I have a dire problem

[Luminous_Reaver]

I was trying at a self portrait, and it was all cool until I realized I didn't know where I was going with it.
It's kind of big for pixel art, at least for me...



That's not the problem though, the problem is that within minutes, I went from original self-portrait to...
This.


I lack originality. All hope is lost. Save me. (Please.)

[rabidbaboy]

No, Lumi, don't do this.
There are worse things than not completing a piece.

Please, think of the people that love you.


Copy-pasted on Paint and skewed horizontally 5 units.

[robalan]

Unoriginal poses are nothing new; a lot of people paint/sculpt/sketch/pixel people in the same pose over and over again.  It's only bad if you get caught in a rut and get to where you can't draw people in any pose but the one you're used to.  The sketch looks decent; clean it up, give it some color and shading, and let us give you some crits!

[Luminous_Reaver]

I don't like how plain it's looking so far.
I really want to take this into some cool, abstract direction, but artist's block is murdering my creativity.

[Helm]

forget the cool abstract and focus on realistically rendering a face.The eye shape is invented, and it's placed on an odd angle. The nose is misplaced too in terms of angle on the face. Study reality more.

[Stefano]

I did a quick and dirty edit that goes along the lines of what Helm was pointing out. It does looks like a starving old man, but that's because I've roughly accentuated all facial muscles for the sake of clarity.
Other thing that I've tried to fix: your perspective. Eyes, nose, mouth and chin seem to be each in a different view angle...
My tip: try to think the face as a slightly curved plane (without the nose). First you shold draw this plane in the perspective you want, to only then draw the eyes/nose/mouth guide lines perpendicular to the center line of this plane. The nose is the greatest pain in the ass, IMO. I could never find a good method to teach people (or learn it myself) to draw noses, so the best I can tell you is to look at similar real-life poses and go "trial and error".



-Stefano

[Malor]

  Sexy Stefano. Now this is a self-portrait correct?... Do you actually have blue hair? Unless you intended this to look like anime, it looks to cartoonish to be realistic. The chin draws back, where as realistic chins protrude. now seeing as you used anime for references, I will assume this was meant to be anime. Reagrdless, the mouths seems to be positions incorrectly, right now, his mouth would be on the side of his head, or at the very least, leaning to one side. the eyes are not very anime-ish, and they are not really realistic.. they are just misshapen.

[Rydin]

If it's a self-portrait, why are you using video game portraits as your references? It's always going to come out looking like other characters if you're looking at them while making the portrait.  I mean sure, I could see using them for a technique or style reference, but the only way you're going to get it to look like you is by looking at you.  This will not only help you with any resemblance issues you might encounter, but also help you develop your own style, because get this: when you are drawing from real life, you get to choose what lines you want to place, where to place them, how thick or thin to make them, etc, so long as you get your message/interpretation across; when you are drawing from other people's art, you have to put the lines they put, or it will come out bad...and it becomes a tunnel, a train track, where you only have one outcome--the other person's drawing.
So, Stefano and rabidbaboy's edits, as they are intended to help show you the way anatomically or compositionally, they will never come out looking like you, because, odds are, they don't know what you look like .

Get the technique down first, and go for style after, you dig?

[Luminous_Reaver]

Fundamentals. I always miss them. I wasn't trying to render the portrait so realistically, but admittedly if I were, I couldn't do it. I just wish Helm would sugar-coat his posts more.

Stefano... When I saw that edit I kind of jumped. It's definitely helpful. Even more so than the muscle reference I was using to draw it originally. When I see this, I can't piece anything together. But I'm probably using a bad reference, anyway.

And my hair isn't blue, but when I work with too many shades of a dark color, I confuse myself, so I used blue as a work in progress color. <_< The video game portraits are references for shading. See I was all happy drawing, and suddenly I didn't know what to do next. Instead of roughing it and continuing, I shrunk it, and started to render it with a set of rules borrowed from the references. It's a terrible habit I got when I learned how to pixel at an editing community.

So yeah, I guess I have to go back and study. i'm filled with discontent over my current inability to draw well, this must be remedied...
but damn i hate studying...

[Helm]

I just wish Helm would sugar-coat his posts more.

How would that help you with anything?