Best products from r/ArtCrit

Hey! I graduated from IB in 2007 and did standard and higher level art, got a 6 out of 7 (I slacked a bit towards the end, senioritis). I then went on to do a 4 year Illustration program and graduated with a BFA. I hope you go down a similar path, art is very fulfilling and you seem to have some passion. Don't feel discouraged if your work doesn't yet match your ideas, you need to crank out tons of studies and eventually you'll feel yourself improving in leaps and bounds.

What IB really wants to see from you is a consistent theme. You've got a lot of experimentation in different media which is great, but I recommend you get some inspiration from art history. Just straight up copy old masters, if you see an old painting that you enjoy try to duplicate it and you'll understand it in a way you could never imagine. Try you hand at things like chalk pastels (Nu Pastel is a good brand), charcoal, watercolor, maybe even some oil paint. Avoid using small scratchy lines all the time, try flipping charcoal on its side and making broad strokes or get some powdered graphite and apply with a brush. A quote I try to live by: "Big artists use big brushes."

Find one or two types of media that really appeal to you and run with it, struggle with it, learn from it, study it, become bored with it, master it. I did digital painting for the most part which was sort of cutting-edge at the time and scored me some originality points and still to this day I work in that style.

Contemplate what you think is an interesting theme to make a series of artworks about, go to a local art gallery or museum and see how other artists approach themes. Get inspiration everywhere and write it down, lyrics in songs, things on the news, ideas in the shower. I did 'Creation / Destruction' as my theme and focused on the duality of the two through mythical stories of gods, warfare, self esteem and perception, yatta yatta. You're in high school, remember that this is a good time to just noodle around, try crazy shit, don't worry about being judged for failing, failure makes you better because you learn what not to do. And originality isn't the most important thing, imitate the art you love and once you feel you understand it you can tweak it.

Here's the biggest secrets I never knew in high school. Artworks are broken down into a few essential components, if you keep these concepts in mind you'll do much better.

1. Color is composed of a few parts - value (lightness and darkness), hue (red, green, blue, etc.), temperature (cool or warm), and saturation (how gray the color is). You can have a dark, cool, desaturated red or you could have a dark, warm, saturated red. When you're trying to paint skintones or landscapes, ask yourself - how dark is this color? What hue is this color? Is it cool or warm? Is it gray or saturated?
   
   
2. Take your artwork into photoshop or any editing program and turn it to grayscale or desaturate it. If your art works in black and white, you can apply any color on top of it and it will still work. This is why the art of people like Andy Warhol works, even though the hue is crazy out of control nonsense, the value (lightness and darkness) matches so your eye can read it properly.
   
   
3. When you are drawing from observation, squint to see value and open your eyes to see color. Squinting helps so much, it fuzzes out your vision and will remove a lot of unnecessary detail. When you squint you will only see the most important forms, the lightest and darkest areas.
   
   
4. Reflected light is important for creating realism. When light hits a surface, it bounces off and casts light on the sides of other objects. A sphere, for example, will have a bit of light in the shadow area because it bounces off the table and hits the bottom part. Keep an eye out for this, do studies of things on your desk and learn how light works in reality.
   
   
5. Never center anything. View objects on the page inside of 'envelopes' that encompass their widest points and move these around abstractly. Don't line up the tops or bottoms, keep them uneven, keep the shapes significantly different. I was taught that people usually cannot perceive a change in size unless it's at least twice as big or small. Try to have one center of interest and a couple areas of lesser interest. View your composition as a dart target where the bullseye is the most interesting part and the outer radiating circles are increasingly less important. You should view your center of interest like a shiny jewel. If you surround it in other shinier stuff it won't be as impressive because it won't pop out. But if you put it in a nice velvet box with a subdued but gorgeous color suddenly that gem seems very beautiful.
   
   
6. Few things are ever fully black or fully white. When you are observing a black object, ask yourself if you can imagine a black that's darker than what you're looking at. If 0 is black and 10 is white, a 1 is a very natural darkness. A 9 would work in the brightest highlight on the object. Most objects are a middle tone between 3-7 including skin. Black and white are also boring, instead of black try a super dark color. Instead of white try a really bright hue. Think mostly about temperature, do I want a warm feeling or a cool feeling?
   
