Sorry it took me so long to reply - i´m away from home at the moment I hav´nt been home since february.. Thank you so much for the lovely compliement hehe.. Have a look at my early stuff.. you can almost pinpoint when I was told about implied lines ect.
I´m also a big fan of pausing the dvd to get refs from movies. I usually just see something and get inspired to do it.. like high fashion magazines with the really beautiful artistic editorial shoots in it..i also really like drawing things like musical people because theres so much behind the images if you know what i´m saying.
You could probably benefit from spending more time on your layout and initial porportions. your shading and that is quite good! I used to want to always rush in and start shading and rendering straight away but it really does pay to take the time to really exactly place everything in the right spots.. using things like the corners of eyes as references and even measuring to make sure they are right and after a while you get the hang of it and you don´t have to measure anymore. I have never really used grids only for really hard perspectives to get it perfectly right but just remember there are tools out there for us to utilise and it´s not necessarily cheating like a lot of people would argue.

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JETMISE
Gallery

Thank you so much!

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"Every blade of grass, each leaf, each seperate floret and petal, is an inspiration speaking of hope."
- Richard Jefferies