Dragon Egg

Please excuse my critic's statement: "Before I begin, I should point out that I judge every piece as if I were walking through a virtual museum so, although I do my best to place the piece it whatever context is intended, my background is fine art and my viewpoints come from that arena."
With that done let us begin with 'Vision', an inconveniently vague concept that I consider to include a work's composition and its artistic elaboration (that is, how much an artist has manipulated a reference or source image). The subject fits well in the space provided in that it is centered and it looks as though it is supposed to be but I don't know if a photograph or an object was used as reference, based on the artist's description. Based on this alone I would have considered four stars since I'm content, not awed mind you but content though this is prior to considering the work's presentation. The top edge of the piece is cropped well, however, the left, right, and bottom edge is not; I can see beyond the work at all three edges.
In terms of 'Originality', well, there was no source image reference so I am forced to assume that all of this came straight from the artist's imagination. The big question I usually ask in regards to this category is if I've seen it before (which, lets face it, everything has been done a million times over) is, 'what is the artist's message that no one else can tell?' I can sense no message; I can read nothing beyond an egg cradled by cave rock and dripstone, so again, I defer to a solid average of three stars.
For 'Technique', I would like to point out the highlights, middle values, and shadows used throughout the work, demonstrating a typical range of values with the highlights and middle values being the strongest and the shadows being the weakest. I would accept this, thinking, "Oh, perhaps some torchlight is illuminating this." but if this was not the objective then this piece should be significantly darker with the white of the paper only showing through in pinpoints of reflected light. That being said, caves, to my knowledge, are formed via erosion by water; it wouldn't have hurt to make some of the stones moist or sweating. This actually brings me to my other point: texture. Everything in this piece has the same texture while a more prominent variation in texture would have made this piece quite impressive.
And finally 'Impact'; in this category I consider how powerful the overall image is to me, largely taking into account my preferences and making this easily the most subjective category possible. This is where I weigh the good I've seen and the not so good and I consider how the work makes me feel and, unfortunately, I am unmoved. Without repeating myself, the only other thing I would add is that some of your solid objects appear amorphous; solid objects have hard edges. The best examples of this would be in the stalagmite in the foreground and the egg itself. There is so much highlight on the edge of the stone that it no longer has a firm, rock-like quality. The reflective light on the back of the egg is brilliantly rendered but the top and left side turn to mush from the overabundance of light. It is not unreasonable to have a bit of highlight be so bright that the viewer cannot see the edge- that's impactful when it's in a small dose- when it's more than half the object it's too much.