Old Sea Captain Portrait

[DTE462]

I'm having trouble with portraits. In general I'm using the GBA Fire Emblem portraits for references. At first I was really happy with the beard but now I'm worried it's just reading as noise. And I'm unhappy overall but can't place why. Any advice would be appreciated.

[rengowrath]

Hey man, first time giving feedback here so take this with a grain of salt. Overall it's looking good! I think you could give the beard a bit more depth by adding some lighting to it.  Also the shading on the side of the face and the nose might be a bit too harsh.  Here's a quick edit:

[eriophora]

I think the most important things you should focus on are increasing contrast, reducing colour count, and focusing on shape over texture. Right now, you're correct in that the beard has too much noise - rather than trying to create a hair texture, think about how the light from your light source would fall on something with the shapes and curves a beard has. I've done a quick edit of your sailor's face, where I increased contrast, focused on lighting, and made all the shapes a bit larger and blockier to increase readability.

[DTE462]

Thanks! Both of these edits are improvements. These will get me on the right track.

[eriophora]

Happy to help! Can't wait to see the next version

[DTE462]

Thanks for both of your help and suggestions. I took the elements I liked of both and I think it's a huge improvement. It's better on a technical level, but it also convey's the idea of the character more. I'm sure there are plenty of other things to improve on with it, but I'm going to move on to another character and come back to this.