   
7. Most objects have a warm-cool relationship when hit by light. Go outside and look at a rock. If it's cool, overcast day, you might notice the light is cool and the shadow is warmer. Not way warmer, but maybe it's a more reddish purple instead of blue. Or go outside when the sun is low and check out how warm the light is. Orangey red tones on everything, but look at the shadows and you'll see beautiful cool blues and purples.
   
   The books I'd recommend are:
   
   The Story of Painting
   
   Imaginative Realism
   
   Everything by Andrew Loomis (Free!)
   
   Classical Painting Atelier
   
   View these websites:
   
   http://www.linesandcolors.com/
   
   http://www.googleartproject.com/
   
   http://gregnewbold.blogspot.com/
   
   http://beardedroman.com/
   
   http://www.artrenewal.org/
   
   Good luck! My website is www.caycegoldberg.com so feel free to contact me if you want critiques or advice or whatever. And don't let the stress of IB take you down, stick through it. It's a tremendous struggle but it gives you a huge leg up on life, you'll appreciate it forever.

Alright bro rather than critique your work I'm going to directly answer your question on how to improve. I got two pieces of advice for you based on what I see.

First off, and it may sound a little vague but ask yourself honesty what do you want out of art? You say you tend to draw on and off in short burst, so do you really enjoy it? What do you see yourself creating if you possessed the required skills to do so? Try to find an answer to that question so you have a direction to work towards.

Secondly, "realism" in arts, to quote Wikipedia "is the attempt to represent subject matter truthfully, without artificiality and avoiding artistic conventions, implausible, exotic and supernatural elements" in other words to not add your own style to a drawing and capture purely what you see. Its really just life drawing, and I'm not exaggerating when I say you cannot become a competent or confident artist without learning, appreciating, and devoting time to mastering it. Realism is not a genera of art its the foundation, drawing as an art form has no shortcuts, that boring stuff an art teacher tries to make us do in art class such as drawing straight lines towards a horizon, or drawing a mannequin over and over aren't options that an artist can opt out of if he so chooses, like any science it's the basic background you require to frame your thinking and let creativity flow naturally through the canvas. If a musician doesn't know his scales how can he concentrate on giving the performance? Forget drawing freehand if you cant properly life draw. A human cannot be learned in sections, if we focus on things like eyes, the head, and hair, every other part will lack definition and consideration resulting in them fading into the background, the whole body must be considered. A regular adult male body is measured in about 8 heads in length starting from the actual head and moving down dividing the body into sections ending at the feet. If you study these landmarks along with the more specific ones than life drawing will become simplified and much more enjoyable.

I'm not leading you astray here, this is the hard truth about drawing, we all started for a reason but sooner or later we gotta decide how far are we gonna take this and how exactly we get there. If you really want to get serous about drawing, learn anatomy, learn perspective, and never focus on development a style, just concentrate on drawing and the style will occur. Start here for anatomy, because when it comes to anatomy Loomis is the authority and we are his students, he has many good books but this is probably his most popular. Though all of his books should be considered as they go into more detail on specific body parts such as hands and the head.
Then go here, it really is perspective made easy and is should probably be read first as a good understanding of perspective is required to properly frame drawing. Almost all of these books have PDFs that can downloaded for free since they were out of print at one point but were put back up for sale. If Loomis isn't your style you can check out this list, most of these have free PDFs as well which can simply be google searched.

But know that there is no foolproof formula to make you a great artist from books or even other great artist, its simply the courage to stand on ones own two feet and seek out enlightenment. I'm no art genius, all of this wisdom is from my personal experiences and lots of books. I just recognized your path as similar to mine and wanted to give some honest advice.

you have potential and its your choice if you want to see how far can you take it.

