Also the color of the shadow areas can be a blend of the sky light and the shadow areas of the skin. I also recommend curving the rocks in a bit more as well. I did a quick little Paint over as well showing some changes you could make as well as fixing some anatomy stuff. You can do the real fixes when you have time. Maybe turning the feet outwards a bit can help the pose as well. His feet seem to be facing forward while his legs seem a bit bent so the turning of the feet should help the pose seem natural. You did do a good job in a lot of areas when it comes to the lighting. So I know you can fix these other things as well. Great work man. Look forward to an update.

[illustrative_inquisi]

The shadows on the character seem overtly defined for the lighting (to dark). Though come to think of it, there probably wouldn't be any shadows on the figure because the lightning bolts wrapping around would cancel them out. Though of course this is art, not everything has to be 100% realistic. =\

Color is relative, so you can probably counter balance the shades on the figure by introducing darker values to other places on the composition (outside the figure), it should work cause most of the shades are at around middle grey, so introducing something a lot closer to black should remove mid greys from being the darkest shade in the piece. For example you could make the values darker around the rocks, this would be a good idea because they are in the foreground, so by doing so you can improve depth, killing two birds with one stone.

Also if your wanting to make the coloring more epic, you can probably add some blue hues to make the yellow lighting pop a little (complimentary colors). As well as increase the saturation around the ground to make it feel more closer to the viewer.

I'll try and do a quick over paint to show you what i mean.

[raustuart]

Thanks to both of you for the advice. I did as much fixing as I could at this stage without redoing it altogether. I altered the shoulder position and other anatomy as much as I could without losing the intended exaggeration for the effect of showing emotion with the character. I also made significant changes with the contrast and color, and added some shadow strips behind the rocks to pinpoint the light source a little better.

And yes, I did grow up watching a ton of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z, lol. Also spent a lot of hours watching Naruto, One Piece and Bleach.

Thanks for the help! Here's the update for further pointers.