Artwork (progress)

Started by Matty, June 16, 2017, 20:48:40

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Matty

Derron - you liked one of my pictures so I tried redrawing her in pastel....she didn't come out quite the same and you probably think she looks completely different but then I do like this one too.


Matty

another pastel one...I like pastels.

Derron

#47
I ... HATE ... THIS FORUM SUBMIT FORM.
accidentally hit the wrong shortcut and voila... a big big wall of text was gone (restoring tabs did not help). REALLY REALLY FU**.
(The restore works in many forums ...not in this forum system). 30 Minutes of writing: gone.

So excuse if the following is now more harsh than before:

second drawing:
- has good skin tone
- misses crinkle at the neck as she bends her head and/or moves the shoulder
- shadowing on the collar bone is really good
- strokes on her (mid short) hair looks good - does not apply to the hair of the first drawing
- her left eye (POV right) draws too much attention (dark shadowing, that white area around the pupil ...)
- her right eye has some white dots on it - paper?
- part over her lips has this circular-shape, making it look like a "snout" - especially as the upper mouth area looks "smeared", less "skinny" than the cheeks.
- lips do not just get darker towards the mouth inner... when using so intense color tones/reds you maybe do better when placing a bit of "light" near the top part of a lip - to make it look more "3D"

nonetheless: it looks rather good if I am able to ignore the eyes (holding a finger over them). So all in all: good - but improvable job (which already improved comparing to the early drawings)



first drawing:
- her eyes have that egyptian "tear drop"-swing on the outsides (compared to the original drawing)
- her look is now "sad" compared to "happy/nice"
- her mouth looks as if a psychopath took a lipstick and draw wildly over her mouth. Think it misses a kind of "outline" or sharp edge.
- the cowlick of her hair looks odd (non-existing in the original), I think you draw it by mistake? If not: put a hand with a scissor next to it, so she is on her way to get a new hair cut. She wont have this mid-short-hair-cowlick with the other hair strains be that long
- outline of the hair strains does not look very well. It suited perfect to the blonde mid-short-hair in the second drawing but here it makes it look "strainy", "not washed properly"/greasy.
- her left nose (POV:right) is too wide, resulting in the eyebrow growing "in the nose area" (if both than ok, looks "wild" but ok - but it is only this one)
- shadowing of the neck and collarbone is a bit odd: right under the chin: perfect, on her left neck the "strokes" of the darker shadow make it more look like an abrasion (especially as you did other shadows with the smudge/soft-strokes variant)
- shadowing of the colorbone is just odd - I cannot explain/recognize what it should express.


I think if you corrected the nose, moved her left eye a bit towards the center then it would look way way better.


The skin tone of the blonde sweets way better (the other one looks a bit "yellowish"). If you once redo/redraw the first picture: use the color of the blonde womans skin tone.
Also pay attention to eyes, nose and mouth - they are what (at least I) people look as one of the first things: if it looks odd, than people wont accept it as "natural".

Side node: head shape in both drawings is better than in many of your older paintings.


PLEASE: Excuse that I now only have these more or less harsh words: I wrote a big bunch of lines more - also containing "thats good, that improved" stuff. But this forum - and my crazyness of hitting the wrong shortcut ;-) - deleted so much of my text...grr.


bye
Ron

Matty

One more .... 6am this morning 27-1-2018

Derron

#49
Skin tone is a bit yellowish, maybe in Australia things are looking a bit different, just judging from the "long winters, a bit summer, skin tone of us Western Europeans" :-). Might be the "orange green" surrounding it - did not check pure RGB values.

That orange hair is looking nice ... ok, that cowlick needs explanation, hehe.
Head shape looks pretty good (ok, the chin area looks a bit squeezed, but might be the shadowing emphasizing it even more). Top nose area improved already - but has still a slight "assymmetry" (her right nose-side is growing into the eyebrow area different to the left side).

While I do not really miss them: does she have eyebrows? .

Does she wear lipgloss? Bottom lip has some glossiness - which makes it look more "lively" (like I suggested, dunno if it is because of this or a random effect). Think it should be a bit "taller" ("thicker", as the bottom lip contains more "blood"). The current slim/slender lip style makes her "narrow lipped" (as if she want to bite on her bottom lip because of some frightening stuff or "uncertainty").