Ok, a few things: first, since you're taking your work into photoshop you are going to need to make quality archival digital prints if you plan to sell them to the public. A friend may not care, but it's part of the promise of acting like a professional. I'll admit, I am just learning this process myself, so I'll just recommend the book I'm working with: Mastering Digital Printing. Second, it is easy enough to get stuck in photoshop using only high saturated and bright colors which kind of clashes with your lovely watercolor backgrounds and makes the work less sophisticated. I've been looking for a great link to explain color theory and still haven't found it, but this will at least show you what I'm talking about. Look at the Figure 10 value/saturation scale. Otherwise, yeah, go for it, but don't let it stop you from continuing to evolve.

Hi,

This is a good first effort!

Drawing the human body is tough. There are all kinds of shapes involved, they move around and change shape in crazy ways, and people are really finely attuned to the details so it's easy to make a noticeable mistake.

If you haven't already, I would first focus on drawing simpler things -- simple geometric objects like cubes and boxes, then a bit more complicated but still basically geometric shapes like buildings and chairs, then biological things that don't move much like plants, and so on. At the very least, it's important to be able to draw boxes in perspective pretty well. (I'm not sure if you can already do that or not -- just saying in general.)

If you want to just dive right into figure drawing, I would recommend picking up a book on artistic anatomy. There are a lot of good ones out there. One I can recommend (kind of intermediate level) is Master Class In Figure Drawing, by Robert Beverly Hale. He looks at drawings from the greats and breaks them down. It's not a complete reference, and there might be better books/online tutorials out there now, but it helps you think about drawing the human body in general.

More or less, his approach is to go from the largest masses of the body (the rib cage, the pelvis) to the smallest (the nose, fingers, etc.). He describes them in terms of simpler geometric shapes like boxes.

I find that more than half the battle is just drawing boxes for every body part in the right proportion and in the right place relative to each other.

Good luck! Keep it up.

I think you were successful getting different textures, so nice job. As general advice I would say try to leave more white areas for contrast. This requires a lot of restraint, especially when drawing dark things like leather and fur and sunburned, wrinkly dudes but the limitations of ink demand it. This may mean you have to invent a strong light source and imply things without actually stating them.

I know that sounds cryptic so if you want some examples look at the work of Joseph Clement Coll. He was great at getting all kinds of textures with just the pen and brush. Also there is a great book called Rendering in Pen and Ink that goes into great detail. As of this post it looks like there are some used copies, hardback, for $6. Worth ten times that if you are interested in inking.

Realism is tricky, but I've got a few suggestions.

Value is a huge part of what makes a realistic piece look realistic. If you're painting from a reference, one of these can help you check your value: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007SQ2MIM/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_2ES.Bb6TZE70G

Just isolate an area of the reference in the little holes then do the same to the painting to make sure they match. Your perception of value can be affected by what is around it. This lets you compare without your eyes playing tricks on you.

Next, avoiding chalkyness. Chalkyness is what happens when you lighten a color with white alone. You end up with a desaturated color, not just a lighter one. This generally looks looks a little unrealistic.

To avoid/fix this problem you want to change color temperature while changing value. The rule of thumb is warmer highlights and cooler shadows. For highlights, this usually means adding yellow (or occasionally reds, if yellow will make your color muddy). Or you can add a warmer version of the same color, which works very well in blues. For shadows it can help to add blue to make them cooler. It takes some trial and error to learn how to apply this in the beginning, but with practice omit becomes automatic.

Vibrant colors also take away from realism. In real life, most colors aren't as vibrant as the pigments we use in art. Bright colors are relative to what they are around. This video demonstrates it. https://youtu.be/6CpY3k0LHFk

To make your colors more realistic, you can mute them a bit. Add a touch of a color compliment or brown to take them down a notch.

Or you can use a mother color, which will mute your colors and add a nice unity to the whole piece.

https://www.thoughtco.com/definition-of-mother-color-2577647

So far this is a beautiful painting! Keep it up.

