My second PS related Fanart. Amy Sage.

Yes, my second piece. I'll get my first one up later. Besides, some have been saying this place needs more PS II art. While it's not original, it'll do. Considering this is my second piece and I only started drawing last week, I'm quite happy.
I'm quite proud of how this turned out, even though I had to redraw the hand several times before it looked halfway normal. I have a feeling hands are going to haunt me forever.

Anyhoo, comments, critique, whatever is all welcome. I'll need it if I'm to get any good at this.

Well, you started off pretty well there Xander. The only critique I can give you at this point is to work on her hand, it's too small in proportion to the rest of her body. But all in all, it's a good piece, especially since you only started drawing a week ago. You should see my first drawings. Ghastly. I can pm them to you if you like.

Cool, thanks. Send them over when you've got a minute.

I tried several times on the hand but at the end of the day I couldn't seem to proportion it right. But it's a helluva lot better than the first attempt. Damn waggly, knuckled monstrosities!

Hands and animating hair are amongst the hardest forms of anatomy to draw, especially if a character has long, flowing hair. You have to judge the wind direction, how the hair falls ( heavier hair tends to hang around the face, while lighter strands tend to flutter about). The best practice for drawing hands is to try drawing your own as practice sketches.

This link might be of help to you.
http://www.mangatutorials.com/

Ah, fantastic! Thanks for the link. Just what I need.

I suppose drawing my own hands is as good an idea as any. I'll certainly give it a shot. I mean, they are hands after all.

Anyway, thanks again. Your help is very much appreciated. I'm going to be doing more over the next few weeks so I'll see how it goes. As long as the scanner can stop playing up long enough to work I'll keep them coming in.

Oh my goodness! Xander, you captured Amy's cuteness perfectly =D

Amy: I feel like I'm a model. ^_^

Well done Xander, Amy looks great . It’s like her eyes are smiling. I hope to see more Phantasy Star drawings from you. Good on ya keep it up!

D'aww! Amy's so cute! You did a great job, Xander, and I'm so glad you chose to do Amy!

This is a really great likeness of the original piece, Xander. I always thought her hand looked a little out of proportion in the original myself. So in that respect, I think you came close to the original even on that part. I always had trouble with hands myself when I was trying to draw people too.

Thanks guys. The feedback means a lot.

As for the hand, I think it took 5 or so attempts before I got this. It was either too thin, too short, too long, the fingers were too fat, etc, etc. In the end, I figured it would be best to go with this one otherwise there would be so many old outlines there that colouring would be a pain. I always thought it was kind of strange, you'd think she was giving the horns to someone.

Though I have a lot of work to do before I get better, I'm glad the proportions of what I've done so far have turned out as they have. It was one of my biggest worries. And the faces don't seem to be such a problem either, though the eyes ended up looking up instead of forward. I think that was a mis-calculation on my part. At least now there are 2 pieces of Amy fanart in the gallery here.

But anyway, courtesy of Lyla I now have a link to some tutorials. I'm going to go take some time and just do some practice stuff today and think about what I'm going to draw next. At least now I know my old scanner can actually do a decent job, I'll be uploading more as time goes on.