"New" Hobby Artist Journal

Hi everyone!

I've always loved drawing, but I never really got into it until quite recently, around this last fall when I purchased a book on drawing baby animals to keep myself busy over Thanksgiving and winter break. The first picture I have is my first attempt at really attempting to draw something decent. The outcome: Not pretty... Anyways, I've done only a few more sketches since because of my very limited time but in Jan I started on a horse sketch(2nd picture) just for fun and decided to really try and make it look good. I though it came out okay for the bad quality reference but I still wasn't very happy. My latest project, the last picture, is of a gray wolf, this one took me just over 15 hours over the course of a month. I'm very happy with the result. I'm looking to get a job this summer and decided that perhaps either selling any future drawings I do or taking limited commissions might be a good source of a small income. Would you buy, or think anyone would buy my artwork? If so, what price should I start at?
And also, I would love critique on the more recent pieces!

Thank you! :3

Hi and welcome to the art forum :)
You look to have made a great start with your artwork, well done.

At this stage, and I am not being rude, but I don't feel that you have enough detail and experience to offer commissions. I'm sure friends and family may give you a small amount to do some drawings for them, but I think you will struggle to get work from the public.
As a professional artist having been offering commissions for over 5 years, with a website, event sponsorships etc., I still have to work hard to gain clients and only recently have I been able to still back and let the work just flow in.

To improve your drawings and get you heading towards being good enough for commission work, you need to focus on your tonal values, and proportions.
In the drawing of the horse, you have made good use of dark tones, but it appears flat because you have not used a variety of tones. In a good, realistic piece of art, you will see that there are tones from 1 (white) all the way through to 10 (black) spread throughout the drawing. The whites are very important, as are the blacks, as they really give a portrait depth.
Your wolf shows better use of tonal values in the eyes and nose, but to make it realistic you need to show the tones throughout the fur as well, the eyes and nose in a real wolf do not start out so distinctly. The fur needs to be brought out from these points to slightly soften them.

The proportions in the wolf are good, eyes, ears and nose are all in the right place.
Now have a look at the horse, see how the lower jaws meets the throat in nearly a straight line? Horse's have a very prominent cheek which needs to be displayed in a portrait, using a deep shadow beneath it and highlight over the cheek. The eye is also not accurate to a real horse, it is a lovely cartoon style eye, so if you wanted to go down the path of doing realistic portraits, you need to study up on eye shapes, highlights etc. which will make a world of difference to the quality of your work.

You've made an extremely good start, keep sticking at it and you'll be doing commissions in no time :)