Okay so those images are of an entire painting that is mostly warm and an entire painting that is mostly cool. I'm talking about the relationship between light and shadow within the same painting. Here's a better example:

https://31.media.tumblr.com/cae91e1b08a12487beeb21475df64b61/tumblr_inline_n7l409ZuZw1s86nd4.png

In a given scene, there is at least one direct light source and at least one ambient light source. The shadows aren't simply the lack of illumination from the direct light source; they're lit up by the ambient light. In a sunlit scene, the direct light source is pure white (the sun), but the ambient light source is blue (the sky) and/or the color of the ground or other surroundings (for example, in the forest it might be green). Most of the surfaces not directly illuminated by the sun are illuminated by the ambient light, which means that in most settings the shadows will actually be cool. Even though the sun's light is pure white (if it's midday), because our eyes adjust to the blue ambience its light appears slightly yellow-orange (warm). A good rule of thumb is that most of the time, the ambient color is the complement of the direct light source. So, a cool light will cast warm shadows and a warm light will cast cool shadows. At a more advanced level it can become much more complicated than that, but this is enough to get you started. The main times you'll have a cool light source as your main light are when your subject is in the shade, indoors with natural lighting, or at night. Warm light sources are far more common, both in nature and in man-made settings.

For more information and examples, I highly recommend this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Color-Light-Realist-Painter-Gurney/dp/0740797719/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1506048298&sr=8-1&keywords=james+gurney+color+and+light

here's my real critique if you want it: You should try studying life drawing for a while. This drawing isn't successful, for too many reasons to get into, but that's ok. Just draw something every day.

Also go to the museum or wikipedia your favorite artists, learn about them, study their careers. DRAW EVERY DAY. Take in as much about art as you can, be open to ideas in art you think are bad. I see all the time people look at Pollock and go 'thats not art, i could do that' without trying to get it at all.

that last bit has very little to do with you, except in that I think it'd help you a lot to study as much as you can and DRAW EVERY DAY.

There is this awesome book called Drawing on the right side of the brain. It's helped millions learn to draw in proportion and perspective.

http://www.amazon.com/Drawing-Right-Side-Brain-Definitive/dp/1585429201

Then there's an art appreciation book called Move Closer. It's my favorite art theory book.

http://www.amazon.com/Move-Closer-Intimate-Philosophy-Art/dp/0374527822/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369903747&sr=1-2&keywords=Move+Closer


Good luck and have fun.


Edit: just looked at your submission history, you know how to draw, u just trollin.

I think you did a pretty solid job on both images, especially the dancer one. I would recommend that you use more really dark blacks in small amounts just to create more contrast. Also, more gradual and soft blending (try a blending stump) although much of gradual blending takes practice. When I took Drawing I, I read this book...

http://www.amazon.com/Drawing-Right-Side-Brain-Definitive/dp/1585429201

and it is truly amazing. It makes you think about drawing and seeing the world around you differently. If you are serious about drawing I would definitely read it.

Good work and good luck!

I think this is great for some first time attempts! =)
Remember that the more simple and characteristic (correct proportions etc) you can get to the original forms, the better it'll look. But what those forms mostly do is get you aquainted with the position of the body in space. For instance difficult things like foreshortening will after a while become a lot easier because you can understand that one form is in front of another form, and you have a rough understanding of how it moves in perspective.

And as you become more familiar with how those parts turn, you'll be able to be more consistent with things that wrap around those forms, like clothes for instance.

I think you're definitely on the right track. I can also recommend Michael Hampton's figure drawing design and invention.
https://www.amazon.com/Figure-Drawing-Invention-Michael-Hampton/dp/0615272819
He goes about it roughly the same way. Don't worry about going through and understanding or getting things right away. A book on art is usually something that gets picked up every now and then to try to figure out problems. And most of the work is done struggling on your own ;).

And remember. You might feel like it's difficult at first to connect this kind of new knowledge to what you want to draw right away. But I think that if you put in enough time with stuff like this, and keep trying to improve your boxes and other forms as well with perspective exercises every now and then, you'll see definite improvement. But remember that it takes time too. Don't be too discouraged if you feel like it's taking a long time. I think most artists who have decent work has practiced .. heck.. I'd say a minimum of 10 years. It doesn't have to take that long, but be aware that drawing is something we do because we like it. Not because we have to win a race. ;)

There's an android ide that I was considering using as well so I'd be able to say that the whole thing was done on the tablet. :) I didn't want to get bogged down in setup though and all of the docs are written for eclipse so I didn't venture too far in that direction.

