Sister Oscar

As a fan of Yamino and her work (her comic Sister Claire especially), I'd like to take a moment to offer what I hope to be an unbiased critique of this artwork. What I'll do is list the pros and cons, and then offer some advice to further improve this piece.

THE PROS:
- Wonderful dynamic pose: I especially enjoy how the capelet, tassels and habit flow around Sister Oscar.
- Excellent choice in color-scheme: I love how the piece incorporates mostly cool colors, but is punctuated with warm colors and shading. Very nice!
- Personality: You really get a sense of Sister Oscar's demeanour in this piece, from her stance to her expression. She is a no-nonsense individual who means business.

THE CONS:
- Sensory-overload: While I do enjoy the stars and sparkles, it feels as though there are too many of them (the stars in the sky especially) and thus it takes the focus away from Sister Oscar.
- Subject/Background: As I mentioned with the color-scheme, it works very nicely, but because Sister Oscar's colors are very similar to the background's, it seems as though the background is swallowing her up. The cool/warm halo around her does help a bit.
- Paper Sword: This is a bit of a nit-pick on my part... you made the hilt of the sword nice and 3D, but the blade looks very 2D in comparison.

Now let's see what we can do to take this piece from "great" to "awesome":

Sensory-overload: I mentioned the over-abundance of stars and sparkles, but I wouldn't say to get rid of them since the sparkles are part of the shoujo style that Sister Oscar emanates. Perhaps removing about 10% or less of the stars (or even shrinking the larger ones down a bit) and removing two or three sparkles will make it feel a little less cluttered.

Subject/Background: Don't change the color-scheme! No, no, no! The colors are perfectly fine! The subtle gradient effect in the background is wonderful as well! My suggestion would be to make the background just a liiiiiittle more subdued. This way the bright colors on Sister Oscar will pop against the similar, but slightly faded colors of the background. This will also give the piece a bit more distance and depth.

Paper Sword: Well, let's see... why does the blade look 2D compared to the hilt? The top half of the sword is a lighter color than the bottom, thereby giving depth BUT! When you added in the white lines to create the shine, you had it go straight across rather than having it refract slightly at the middle (like a straw in a clear glass of water).

Also, at the very bottom of the blade (at the hilt) it's perfectly straight. If the blade is indeed raised in the middle, then looking down the blade from the point (a frightening perspective given who's holding the sword!) it should look like a skinny diamond shape. So, to fix this all you need to do is make the base of the blade come out ever-so-slightly to give the illusion of 3-dimensionality.

Another thing I noticed is if you tilt your head to the right, it looks as though the sword is asymmetrical (at the tip and hilt), but I suppose we can blame perspective on that.

The only other suggestion I can think of to improve this piece would be to perhaps add an extra bit of shadow to the underside of her capelet: Just a slightly darker blue along the folds and close to her torso. But then you'd have to add that extra bit of shadow/depth to the skirt and habit as well. Given your style, I don't think it's terribly necessary to add that extra shadow, but it would give Sister Oscar an extra bit of dimension to further separate her from the background.

Oh, speaking of the background: I very much like the use of pink to show waves in the water, but perhaps the lines should be a bit thinner and slightly peaked to clearly indicate waves (not to the point of consummate V's of course, but more like a very shallow, pinched-at-the-top sine wave)

All in all, I would say that this is a lovely piece with only a few minor (and in some cases nit-picky) details that have room for improvement. Well done!