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I came up with a rough sketch of the Canuck getting ready to do a little 'long division.' I'm not too happy with his left arm, and the thumb on that hand seems... off as well, but I think I kinda like the rest. Is there anything else I could tweak, and how so?
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Yes I agree that the thumbs (on both hands) are off. I'd suggest you'd get good value out of practicing drawing thumbs for a while. Just take some time to observe your thumb on your hand (use a mirror even) in various poses. Compare to the poses you used in your doodle. The tweaks to your doodle should prove to be minor but should make a solid difference.
The next thing I would suggest to tweak is the general clutter in and around the face. There's so much tiny but intense linework all crammed together. It kind of unbalances the piece, especially how the elements of the piece below the collarbone generally have sparse lines. It's hard to figure out how that might be improved, but perhaps if you increase the size of the head a bit to give you more skin area within which to buffer the beard, hair, mask, mouth, teeth, tongue, and nose, (not to mention the pauldrons, axeblade, and right bicep that are right up on the face as well) you might relax some of the pressure.
Finally, I think that a couple of your anatomical proportions are slightly off. For the most part the clothing being loose covers up the need for super-accurate anatomical proportion. But it seems to me the right hand is too small for the right bicep, and the head is too small for the left hand. I might suggest increasing the width and length of the axe shaft to give it more of a look of heft, increasing the size of the right hand to match it and line up better with the bicep, and increase the size of the head a little to match up with all of that. If it helps, you can try using your own hand to grab as much of your face as possible, to give yourself an idea of how the proportions between a hand and a head tend to come together.
But still it's a good effort. Keep it up.
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Yes I agree that the thumbs (on both hands) are off. I'd suggest you'd get good value out of practicing drawing thumbs for a while. Just take some time to observe your thumb on your hand (use a mirror even) in various poses. Compare to the poses you used in your doodle. The tweaks to your doodle should prove to be minor but should make a solid difference.
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Thanks, and I agree about the thumbs. What I really need is a full-length mirror. 
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The next thing I would suggest to tweak is the general clutter in and around the face. There's so much tiny but intense linework all crammed together. It kind of unbalances the piece, especially how the elements of the piece below the collarbone generally have sparse lines. It's hard to figure out how that might be improved, but perhaps if you increase the size of the head a bit to give you more skin area within which to buffer the beard, hair, mask, mouth, teeth, tongue, and nose, (not to mention the pauldrons, axeblade, and right bicep that are right up on the face as well) you might relax some of the pressure.
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Well, I didn't put alot of detail in the armor yet, but it will be there eventually (for example, he will be wearing piston boots), so that should balance out somewhat in the final piece. I'm trying to go for a foreshortened look on his arms, with the left being close to the viewer and the right being further back. The head could stand to be a bit bigger, but then I'd want to make his left hand larger as well, which just might serve to cancel each other out in the end.
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Finally, I think that a couple of your anatomical proportions are slightly off. For the most part the clothing being loose covers up the need for super-accurate anatomical proportion. But it seems to me the right hand is too small for the right bicep, and the head is too small for the left hand. I might suggest increasing the width and length of the axe shaft to give it more of a look of heft, increasing the size of the right hand to match it and line up better with the bicep, and increase the size of the head a little to match up with all of that. If it helps, you can try using your own hand to grab as much of your face as possible, to give yourself an idea of how the proportions between a hand and a head tend to come together.
But still it's a good effort. Keep it up.
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Thanks, I really appreciate the feedback. As I said, the size difference in the hands was intentional, though I may have gone too far with it. I think his upper torso could be twisted a bit more into a profile though too, now that I look at it more. I'm pretty happy with his legs and feet positioning. But it definitely needs more tweaking.
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I think his upper torso could be twisted a bit more into a profile though too, now that I look at it more.
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His current lack of torso twist does make him seem a bit relaxed for being about to angrily swipe down a destructive axe. But I'm not too concerned about it overall, it kinda works ok as it is in my opinion. Not all comic book styles feature super-extreme posing, some artists keep the action within narrow bounds, (a few even go to plain extremes by featuring page after page of just word-bubbling heads).
It seems if you can get some clarity of expression out of his face, supported by expressive hands, the rest of the torso doesn't need to do much else to sell it to the audience. Unless you want it to. 
So awhile back Alex made up a sketch of my Ice/Axe tanker Commander Canuck in his '98 sketches' thread. I never thanked him in the thread because I'd let my account expire, but I did thank him on his blog (because it was a nice gesture and an awesome sketch!)
Anyhoo, a friend of mine saw it and wanted to color it, so I told him I'd try to make it into some nice lineart.
That was two months ago.
Fast forward to today, and I finally get the itch to doodle again, so I came up with a rough sketch of the Canuck getting ready to do a little 'long division.' I'm not too happy with his left arm, and the thumb on that hand seems... off as well, but I think I kinda like the rest. Is there anything else I could tweak, and how so?
Thanks in advance.