My fiance and I don't have an apartment together yet, and I'm spending most of my time at hers, so the fact that I could carry the tablet with me was critical to getting this accomplished. I worked on the drawings all sorts of places. Most of it was done in airplanes, or on her couch. If I was chained to my desktop I never would have been able to finish it. I may not even have gotten over the hump of learning to use a wacom.

You might be interested in this post I made about drawing on android.
https://plus.sandbox.google.com/116949834608586521321/posts/4GKFTb7cegH

>Started using this to draw on my tablet last night, and really loving it. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0064REJ3C/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i00 I've tried wacoms but never used them regularly enough to get used to the extra level of hand-eye indirection. This I was able to pick up immediately. The only unfortunate thing is that because it's a blunt tip, the exact place you are drawing is obscured much more than it would be with a pencil (but less so than with a finger) It isn't too bad to get used to.

>The next step was picking out an android drawing app of which there are many. I've bought and tried most of them on the market. There are only two to seriously consider, and they both have limitations. Photoshop touch: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=air.com.adobe.pstouch&hl=en
and Sketchbook pro: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.adsk.sketchbookhd&feature=search_result

>Right now I'm preferring Ps touch, but it's very dependent on what you want to do with it.

>Ps touch is focused on manipulating existing images. You get easy access to selections, layers, effects. You can also work with higher (though still not high) resolution images. On my device it caps out at 2048 x 2048. However, your brush options are very limited. Only round brushes, and only opacity, hardness, and flow controls.

>Sketchbook Pro is focused on painting. There are many brushes, you can create custom brushes, and the opacity, size, and color controls are extremely easy to access. It has a handy mirror mode for creating symmetric images. The max resolution however is capped to the resolution of your device.

>If you are mostly intending on creating new images from scratch, and you don't care too much about resolution, go with sketchbook pro. If you are mostly manipulating existing images or care a little more about resolution, go with Ps touch.

>For my current project, it's all new art, but resolution is critical, so I'm using Ps touch. For quick sketches, Sketchbook Pro would definitely be my choice. Unfortunately, neither one of them is yet up to the standards of a professional tool yet until the max resolution at least triples.

Fun With A Pencil: How Everybody Can Easily Learn to Draw https://www.amazon.com/dp/0857687603/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_NKDYDb41Z5N7G

Figure Drawing for All It's Worth https://www.amazon.com/dp/0857680986/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_7KDYDbJ3HG990

Drawing the Head and Hands https://www.amazon.com/dp/0857680978/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_kLDYDbGRHYFM8


I'd suggest you learn the fundamentals, here's a great start, read these and you'll see a huge improvement very quickly.

The brush is the best way to ink, hands down, and you can definitely ink those (and other) fine lines with a brush. I can do super thin lines that make it look like I'm using an 01 Micron pen, or I can make super wide lines that look like I've got a Sharpie in my hands.

This page and the two after it are good examples of the varying lines I get from my brush. Note that I've drawn every page of that comic with a brush. No pens, other than an 08 Micron for drawing (most of the) panel borders.

For practice, I would suggest getting to know the brush: figuring out how much pressure you need to make the lines you want. Wet technique vs. dry technique. Hatching and cross-hatching. Inkwash.

There are a thousand things you can do with a brush! One thing I've noticed:

If you sit back and let the brush do the work, you'll end up with the best lines. If you try to control the brush, you're not going to have much fun. I've noticed that the lazier I get with my brush control the more my art looks like a Sin City comic. Which is interesting.

If you're looking for a lot of practice ideas, check out Rendering In Pen And Ink. I've had this book for 20 years, and I still turn to it often. There are a lot of pen & ink exercises in the early chapters that are also good for brush & ink.

As for ink: I would suggest Chinese ink rather than India ink. I don't know if it's still the case today, but back around 1996 or so, they stopped putting lead in India ink, which is what made it so black. When Higgins Black Magic became Higgins Gray Magic, I switched to Chinese ink and never looked back.

It's cheaper, blacker, and goes on smooth as silk.

