Sokharina

Hello, how are you doing! First of all, congratulations on a very striking and original portrait piece. It is refreshing to see a non generic beauty for once and also someone cold and stern rather than sweet and vulnerable. She definitely has an old world feel, like she could fit into some sort of historical biopic, and she definitely exhudes character - perhaps she has had to struggle to make ends meet in the past, for she is rather stern and strong.

The fur is very well done and feels incredibly tactile. Her skin is cold and flushed only on the cheeks and the nose as one would expect. Her expression is the best part of the piece - the downturned lips, the questioning and impatient brows.

In terms of critique - I believe you could benefit from being much more strict in rendering bone structure. In such a strong character portrait, I think I'd expect a very strong bone structure and at the moment the edging of her nose for example is very feathered and treated with softness. There needs to be skin rendered between chin and neck or else it is in danger of looking a little bobble-headed. I do really like the lines on her throat though.

The whole portrait could benefit from a little more dynamic lighting, even just some luminescence in her face and some vignetting of the background area, just to make it pop a bit.

I've also noticed there are smudges around her eyebrows. Unless her makeup is smudged, we shouldn't see those. It also depends upon the level of realism you are after, but the eyebrows are two different thicknesses as well. Also, her left (our right) eye is lighter than the other, which sometimes can make sense, but the lighting is flat here.

Try to keep away from greys or tans in rendering shadows on skin, as they tend to make the skin look muddy or dirty rather than natural. The only time where I reckon such hues are acceptable as a primary shadow colour is when you are rendering someone waxen like a corpse. Even though she is very pale here, there should still be hints of blue, yellow, and pink in the shadows - whatever her base pigment is.

One more thing - I've noticed that you have not paid any attention to reflective lighting here in terms of colour bouncing off objects and mingling with others. There is so much dominant red in this piece that you would probably see some on her very pale skin as well, and mingling into the fur will also make it a more cohesive piece.

Overall very well done! It is a wonderful portrait with such character and non of the vacant staring you see rife on deviantart nowadays. It has that old world appeal of classic art!! I hope this was a helpful critique!