When looking at the mouth: what do you see? I see some big big teeths (with black outlines... no teethbrush laying around ? ;-).
I did not mention it in the other pictures but "teeths" are something on your TODO. While the white-tone fits this time (they are never bright white) the "size" does not fit well. Just have a google-image look at "teeth" and you will see, that the incisors are wider than the canine/cuspids - especially in the top row. Drawing them "right" also helps drawing the perspective (the teeth row bends into the mouth).


Ok back to her eyes ... you emphasized them pretty good - I think it even would not need that black outline. In other words: I would avoid that black outline and use a dark dark shade variant. The outline of the iris could be a "unshaded/mixted" variant of her eye color ... it does not need an "outline" if you can have a clear stroke of the same color.
That black outline would suit well if you want to have a "cat eye" look.


Shading of her collarbone is something I do no longer write about: looks good, really nice shading ;-)
Keep it that way and avoid harsh cleavage-lines. Well done.


I like the green shirt + orange hair. Green always fits to red/orange haired women.

Conclusion: If your next works keep away from the old mistakes, it can just improve more and more. You seem to be on a good way (just judging yesterdays and todays picture)!



bye
Ron

Matty

Thanks Derron.  Appreciate the feedback.  It's a few steps forward and some steps back....I cant guarantee that i will always go forward but that's the intention.

Yeah...teeth....gotta get better.

Skin colour-actually it's more the lighting in my lounge where i took the photo...it was too early in the morning and the lighting was incandescent globes.

The actual drawing is pinker. Fleshier.

Yeah...the eyes...maybe i will work out a way to do it without the black.

Thanks for taking all that time to write that feedback.  You put a lot of thought into it.

Matty

With natural lighting now the sun is up see attached

Matty

Still bloody hot at 1am in the morning...couldn't sleep so drew a picture with pencil only.

Matty

And coloured on Wacom (I would have liked to have done it with pastels and still may)


Derron

Think you improved on nose and mouth this time. Nose has some odd parts (the nose tip has some kind of border to the nostrils - these MIGHT exist in reality, so I wont blame you for this).

What did you concentrate on this time? Think the lips got some glossiness which helps them to look more "plastic" (in the sense of "3D").

While eyes - nose - mouth fit a lot better compared to some days ago, not to yesterday - which was imho a bit better. Dunno if the reference image has a odd "perspective" resulting in that nearly straight line from top to neck on her right side (POV: left). Especially the part from "shoulder to neck" looks like a 90° angle.

I think she had this "turn your head by 30°"-photo-pose - which never looks "natural" but just "posed". But to make this pose "recognizeable" it misses some lines/crinkles or shadows on the skin.
What you really borked up - imho - this time is again, the head shape. The "hair line" is really "sloped". This does really look weird. If you do not believe me, just scroll down on this page until the forehead is barely visible anymore: it looks way better than, doesn't it?.
If she is looking "to the right" (POV: left) then the shadowing should be different - the "wider half of the face" (her left, POV: right) would need some shadows to emphasize perspective, the right one (POV: left) should have a shorter shadow and less "diagonal"



http://www.martelnyc.com/figure-illustration/the-face.html

If it was a "look straight to the front"-pic, then her eyes seem to tell "there is something happening on the right".


@ Iris and pupil
I wanted to write something about the light reflection on iris and pupil but seems I would have been wrong:
https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=eye+light+reflection
I would have sworn that the iris needs a bit reflection too - but today's high-gloss-photoshoots tell another story. So nothing to blame there.


Ok, Did I mention you mastered the collarbone area? Nope this time shading was almost invisible there, making it look "flat" - exaggerating the borked up perspective of "shoulder neck head"..


So again: if your focus were lips, nose and eyes this time, then there you go.



You also wrote that you colored with your Wacom. Wouldn't it be able to do a complete digital drawing - including of what I suggested: draw a basic shape on a layer, draw the refinement on the layer above - and when finished with your outline you can colorize in another layer. The "sketch layers" could be removed afterwards - keeping a "clean and only wanted strokes"-layer plus the color information.
Shading of the colored parts could be done on another layer.

