Silk and Lace

I'm one of the co-founders at <img class="avatar" src="a.deviantart.net/avatars/a/n/a…" alt="" title="AnimangaArtists"/>, and since you asked for a critique I thought I'd leave you one here <img src="e.deviantart.net/emoticons/b/b…" width="15" height="15" alt="" title=" (Big Grin)"/>

For reasons it didn't get accepted: While there also seems to be some ink in here, we are not big fans of sketch art. Colored pencils are great, but unless it's really clean and really impressive, we rarely accept b/w pencil art. We recently accepted this: [link] It's clean, there are different shades, different textures, and there is even some background work along with really nice character art.

For ways to improve your art: I really like the details in this pic with her clothes, and the spiders and their beaded webs are a pretty cool addition. But the girl herself could use some work. Her face looks messy with the smudged pencil, her eyes look unfocused, her hair looks stiff, etc. Pencils can make work look very soft, but here it just looks a bit messy. I think the webbing could use a little more focus (and I mean the webs in the background, the webs that make up her clothes look really nice!), since in some places they don't really properly connect. But mostly... clean up those smudges!

Artists who use regular pencils as their main medium usually play around with their scanner's settings so they can control brightness and contrast. For this pic, if you adjust brightness/contrast correctly you could probably make all the smudge marks go away. Also, when drawing, try to keep your hand from resting on the paper. Rotate the page if you need to reach something, and that will help keep down the smudging. Play with pressures, do grayscale exercises... all of that will help you with your next pic <img src="e.deviantart.net/emoticons/b/b…" width="15" height="15" alt="" title=" (Big Grin)"/>