Akins Animal Art

[chrisaakins]

Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? I decided to start creating pieces on animals to further my skill. I have an idea for an animal book in the future. I will post them here. Feel free to critique if you see areas I need improvement on (inking, values, other technical stuff, etc.)
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[demotlj]

@chrisaakins I saw your ink of this on instagram and really like the watercolor version.

[chrisaakins]

@demotlj Thanks so much! I plan on posting this tomorrow. Trying to limit to one post a day. But I was so excited about it I decided to post it here, too.

[robgale]

@chrisaakins Nice work! I like the pose/angle of the turtle and the drawing is solid. One thing I will throw out there, partly because I'm working on this myself and hyper aware of this, is to look at ways to use your lines to describe the form even more. Another reason I suggest this is because you're already doing it. So it's something, if you push that even further, it would emphasize some of what you're already doing and I think make the work even stronger.

His work is really different than yours, but this guy is phenomenal with doing this sort of thing, ie describing form with lines. He works in pencil, but you could definitely apply some of what he's doing to pen and ink. I'm learning a ton from studying this guy right now: Gary Villarreal

Great job though, and I hope that is helpful!

[NessIllustration]

What a great idea! Specializing is always a great way to improve and get known for something in particular, and seeing this turtle it's clear that your style works really well with the subject of animals. Very nice piece!

[Sophie Lawson]

Has got a nice ring to it

I like the feel of this one.

[chrisaakins]

@robgale Thanks for the suggestion. It is something that I am mindful of and am trying to improve.
@NessIllustration thanks for the encouragement! I have always been able to draw animals and so I decided to really focus on it. I wonder if it is because I had every animal book available and was a self-described animal expert as a kid. Haha!

[chrisaakins]

@sophie-lawson thanks! Alliteration is always fun.

[chrisaakins]

Here are some recent additions. I am finding I like to draw the highly textured not so cute but still cool animals.
![0_1543025362719_IMG_20181122_105119_787.jpg]