Why am I asking for this? I know that correction in "real world pictures" is hard to do - once drawn there is not always a way to fix issues. So you have drawn for 20 minutes already and then you have this fatal brush stroke done... ouch. Maybe you like the digital painting? - or you don't, but in that case you at least tried.


@ Reference photos
Did you try to draw the same model from different reference pics / poses?
So you can keep certain things "the same" (nose proportion...) and can more easily concentrate on the perspective?


bye
Ron

Matty

I wanted to draw more of a person - and wanted to try my hand at some fantasy drawings again - barbarians, knights and so on.

So I took a photo of myself in my underwear (reference not shown - aren't you fortunate!) at 5 in the morning.

I have to say - for the barbarian look - sleep hair is wonderful!

Anyway I did a quick pencil sketch - took about 15 minutes to draw, and came up with this as a first draft...this is on cheap paper...I'm going to try it again on proper paper now that I can get the look mostly as I want it.

I'm pleased with how it came out.



Derron

You either have only one nipple - or your nipples are widely apart from each other ;-)




Use this rough sketch as a base and create on the computer the necessary outline (or do it on semi-transparent paper). Think you will have a bit to do on the hands (I am pretty sure you are not satisfied with them either).
Right arm has the "shoulder + muscle" portions, left arm doesn't. Right upper arm is thinner than the part after the elbow - do you like spinache / Popeye?


Everything is shadowy/hairy/grungy looking - except your underwear which is pure "cheap paper"-color aka "white" :-)




When doing the "outline, color..." part: replace the underwear with a a leather loincloth. And add a shoulder belt or so.




@ sword
pay attention on where you draw shadows and where not ... right at the right crook of the arm there should be no shadow - also the sword should be a bit wider there.


Also pay attention to whether it would be a good idea to have this long sword (long swords ... are more often used by knights I think - but we have people here in the forums with more weaponry-knowlegde).


bye
Ron

Matty

#57
I tried drawing over it with the Wacom tablet...I pixelated it because it was still very 'scratchy'/'messy'...however this is unfinished.

I realised after doing it that if I want to draw it without the pixelation and with good detail I'm going to have to simply spend some quality time working on the image...this was done in the space of about 30 minutes.

I really need to spend some significant time refining it to get it right..but the basis is there.

I've never been good at taking it slowly so this will be a good chance to stretch myself with my patience at drawing slowly rather than quickly if I can refine this significantly more.

EDIT: I've had a bit of a look - I don't actually know how to do this easily - I like the look of the image below but if only I could sharpen it up and remove the pixelation but keep the shading without having to repaint it...I'm not really sure how to go about this.


Matty

Watercolour pencil and pastel pencil quick sketch as well...


Derron

If you have very thin paper (so you can see the base stretches you've done) you can draw with your normal pencil?

Of course you could fold your paper from time to time to see if you missed something. That way you could correct shapes - and create a kind of "level 2" drawing. Use this then to do further enhancements - add some things here and there. Then do it again, create a "level 3" drawing - it now already misses the mistakes done in level 1 but corrected in level 2.

It is very similar to drawing with layers on your computer/tablet.


BTW his left lower arm seems a bit thin for the muscles you packed in the left upper arm - not much, but maybe increase a little bit.

In the water color image you changed blade of the axe - make sure they are "connected" - so very often they share the same base on the handle. Keep in mind that metal was precious for the poor ones - so less metal, big handles - ok, or weapon was stolen :-)

Why am I telling you this? Every picture is not just just an "idea" and a final "stroke here stroke there"-thing. You need to either sketch out things and redefine later - or research before if you have a kind of "plan to follow". Think it is like coding, or doing music ...



Think you already found out that you must prevent yourself from "rushing through" the necessary steps. There is no "rapid outline drawing" + "coloring" = "done". Not if you are still learning the basics of what you plan to draw. Even masters will always learn something - but nobody of us will seriously call oneself "master" :-)


PS: It is good to see you trying things on the "same object". This allows a way better comparison.


bye
Ron