I can't find a link to the stuff I normally use (I'm on a different computer). It comes in a white vase-like bottle with blue Chinese dragons on it. Don't use the stuff that comes in a dry stick that you have to mix with water.

As soon as I can, I'll post a link for you!

First of all I would say you need to study how light falls on forms and how to make them look 3d. Like iamnikolatesla said, a good way to learn this is by doing still life paintings of simple objects.

Some tips for stuff to look out for when painting an apple:

• try and get the values as close as possible to what you actually see.
  
• pay attention to where the darkest part of the shadow is. (it will not be at the very bottom of the apple because light will reflect off the surface the apple is sitting on)
  
• Look at the edges of the apple and the shadow it creates. Some edges should appear softer and some should be sharper.
  
  To critique your actual painting I would say your proportions are off, I recommend this book, Drawing The Head And Hands by Andrew Loomis. Also when you want to make something darker don't just add black, it makes the painting look muddy. Skin tends to be more saturated in colour in the shadows. Try not to make the whites of the eyes so bright, if you look in a mirror your eyes will not be so bright that they stand out. Lastly, try and think of hair as bigger shapes and don't render it so much, if you keep it simpler it ends up looking much more realistic. Good luck and have fun, faces really are a very difficult subject to paint.

As far as visual story telling there's nothing there. It's all just character studies. I'm a huge comics nerd and the medium is so unique and powerful but people think it's simple when it's anything but if you really want to do something with it. Check out this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Comics-The-Invisible-Art/dp/006097625X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331962588&sr=1-1

It's probably at your local library if it's worth its salt. And read some great comics. Check out stuff by Top Shelf Publishing. I've talked with their publisher before and he really gets comics.


As far as the characters themselves go I think other people made the points I would make but here's another book recommendation.

http://www.amazon.com/Dynamic-Figure-Drawing-Burne-Hogarth/dp/0823015777

This can't be considered "finished" by the realism standards, you should consider filling the contours with pencil, even if lightly, and if you still have your reference, try to look a little more at it, see how light and shadow behave on its surface.
Realism/drawing from life is mainly observation, would be great if you read some books on the subject. keys to drawing and drawing on the right side of the brain are a good place to start. They may help you learn how to hold the pencil correctly, measure effectively, also may show the basics of light and shadow, and perspective.

I love Jeno Barcsay's Anatomy for the Artist as a general anatomy resource. I just got Andrew Loomis' Drawing the Head and Hands and love it so far!

Again, this is something that will improve with practice. You have to train yourself to see and interpret the underlying structure rather than the symbols of body parts, if that makes sense.

For sketching or outlining you can use 2B or HB. It is actually not that relevant just don't press very hard because creates dents in the paper. (I do this all the time and it's bad practice.)

I use layering and usually go with 2B for the darkest shades then add a layer of HB then layer of 2H. Using layers is better than pressing hard because it does not smooth the paper. You can even do few layers with 2B to get a darker value. I use 4H for softening the edges.
A grayscale value can help you to decide how dark to go in different areas:
https://www.amazon.com/Color-Wheel-Scale-Value-Finder/dp/B007SQ2MIM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1504839331&sr=8-1&keywords=grayscale+value+finder

Also the paper you use matters. If it is very smooth then it is even harder to get darker values. The one in the picture looks like it has a bit of a tooth to it which is good.

Edit: There are many useful ways to critique non-representational and abstract work- Some of my personal favorite methodologies are Panofsky's three-tiered system, Semiotics, and formal deconstruction.

1). It's a portrait, with recognizable, yet stripped-down features in more or less the right places.

2). it either explicitly references Basquiat as /u/Felix-Is-Dreaming pointed out (and with whom I strongly agree), or it's another crown referencing kingliness - think 'the fisher king' if you want a more psychoanalytical analogy in relation to this piece.

3). Formally, the piece draws much of its strength from a secure composition and from its ability to span between representation and abstraction. It's angry splatter brushwork, dark colors, and broken down form all collude to present an identity in turmoil (or something close to that effect).

