Awesome Work Man!

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Yay for ninja!

looking good man

Much appreciated.

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Carry me to the shoreline

Bury me in the sand

Walk me across the water

And maybe you'll understand

finally, new art. i was beginning to think you stopped drawing or something.
couple o' questions for ya:

why don't you start out, before every drawing, by drawing a line which you divide into eight segments? this will help you a lot. first of all, you will figure out the exact size of the figure you're drawing and won't have any more unpleasant surprises, like no more space for the legs. also, you can't get any proportions wrong with the eight segments rule. which means you won't be going back on the head to adjust it so that it fits the rest of the body

also, why do you use lined paper for drawings? it makes them look messy and sketchy and people will not take them seriously, no matter how much you've worked on them. tidy drawings make people like them and respect the artist, as weird as an advice that may sound.

in other news, i really like the outfit, the way the patterns complement the structure of the body, almost suggesting where certain muscles should be. the sword is a bit too short for my taste but the rest is ok.

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supporting deviantART's critic community

Well I don't draw very often, but occasionally I manage to get something done. Thanks for the lengthy comment.

How would drawing a grid fix any of those problems? I don't understand how that would work.

I use line paper because that's what my notebook is made of. When I draw, which I rarely find the inspiration to, everything comes out extremely rough and a lot of times it ruins the paper. So instead, when I draw something I actually turn out to like, I transfer it to printer paper.

Thanks, it took a long time for me to decide how it should look. In the end, it just came down to drawing random lines until I thought it looked decent. The reason the sword is short is because it is a ninjato, the actual blade weapon that Ninja used. The blade is shorter than traditional katana to allow it to unsheathe faster.

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Carry me to the shoreline

Bury me in the sand

Walk me across the water

And maybe you'll understand

well, i can't really explain how that grid would fix the problems. it's a very simple thing to use but you have to show it to someone, and i couldn't find any tutorials which have it yet. it's a bit of a basic thing you learn in school at art classes if you're interested, i could make on for you and put it on devArt (that is, if i don't find a proper one around here...).

hey, i have a curiosity: a ninjato is not a wakizashi, isn't it? i know they are both shorter than the katana but i never heard of ninjato before

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supporting deviantART's critic community

I guess if you want to I'll take a look at it.

No, it's longer than a wakizashi. Wouldn't you know it has it's own Wikipedia page? [link]

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Carry me to the shoreline

Bury me in the sand

Walk me across the water

And maybe you'll understand

well, there are many tutorials but this is one of the most eloquent: [link]
i highly recommend checking out the rest of ^Cedarseed's gallery, she has the most amazing tutorials
thank you for the link, by the way. i'm pretty fascinated with weapons and it's nice to come across ones i've never heard of every now and then

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supporting deviantART's critic community

Ohhhh, I thought you meant grid the paper as in literally cover the entire paper with boxes, like if you were drawing on graph paper. You can see why I didn't think the idea made sense.

I'm not so sure I'd be comfortable with doing that, though. I rarely distort my proportions when I draw (or if I do I can't notice it, even if someone swears it's there) and I even more rarely draw people standing straight up doing nothing. I'm trying lately to put as much action into my drawings as I can, which I think has also been leading me to put out less art since it becomes difficult to think of a dynamic, eye-catching pose.

No problem. I'm happy I got at least one real comment on my drawing.

--
Carry me to the shoreline

Bury me in the sand

Walk me across the water

And maybe you'll understand