Merry Christmas 2014 by bcnyArt on DeviantArt (original) (raw)

⭐⭐⭐⭐ Overall

⭐⭐⭐⭐:star-half: Vision

⭐⭐⭐:star-half::star-empty: Originality

⭐⭐⭐⭐:star-empty: Technique

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Impact

It's my first time writing a critique, so be indulgent with me.
I'll start with the overall impression, which is very nice, the use of a selected few colors draw out the black and white parts.
The drawing in itself is perfectly inked, with neat lines that don't overstep each other dispite the many elements packed closely toghether.
The downside being that the lines are all of the same thickness, so it is a bit difficult to differenciate one element from an other.
A way to get around this problem is to draw the lining of foreground elements thicker and background elements thiner.
I can see that you tried to detach the main character from the rest by circling it with gold, unfortunately it's not really noticeable because it's flooded in the rest of the yellow mass.
Not to worry, though, because the girl stands out for having large white areas, which makes for a nice respiration, contrasting with the highly detailed elements around her.
I don't know if it is intentional or not, but the way you worked the textures is simillar, be it for her hair, cloth, white fur, ribbons or the reindeer fur.
This has two main effects, it makes it difficult to differentiate between elements, but on the other side, it draw out the attention on the important parts of the picture. The same can be said about the red eye: even though it attract attention, the color was chosen so that it would "blend" with the picture. Having it blue (for exemple) would have attracted the attention more, but it would not have worked quite as well in my opinion.
This being a critique, I won't spend too much words on "how pretty!", for it being quite obvious. I'd rether be constructive, so as to help the artist grow further. Following that line of though, I would say that this picture is a bit confusing for the reason aformentioned, but really well balanced.
Overall, I think that this would make for a wonderful post card, this effect being reinforced by the grey bars on the sides and the "merry christmas" text.
I tried my best to be as honest and constructive as I could, and I wish you all the best for the future, which looks promising.