Cross Contour

We probably want the face or eye to be the part that people look at. The eye is the "window to the soul," and the face is where we look to see what emotion someone's feeling. If you meet someone on the street, you look at their eyes, face, and hands first. And after you've seen those you know their mood and whether it's safe to stick around or not. As such, in a drawing the eyes, face, and hands are the most important parts, and are likely what you want to draw people's attention to.

There are any number of solutions to draw the viewer to the eye in this picture. You can add more detail on the face area, or you could fade out the scales so they're gray and have a lot less contrast, or you could only draw enough scales so we understand the texture but don't see every scale.

"But Stickman! There's no more detail to ADD to the face!"

Not a problem! What about cross-contours? Just because a "line" is generally accepted to mean "a place where two values contrast" doesn't mean that's the only place you need to put them. Draw some curves around the dragon's face that all point towards the eye. ("Point" meaning draw them from the outside and finish them at the eye. The direction you draw a mark effects how an eye moves when looking at it. An eye will follow the direction of your stroke.) That will pull the people right in. Let me throw up a picture that helps illustrate the "cross-contour" point.

(insert and http://www.skaarj.com/gimpystick/faileas/418 as an example. Make new example that illustrates it exactly.)

First, see how much more three-dimensional it looks? Second, since I used a black instead of the graphite gray, it's much darker. Notice how your eye moves quickly towards the front of the dragon's head instead of towards the neck?

Because of simultaneous contrast, you would want to make the cross-contours more dense (add more of them so they're closer together). That way they would read as a value and not pinstripes. I drew them quickly due to time constraits, not because I wanted him to look like he had pinstripes.

I hope I'm making sense. Simultaneous contrast is a very important concept that I need to create a tutorial about sometime.

Unfinished