Half face: Love how each half looks like a slightly different expression due to the scars and eye. How long did it take for him to get used to eating without that cheek/skin there? only artistic criticism or observation or whatever you wanna call it is; the scarring around his jaw looks a little odd to me, like the lines are too smoothed. Scars typically have sharper edges, are more ragged His are too rounded like you’re blending them in. Sorry if that’s rude or mean.
It took him a while but I think the entire oral setup they have is pretty awkward for eating anyway. That very mobile throat area they have is apparently capable of hockin' loogies (The Predator 2018) and shaping itself to form sounds associated with speech (Predator 2) so I'd bet that the finger like appendages probably just help tuck foods in towards the back of the throat but the swallowing mechanism does most of the work. I can't really picture them being able to chew their food effectively at all, so, I'm leaning towards the assumption that they just swallow chunks and let their digestive system deal with it. I'm not convinced the cheek flesh does too much to control food that you wouldn't be able to accomplish with eating utensils to more directly pass morsels toward the throat.
On art critique, I do gladly take it, but don't always respond to it because I'm already aware of areas that don't look right and need improvement. To preface this: I no longer spare the time to brute-force correct problematic areas with trial and error. If a sketch looks weird by the time I'm thirty minutes in, I just complete the sketch anyway because the more I do and complete the more I'm going to learn.
There are two things for certain wrong with the scarring on his jaw that I noted.
1) The lines are not consistent between the frontal sketch and the side profile sketch. The lines of awkwardly stretched tissue run too long on the frontal sketch and reach towards touching his chin whereas they don't on the side profile sketch. I messed with it a little to make it less obvious, but decided to save time and not brute-force it.
2) the color is most certainly off. It's over blended in areas where scar exits the mucus membrane of the inner mouth and touches the Orange/sulphur/yellow skin tone, where it shouldn't blend much.
Mouth tissue is amazing, it can almost heal itself until there's no visible scar present at all, but when a chunk of tissue or a tooth is removed completely, the tissue tends to shrink inward around the empty space to fill it, and this makes things appear rounded. I also looked at amputated fingers for references, and tried to combine that with what I already knew about oral scarring. With fingers or limbs, a flap of skin is usually preserved during surgery to fold over the open surgical site and I tried here but may have missed the mark a bit.
As far as future crit goes, I might not always respond to it simply because I'm already aware of the problem and have made notes to correct it in future works.
An Opinion and Gentle Piece Of Advice:
Overall, I don't support giving crit unless it's explicitly asked for. The reason for that is, I, a person in their late twenties, can handle it. Someone in their early teenage years, someone with self esteem issues, someone with artistic insecurities might not handle it at all, however helpful or good intentioned that crit is.
I cannot know the mental state or experience level of another person online, and constructive criticism, no matter how it's worded, can hit a ten year old kid as if you'd said "quit art all together," even if that's not what you meant to say at all.
So like... Yeah, understand that anyone on the internet could be a child, struggling with mental health, or wrestling with their self esteem, and then determine whether or not they take constructive criticism before giving it.
Sorry if at any point I sounded crass or irritable, I understand that tone is hard to convey in written text.
