Might always help to get a really top notch artist to redline some of your work. Without just like drastically changing up your style and just trying something new, like realism, I'm not sure what there could be to critique

thing is critiques are alot of times seen as a bad thing but if im critqueing your work and imma say in general i dont see anything wrong with it its awsome work and hell id sure as hell get a hypno icon if i had money

Artists should give better critiques than non-artist watchers. Are there any furry art communities out there?

I have a lot of established artists watching me, which is why I posted the journal
good question though. I don't know.

The poses and expressions of your doodles look stiff sometimes when you feel unmotivated. Practice doing faces and body parts with minimal brush strokes if you're going for a natural cartoony kind of style. And if you're going for realistic then honestly the idea of another artist doing a few redlines would be interesting to try. Worth a shot to see what happens.

Honestly, I'd study a more realistic style, or just a different style in general. Studying something new can help you improve on the style you're trying to go for. With the realism one, it doesn't even have to be anatomy. It could just be like... a tree or something. Studying anything from life can be oddly helpful in your art.

Something interesting I think you should try is figure drawing, but with your current style. Sometimes the movement is stiff, or the pose is just generally lacking something. Plus I just think it would be cool to see characters in your art style with some of those weird figure drawing poses. :)

This might just be a personal opinion, but sometimes when you do a more full colored piece, I don't think your shadows are deep enough.

That's all I've got. ♥

Thank you so much for your input! I feel like both of those points are valuable critiques, especially concerning the lack of depth on my shadows. If you wouldn't mind I'd actually really like some tips on how to improve that or some tutorials if you have them for digital art. It's something I've been trying to improve upon for a long time
And I love doing gesture drawings, so I should do more of those to help loosen stuff up!

Well a general rule of thumb when it comes to shadows is the deeper the shadow, the brighter the light. You work with some fairly bright colors, so I think you should have some equally dark shadows going on.
Here are three tutorials that should be of use. One of them is about lighting, but that can still help with your shadows I believe.
http://trisketched.deviantart.com/a.....mony-423507240
http://trisketched.deviantart.com/a.....rast-369413479
http://trisketched.deviantart.com/a.....ting-615094374

Hmm, if I had to pick out something in your work that could use improvement, I'd say that you might just need a bit more variety. A lot of your stuff, while perfectly well-drawn, tends to fall into the 'bust shot or character floating in a void' variety (WHICH I AM EQUALLY GUILTY OF LOL...), so that could be part of why you feel like you're stagnating. There's only so much you can do with a character in a void, even if you're good at it!

I would recommend trying to do more full illustrations-- they don't have to be complicated, just enough to start getting more used to creating scenes to put the characters in. Even for backgroundless images, you could try drawing more characters actively engaged in doing something, like going to the store or talking on the phone or what have you. It can be sort of frustrating at first but it might help perk you back up, and make your characters even more expressive!

I feel like that's some very good advice- the lack of variety was something that bothered me for a while. Couldn't ever pinpoint what was bothering me but I think you nailed it!
I'd like to try doing more full illustrations / pieces with character interaction in the future and I feel like it would definitely help.
Thank you for your input~

I'm glad I could help!

Honestly, I think it would even help with a few of the things folks mentioned above!

Your art is super cute and I'd love to see it get more in-depth and illustrative. c:

First order of business would be "What do you want to do with your art". I chose to focus on animation, so I received critique that I don't draw enough humans and should show a lot more process work with character development from concepts to expressions to a turnaround.

So, what do you want to do with your art?

I feel like what is important is you draw what you want to draw. You mentioned to me before that you want to "get back into doing more emotionally oriented pieces." I personally have always really enjoyed your style for it's surreal toony look and I also love your use of colors and patterns and that is especially the case in those kinds of pictures.

As for suggestions, I agree with the people who mention how the poses tend to be a bit stiff and not as fluent. However, one example of a piece you made does show a sense of action pretty well (http://www.furaffinity.net/view/19548359/). Compare it to this one which is kind of similar in the action they are trying to convey (http://www.furaffinity.net/view/20781127/). The first one has the character with more of a hunch that seems to emphasize a greater sense of action. In the second one, the character appears to be more stiff in the pose.

Another suggestion would be working on the shading and lighting on characters placed in settings. In these two pictures here (http://www.furaffinity.net/view/16581544/ and http://www.furaffinity.net/view/15002935/) the characters pop out from the scene rather than appearing to blend in with the scene. I feel should have darker shadows on the character's backside with the lighting on his front side with shadows that are in line with where the light source is coming from.

