Here's a baby bird that I'm working on, can't decide whether or not to call him finished. I'm not that happy with the wing, or the inside of the beak, though for my needs I don't need a lot of details. I plan to make one or two more maybe on a branch or in a nest, haven't decided yet. Ideas for the dark wing are especially welcomed.
This is supposed to be a chickadee. Funny, it just hit me, I ought to use this bird as my avatar (my name is dee, and I'm a chick!), lol.
dee

cute !!!

My first impression is the wing is just a bit too small. I know its just a baby but maybe try scaling it up a little?

Hi dee,
Very nice!!

Hhhmm....yes, I see what you mean about those 2 areas. For the wing, to me, it seems it's either a little bit to high, or maybe it's more the angle is off. If it were me, I would try rotating just a little bit counterclockwise, and see how it looks. The size of the wing seems ok to me. I tend to focus on realism in my work, and this is more of a cartoon bird. So I'm not sure, but there might be something you could do with the shadow of the wing, to make it work??

For the beak/mouth, maybe make the middle of it darker, to create a little more depth. Maybe even with a gradient or blur, so that it gets progressively darker towards the middle?? That might be my realism speaking though.... But just as a viewer of the image, I would say that the beak looks like it's barely hanging on. To me, it seems to need (somehow, not sure how) a stronger connection to the bird. ....OH! You know what I think it is, is that the bird's head is almost purely in profile, while the open beak is facing us much more than pure profile. If the beak were in pure profile, we would not see the inside of it. That said though, I understand the need for the wide open beak, in the overall appeal of the image. So I don't know. For me it would be much harder to make the head turned to something less than profile, than it would be to make the beak more towards profile. If that made sense, lol.

There's one other small place that seems a little off to me, and that's at the place where body turns into head, ie - the neck, as it were.... That tan color, that's under the wing and over the fluffy yellow. The top of it, to my eye, is a little to high. And actually, that might fix the whole wing problem. Here, let me do a quick screenshot, to point an arrow at the place....ok, or circle. So I've put a blue dotted line where the line of the neck seems to fit for me. I think I might try moving the top of the tan object to aligh with the blue dotted line (while keeping the rest of it the same).


So just a few friendly comments -- no negative criticism intended
Can't wait to see next wip!

thanks to all for the suggestions (I don't mind constructive criticsm at all). Sometimes it's hard to sit back and figure out our own mistakes! I'll play with the wing position, check for sizing, I do think that his wing is a bit short, and the other suggestions.
Brynn - great points, I agree about the beak too, I keep moving it, but it still doesn't look right, will add a gradient, hope to post a new birdie in a few days, after all it is tax time, and I'm still working on that.
dee