What is most distracting to me:
The posture is off. His feet (and by extension his legs) are far too forward to be supporting him correctly. Since he's leaning back against gravity, it gives the impression he's about to fall - yet he looks like he's standing. The conflict makes it hard for me to look at anything else.
Look at where his feet are, then where the torso is. The feet should be directly below the torso. This is difficult to detect and avoid the way you have constructed the figure with the perspective points, but the posturing problem is definitely there.
EDIT: Life drawings. I've been doing that kind of things for about 4 months.
Besides the mangled anatomy and the pupils I've forgot to draw, there's something wrong with these sketches, but I can't nail it down.
These are the most recent sketches. I've got a lot more of these scattered across my sketchbooks, back from 2011, but they are too painful for me to look at. They are too horrifying.
I draw these things during lessons at school.[/spoiler]
Good. Keep at it!
Make sure to look at the people more, if you aren't doing that already. That helps quite a bit.
What's wrong with them is that they're (IMO) too small, and it seems you're still drawing eyes and noses and mouths as discrete parts with imaginary outlines instead of an anonymous entire head. Try to draw and render heads as such.
They don't look bad as much as they look unfinished.
I think the uncertain and excessive lines make things look worse. Thick redrawn lines can be stylistic, but it looks like you redrew them in order to correct them rather than to stylize.
That's fine, especially in sketches - hell, I do that all the time.
The main objective with sketches shouldn't be sitting there going over a single line with an eraser until it looks just right. You'll be trying to capture the movement and the general shape of the subject first, and you won't be looking at the paper much. Once you've done that, you're allowed license to refine and add detail, but always keep looking at the figure as much as you can.
Most of the people I encounter trying to "do some art" with a figure or scene in front of them spend most of their effort and time staring into their sketchbook than looking at the figure, when it should be the other way around. Practising drawing without looking at the paper is good.
There's also a great deal of "fly swat" going on, with a few exceptions.
Nope.
That applies to full figures where the limbs are askew and flailed wildly - not here.
Try drawing without correction or retracing lines too much. To encourage more solid lines, play around with different pencils (Even mechanical pencils) and erasers.
Frankly I'd just go with a 4B crayon-type and a putty eraser when you need it.
In fact, I'd discourage outlines and solid likes like that, because they encourage the making of lines and outlines where they don't exist. A face has much fewer lines than you think and imagine - most of them are simply diffuse gradations in light.
Here's a quick reference in regards to making sketches more "swooshy" - Both outlines and skeleton lines. Note the stylistic differences between the pieces.
Again, that applies much more to final pieces - and comics with clear linework - than sketches.
So, how does this thread work? i just post the images here, and get them reviewed? cuz' if that's so, here's some of my drawings:
the product of me desperately wanting to draw a mafia mamber 
Welcome!
My suggestions:
- Go back in the thread and look at what I wrote about symbols. Dispel them from your mind.
- Draw more from life.
- Look at (preferably scientific/biological) anatomy books and study them.
We have lots of Mafia members down in the FG&RP-Mafia subforum. Pay us a visit sometime!
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Topic: +The Engravers Guild+ (Read 377930 times)