Now to start off some common things I've seen in drawings and 3D art alike:
Sense of scale. There often seems to be a lacking of this in a lot of artists work when starting out. when you create short and fat doors or buildings you can quickly lose scale.. especially when there is no reference images to show it's relative size. In order to get a sense of scale it's often needed to create objects that will help use recognise the size of an object. For instance if you are making a building, something like a human, or a cart, or tree can help you establish it's size. Trees may not always work because it could be assumed it's a sapling. However, just keeping in mind that having a recognised item can help greatly as it will let them have something they know the size of and from that can get an idea of the size of the main subject matter.
Saturation. This I see in even non amature work. There seems to be a habit of going more saturated than you need. Our brains appear to work oddly when picking our colours. Many people will assume they need a bright vibrant colour in order to carry across that it's that colour.. to be bold make a statement..
Not needed.. here's a link talking about colour perception. The point of this is to show that even perfect mid grey can appear to have colour to it under the right conditions. So working with low saturation can lead to nice results.. in addition you can use colours to give contrast but more on that later..http://www.designmatrix.com/pl/cyberpl/cic.html
Attention to details. This is something often missed.. people will make things that are completely clean.. not a spec of dirt or dust.. this makes it look wrong. How often do you see something new and shiny? not often.. swords, armour, cars, etc.. they look more used and realistic when you have dirt. Now.. some people do this.. however laying down streaks of dirt just anywhere is also bad.. you need to think about where it should be.. what direction it should flow.. what colour should it be.. why does it exist there .. and how much of it should be there? This passes on to how is it used? think of a wall with water stains on it.. where do they come from? how long has this been happening? is there metal there? if so you need to show elements of that metal.. green for copper, black for nickle, red for iron.. or maybe the green is algy.. maybe it's always wet and so that grows on the wall here... now it its wet.. what do we know about pourus materials like stone? Well they get darker when they get wet.. and on and on.. this is what will make us believe in your work..
that should be enough to absorb for now.. I'll post more tips later and more links too.
moo
