Ok so here is yet another dragonfly picture. I will be doing this one in watercolor pencils when I can get away from kids and house work. (TONS and Tons of laundry!!!!) Anyways I really like the way this one turned out. I tried to practice my shading and decide on which colors I wanted to use in the process. I am leaning towards pinks, purples, blue and greens and yellow. Nor quite sure. Somewhere in that area though. I know that my dragonfly is a little to drawn and needs some work because I added tooooo much detail to the wings and the shading on the leaves on the bottom looks a little like they are bleded to much. So feel free to C&C. Thanks!!
PS,
Just for the record the scanner did not do justice for the picture. The coloring on it looks way off. (Just veiwed it myself.)

looks really good, i dont think there too much detail in the dragonfly, the detail in the wings make it the focus of the picture, despite the flowers being much larger. the illustrative style starting to work really well for you.

I do like the shading on the leaves. And I also think the deatail on the dragonfly is good except it doesn't give the appearance that the wings are a bit transparent as they should be.

Love love it!!

looking foward to seeing it in colour

What a lot of work has gone into this drawing! Are you going to use water with your w/c pencils? If so, I do think you might have a little too much detail as w/c is a delicate medium and requires a light touch. The wings may be a little heavy-handed to look gossamer and transparent.

You do such beautiful drawings & I feel as if I'm being overly critical but I hope you're like me & would want to know an honest opinion (and that's all critiques are - opinions!)

Anyway, I think that the dragonfly seems disconnected from the rest of the drawing. Also, it might be more effective to have him flying toward the flowers. There are some dumb art "rules" and one says the viewer's eye needs to be led into the painting. With the dragonfly the way you have it, the viewers eye will "fly" out of the picture because that's what the dragonfly is doing.

I think you have a tremendous talent and hope you keep doing this sort of drawing.

J

Thanks Everyone for your opinions. I am not close to being done with this picture. I was just putting it up for critique for now to see what everone had to say about. J-Lynn..that particular dragonfly is gonna fly out of the picture so to say. I am gonna draw a few more and add them. I just haven't decided if I wanted the same one or if I was gonna add diffrent ones. This is basically my rough draft. I am gonna transfer the picture onto water color paper and do it as a watercolor. So the detail in this particular picture will be alot diffrent than the pencil drawing. Aviation..I know I had a hard time on the wings. I may try to draw it over again. (restart so to say...same picture though). 3lansir...Thanks for the compliments. I think I really like the idea of illistrating. Since i have been thinking about it and doing the dragonflies I have even gone so far as thinking of my own stories for children (which is easy to do since I have 4 children all under 10 yrs of age too.) Just need to think of ones that will grab the readers attentions. That way I can illitrate my own story, and it will let me know if I have what it takes to actually illitrate for other writers. Ukartist...I will try to get it done in color before the week is over. Time is hard to come by.

Venus,

Great work on the project. Your leaves look life-like with that shading you used. One suggestion I have is if you add more dragonflies then pay close attention to the rules of distance. Use a couple more in varying distances (size) to show relationship to your large one being close to the viewer. And, be sure to make the further ones less detailed as the foreground one as objects in the distance lose details and colors get washed out.

Eric