Those are my two cents and I hope that they could be of use to you. Keep up the good work Frindle :)

I think your art is dope, i love your more psychedelic stuff but still with everything else its cool, you have that kind of toony but not style like rnorthex, i would love it if your commissions were open, id love to get myself a hypno icon for my soon to be birthday, but hey you are the artist, do what you enjoy.

Ok now keep in mind
1) you're a better artist then me, so please don't take this to heart! I love your works and this is not an attack on you personally

I think one of the problems you have is same-face. Now don't get me wrong, it's really common in most furry characters for everything to look similar.
For example: I see not much difference in this piece http://www.furaffinity.net/view/19337965/ / http://www.furaffinity.net/view/19416115/ of course its upto you if you want to fix this, but imo - nothing much has changed to make the characters different from eachother. Same sized eyes, same type of nose, same cheek fluff, same fringy type hair. Of course, since this is your style you can decide if you wanna build on this. If you think it looks alg and it's not an area you want to improve on then yeah, there's no harm in leaving it as is. But seeing characters with wildly different structures always adds a touch of variety.

AAAAND I'm really bad at wording things, but another thing I think you could build on is drawing more
'feral' type art, as anthro art really does get repetative overtime. IMO you've got a very furry style, (though really sophisticated furry style) and because of this some of your works tend to fall into the same trap alot of other artists face. http://www.furaffinity.net/view/20864324/ Big fluffy cheeks, big smushed faces, massive pupils. itd be awsome to see you try something different - maybe draw different species as ferals and try to see what makes everything look different and fresh,

I also don't see much difference between your chibis and detailed pieces, http://www.furaffinity.net/view/21829292/ , http://www.furaffinity.net/view/20796528/
it'd be rad to play around with certain proportions to give your works a very dynamic style - since your lines are thick and comic-y it'd really give some of your new pieces a different flair -

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/20725896/
even though this is oldish, I really love this piece! It's simplicity stands out !

ok well im going to mention that i'm so bad at wording things yet again so i'm gonna slip away now

nah, i think you're totally right! everything you pointed out is exactly what was bothering me, and you managed to nail exactly WHY it was bothering me.

for a while (about two years or so) all i really had a chance to do / did in general was commission work, and while working on commissions i didn't feel too motivated to vary up my art or experiment with different things and it lead to me feeling very stagnated.
interestingly, most of the pieces you linked were things i did as commissions or just generally uninspired compared to the older work i had done (such as http://www.furaffinity.net/view/20694848/ http://www.furaffinity.net/view/15858073/ http://www.furaffinity.net/view/19550935/ http://www.furaffinity.net/view/13963340/ http://www.furaffinity.net/full/8346830/ and many more ) which is back when i was experimenting all the time
ferals, realistic critters, and semi-realism in general with surreal undertones are actually some of the few subject matters i REALLY enjoy drawing.
it's always a treat to work with new colours, poses, expressions and styles and i'd really like to start doing that again
i can't tell you how much i appreciate you taking the time to give me such valuable feedback and actual critique.
it's exactly the kind of truth i needed to hear and after reading your comment i'm inspired to go out and start creating work i truly enjoy again. thanks so much :)

Sorry for the insanely-late reply, haven't cleared and sorted my messages properly for days!
and gosh those pieces that you linked are absolutely gorgeous! I can't wait to see what you make int he future

and i'm glad I could help you out! i'll keep an eye on your newer works if you'd like some more critique! i'm sure they'll be just gorgeous but just incase!

Perspective, form and anatomy are always good things to work on.

Highly recommend you watch Sycra's tutorial videos. I have learned more from him in a few hours of (actively) watching his videos than I have in 100 hours of practice: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?li.....73FA2B3CD4C899

In regards to creativity: You can also take a trip and draw in that mindset. That always helps me learn something new.

Try mixing up the brushes you use. Try using soft or textured brushes. I also highly recommend the Alchemy software (its free and open source, google it!).

I think a good question you could ask of us would be to critique a specific artwork. It's a lot easier to tell you errors or ideas in a specific work than to try and evaluate your entire portfolio. Even if you already noticed 90% of the errors we list, it's the 10% that we list that you didn't notice that will help you learn.

I gotta be honest-I think you ought to work on fundamentals more and change up styles. As much as I LOVE your work a lot of it is looking like you're taking the 'safe' route. Doing a lot of what you know you're good at instead of taking chances on the kind of art that scares you. Mostly though color theory, lighting, perspective...all the boring stuff that can be annoying to do but will help you gain a ton more confidence in your work.

Btw this is all stuff I need to do, too lol.