Zelda drawing (first ever shade job)

...opinions? This was actually the first picture I've ever shaded....

You did a good job, but if I were going to make any recommendations I'd have to say go darker.

Shaded pieces with higher value and a wide range of value are a lot stronger. Next time you're shading something, I'd recommend having both pure black, pure white, and a variety of shades of grey. Sometimes it helps to have a value scale to look at, to make sure you cover all the shades.

In general you want to make sure some of your drawing is as dark as your pencil can go and only leave the very whitest thing white. It looks like you might have done that with a pencil, if you have the time, get an ebony or charcoal pencil. You don't need the five billion that come at art stores or will be recommended, just one.

Thanks for the advice I'll say that the actual picture is darker, photobucket kinda screwed it up. If you want a better version of it go to my DA ( http://www.bandmatescomic.deviantart.com ) and it may or may not look a little better. Thanks especially for that graph, I have a feeling it will help quite a bit

I liked your majora's mask, seemed a bit better to me than this one.

The most important thing an beginning artist can do is work from a reference
Faces are complex and difficult. You don't necessarily have to draw a picture that's already been created, but you do need a reference of some kinds to learn where to shade and how to create a proper perspective.



For example, you could have used this picture, which provides a somewhat similar angle to what you were going for to note the size and position of the eyes and the areas that needed the most shading. Note the right jawline, your painting has none, this photo shows that it is the area with the highest contrast, besides the hair. Also note the darkness of around her ear and the shadow that runs along her cheek, both absent from your drawing. Most notably, Zelda's left ear should not be present in that shot. I'd recommend printing a picture out, (make sure it's black and white or grey scale if you continue ebony) and doing a blowup of said picture. Run a gridlines on both your paper and your source to use as reference to where the lines of the face should run and then erase these before you shade. It really only takes one of those to then be able to naturally freeform it much better. Good luck