Hello guys!
This is my first request for critique here so I’m kinda nervous. :argh:
So what do you think? I just wanted a cool looking character with some badass pose. Is he ready to go or need some more work?
Any feedback will be welcome! Thank you so much. 
Can you tell us more about this image? Is it a simple character portrait? What’s the premise and the narrative behind this image? What were you trying to express?
Hi Lunatique,
Thank you for the questions. It’s a simple character portrait. I just wanted him to be a badass character wearing a cool armor.
Initially I was drawing him focusing on the lineart, giving him a comic book look (e.g. Marvel Comics).
But at the middle of the process I decided that a traditional painting look would please me more and it makes sense for me as I do want to master this type of painting because I’ve been working with concept art in small projects.
I really don’t have a narrative behind this image, but taking a look at your masterpieces I started to think that this could add much more value to my art.
Do you think it lacks soul or it could be richer having a story behind?
It depends on your goal in creating this image. If you have a story to tell, then of course you’d want your image to convey the story you are passionate about as a storyteller. If you want to just make an image that simply looks cool, that’s fine too, but you have to think about exactly what to portray in order to make the character portrait interesting.
For example, what is the personality of this character? Is he simply a badass with no brains? Does he have a gentle or vulnerable side? Is he kind and noble? Is he a total asshole who’s cruel and selfish? Does he have a family? Where does he live? What is his job exactly? What kind of a world is he from? How does that world affect him as a person?
The more you can convey a character’s personality in a character portrait, the more interesting and soulful it’ll be. Even badass warriors have personalities, families, moral values, and so on. If you can make his facial features, body language, and expression convey these things, then you’ll have a much more interesting character portrait. You can also create a premise/backdrop that helps in this purpose. How a character behaves in an environment is often telling of his personality too.
Thinking about on what you said, this warrior is certainly a hero, fearless, honorable, that kind that would do anything to save those who are weak or somehow needs a helping hand against evil forces.
I can tell you he is like this because this is the character type I love the most.
In this image I think that his expression, the hero pose, the way he is holding the sword like he doesn’t fear anything and he is prepared to fight because he does know how to fight, and the bright, saturated and full of life palette are my expectations that the viewer will perceive him as the character I imagine he is. Also doing his armor with this graphical look is another hope that I have to convey that he belongs to the good side.
Now that I’ve got you thinking about who the character is, and how to portray him effectively, let me go one more step in helping you help yourself.
When you look at your favorite artworks that depict a lone hero, and then compare those artworks to your own image here, what are the differences you see? Do you see more dramatic lighting? More dynamic and interesting play of light and shadow? More expressive body language and facial expression? More interesting composition that leads the eyes to the main focal points? A sense of place/location where the hero is at? Interesting colors such as complimentary contrasts of warm and cool temperatures? Selective detail? Variety of edge qualities instead of simply sharp all over? Interesting brushwork that’s expressive and varied instead of homogenized?
Thanks a lot for the feedback, Lunatique! You’ve been helping me a lot!
Definitely I see some diferences.
Each time a create a new painting I can see that my understanding of light and shadow is getting better, although there’s way too much to work on. I do think that my works still lack more dramatic use of lighting, but somehow I think that I am better now on making the light and shadows dynamic.
Facial expression is a subject that I’m giving special attention mainly in my cartoon characters. I find that way of exaggerating facial expression using a lot of squash and stretch, big eyes and mouths and so on is just amazing. I do want to master it. But looking at this image here I cant tell that it didn’t change a lot in relation to my other lone characters.
The body language I THINK it’s OK, but focal point is something faulty in my portfolio (http://joaocesar.carbonmade.com/), as I don’t have many works mixing characters and sceneries because almost of my works are for some client and not to me. I got a lot of concept arts of characters, model sheets, but full compositions are kinda missing and I DO have to work on it. My next artwork will definitely feature more characters placed somewhere not blank! 
My palettes certainly need a better use of complimentary colors. This is for sure. Reflected lights are something I have to improve as well.
Details and edges qualities are things that would like to have worked better in this image. I think it kinda got caught between a concept art and a final polished artwork. My other works on which I used this same painting technique lack more detailing too.
All my works are done with the two first default Photoshop brushes. For a long time I always tried not to depend on other people’s brushes or blurring techniques, but now I see that there’s no point on it. I do want to experiment more textures, more ways of creating my works with expression… Open my mind.
Phew… Wall of text!
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