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This is looking digitally made althought I wass questioning if it was scanned ink, either way, work on your hatching and crosss hatching. If you're intending to stick with a strick black and white and just use these two tones for communicating yeah. The areas where you're practicing hatching to create the effect of lower value are effective, but with the scratchiness thats where i'd push. if you're producing a printed effect, as if this was your matrix, then it's comming cross. I'd reccomend creating cleaner "cuts", where the white liness would be your cuts and the black lines would be the surface of your print block. You've got ssome really interesting shapes for the darker value all throughout, I'd say have a run through of just capturing the shape of all the shadows, sinix talks about ditillation and stroke efficiancy in thi video and i think you'd benefit from hearing about distillation particularly given your approach . I tthink some of the shapes and the shadows tend ot get lost or a bit too complicated when you bring in your hatching so calling back on everything: work on cleaner hatching lines, it producess a printmaking effect with the jagged-ness in the line weight which could be ussed to your benefit if you like the style, but I'd reccomend cleaning your etching. Work on the shapes of your shadows and look into distillation. It'll help you break down your references shapes, this can then be used to improve stroke efficiency as Sinix will speak on.

A note on the piece outside of style and more on what you present witthin the image: I'm confused at her shadow on what I assume is a wall behind her, I'd also love to see her shoulder on the left cut through tthe negative space of white or else have the white takeover the sshadow shape on that left shoulder so it balances out the composition more. You have this really cool black and white which balances diagonally through the piece, as seen by the white space on the left and black space on the right. Makes me think of a gruny jungle scene (although i'm watchingg james bond movies right now so my iinspiration iss probably sourced there.).

That's about all I can provide, Great work! Love the texture you've created with the black background and likewise the approach of just usingg black and white and using hatching to describe mid values. If you have any questions or want to further dialogue, let me know! Happy drawing!

It is scanned ink. Which makes especially the white "lines" a pain in the behind, as they require "juggling" several shapes all at once in my mind, because erasing landmark lines isn't an option.

Thanks for your critique, I watched the video you suggested, and it brought up a number of interesting concepts, some of which I can try to implement in my analogue art, some of which are a bit harder to do, as I don't have the luxury to try out, erase, smooth out and overpaint at leisure, so I have to do them in my head before putting the brush to paper.

That's the best value rendering I've ever seen, AuntHerbert.

My bigger critique is that your tones are already exquisite as they are, but I'm not getting enough of the exaggeration of the life in them. Would you kindly work the most liveliest shades and lights, for your thumbnails, with 2 hours of 15 second light sketches? (7200/15=480 quickest lights and shadows of the faces and expressions)

The reason why you should, could and would is because, your tones and lights and shades will become the least stiffest, the the most dynamic, appealing and densest.

Good luck and cheers to you and your future goals.

I'm not sure I would call these shadows 'rendered' inasmuch as they don't seem to be painting a 'realistic' picture for me. But I'll tell you what, I like the shadows this way. This sketchy style? It looks REALLY GOOD. Depending on what you're aiming for, I might lean into that sketchy style; it has a really unique and striking look.

Also it looks like jodie foster, in case that's who you were using for reference.

Beautiful and strong. Looks like woodcut. Reminds the face of a Finnish blues singer Aija Puurtinen.