My first portrait, would love feedback :)

[Zanorin]

Hey ! I made my very first "big" (well not big, but bigger than what I'm used to hehe) portrait sprite. I would like to know everything I can do to improve it. When I look at it at like 200% or 400% size, it looks just fine, but at 100% there's something wrong with her, I just don't know what 


Here is a tattoo-less version to see the details of the face better if needed.

[eishiya]

The forehead is pretty flat, so it looks strange that the light/shadow cuts right across it. Same with the tip of the nose - though it's curves, shadows tend to fall on the side of the tip of the nose instead of cutting through it. In addition, the shadows on the torso suggest lighting that's more from the front, which is at odds with the side lighting on the face.

[Zanorin]

Now that you mentioned it I can't unsee it, is this better ?

[eishiya]

Definitely better, though the lighting on the face still appears more from the side, while the torso lighting seems more from the front. I think the face looks good, and it's the torso that could use tweaking.

I also think it would benefit from more contrast between the light and shadow, especially the face-paint.

[Zanorin]

Here, I lightened the lighter brown and I think it looks definitely better now ! I tried editing the torso a bit, but I don't know how I could make the light come more from the right side than it already does.

[eishiya]

When in doubt, use reference! A flashlight and a mirror is all you need. If you don't have breasts yourself, that part might be a little tougher, but you can extrapolate from what you do see. For when using yourself isn't an option, you should be building up a reference image folder of people and objects in various lighting situations. There are also 3D "life drawing" programs and sites out there that let you play with lighting.

Here are a couple of edits on the shadows. The left one has more of a frontal component than the right one.

The thin neck threw me off when I was shading it, so it's a mess. Necks have quite a bit of surface detail that make them great for showing the lighting direction, but this character has such a thin one that it's difficult to fit anything into it.


Edit: I didn't touch the hair at all, but remember to shade the hair in accordance with the light source too!

[Zanorin]

When in doubt, use reference! A flashlight and a mirror is all you need.

This is actually really clever, I'll make sure to do that next time, thank you.

Had a try at shading the locks, does this look okay ?