Self Portrait

To start, very amusing title and description. That is indeed a pretty accurate depiction of what you would probably look like as a crow. I love how you intentionally strive away from any attempt to anthropomorphize human features onto your subject. It does make me curious, though, if that was your intention from the beginning, or if you decided to name it that after the fact. Either way, you made my day! For some reason, there is something about birds of the Corvidae family that I find intriguing, though I am slightly more partial to the Blue Jay, due to the striking combination of the color and shape.

Really good sketch overall. Some of the feathers on the lower right look like they may need a bit more work to make them a little more feathery, and a little less scaly, and I might recommend making the highlighted feathers around corners of the beak a little less pronounced, except right on top. Just maybe add another layer and tint it down slightly. I do understand that those areas of the face do have a bit more of an oily sheen to them, so It's food to keep some of it there. Aside from that, I like what you are doing with the lighting, especially in some of the darker areas, where you use single strokes of gray to highlight just enough for us to visualize feathers in an otherwise black region. Also, good work on the glassy reflection in the eyes. It really makes for a brilliant focal point that pulls the image together.

I've been experimenting with lighting in b/w in some of my own work recently, such as in this piece that I made last December: www.deviantart.com/art/Fitzger…. I figure I'll follow your work to see if I can pick up on some of the things I like with your technique. If my feedback was at all helpful to you, I'd appreciate it if you could offer some constructive criticism on my stuff. I've only had my stuff up here for a couple months, but I'm noticing that there are a lot more people requesting constructive criticism than are giving it. I figure that providing critiques is still a good thing to do, as it strengthens the art community overall.

Keep up the good work! <img src="e.deviantart.net/emoticons/s/s…" width="15" height="15" alt="" data-embed-type="emoticon" data-embed-id="391" title=" (Smile)"/>