4). however, there is a careless amateur approach throughout the painting. In Scott McCloud's brilliant Understanding Comics, McCloud explains how someone who seeks to emulate only the style will only have a surface level understanding. I believe that to be the case in this piece. For example, there is no attempt at a ground on this piece whatsoever; does that mean the titanium white of the gesso sufficiently conveyed your meaning? Or is it a lack of foresight? Similarly, many of the colors are unmixed, seemingly straight out of the tube. Yet does that mean you are having a conversation with pure pigment as someone like Calder or Matisse? Or is the more likely story that you did not refine your intention for the color before application? When your characters crown hits the top of the composition yet the bottom doesn't, is that a conscious choice on your part or did you simply run out of canvas space?

you may be interested (or already looking at) some of the neo-expressionist painters, particularly from Berlin. If so, I recommend Donald Kuspit's: The New Subjectivism. Kuspit's a romantic, but acute critic and you might find some common ground with the artists within. This is to say, you have more experimenting and examination to do, of which I will leave to your own devices.

Best regards,
D

Edit: rephrased my intro for clarity. removed:
> geez, you other people have no idea how to critique a non-representational piece, huh? You can still use panofsky's 3 tiered method, an expliticly formal approach, hegelian dialectic. Shit, there are tons of ways to approach this.

http://www.amazon.com/Figure-Drawing-All-Its-Worth/dp/0857680986 This is the best book on the figure ever written(/drawn) hands down. Loomis is a god among artists and his figure drawing and explanations of figure drawing are unmatched. This book is back in print after being out of print for forever. I have had this book recommended to me by no less than 30 professors and professional artists. Its amazing.

Definitely don't worry about talent. Art is mostly practice and using the right resources.

You could try proko, Ctrl+paint's traditional drawing videos, and r/artfundamentals

If human figures are what you're interested in there are books by Loomis/Hogarth you could try, but I really like Michael Hampton's figure drawing: design and invention

This is a pretty good beginning book: https://www.amazon.com/Drawing-Head-Figure-Jack-Hamm/dp/0399507914

if you've very serious about this and want to do realistic renderings, I would try practicing with bargue plates for a while: https://www.amazon.com/Charles-Bargue-Jean-L%C3%A9on-G%C3%A9r%C3%B4me-Ackerman/dp/2867702038/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1467062406&sr=1-1&keywords=barque

They look roughly like Mass effect characters though it looks like your need to practice drawing with regards to perspective such as in the Garrus drawing.

My advice: Study this book

Pick up introductory drawing books. I whole-heatedly recommend starting with one and only one source: Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain: http://www.amazon.com/Drawing-Right-Side-Brain-Definitive/dp/1585429201.

As you start you'll need to learn some fundamentals: draw what you see, not what you think you see; don't draw in symbols; learn about value, line, and shading; learn about constructing volumes that look like they inhabit three dimensions; learn about proportion; make a habit of practicing every day; perhaps more importantly, learn how to take and give artistic criticism.

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain will teach you to do all these things and is certainly enough to get you started. Do not proceed with trying to draw in a stylized manner, you'll simply learn bad habits. You can proceed to style after you've made some headway into drawing realistic forms and figures.

well, I don't really understand what's going on in the neck region, it kind of looks like a pyramid with the head balancing on top. Just for a reference, here's a photo of a boy. Necks usually don't slope to so severe of a point, and the eyes you've drawn are very flat. Those are the two problems that jump out at me, but there are many others. Might I recommend buying a book on drawing, for example fun with a pencil?

Color and Light, a Guide for the Realist Painter is a good book to start with. And any art history books at your local library or local university library. Studying the works of masters can show you new ways of tackling abstract art.

http://www.amazon.com/Color-Light-Guide-Realist-Painter/dp/0740797719/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1370015276&sr=8-8&keywords=color+theory

http://www.amazon.com/Color-Theory-Watson-Guptill-Artists-Library/dp/0823007553/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1370015276&sr=8-4&keywords=color+theory

http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Color-An-Introduction-Designers/dp/0470381353/ref=pd_sim_b_12

Nooooooo. But seriously work on facial anatomy I recommend reading this