[dead] portrait

[Feron]

thought i'd post a pic in its very earliest stages and get some critique on the very basics (anatomy/depth/composition/colors?) before i do anything else and then have to redo things over.



palette inspired heavily by adarias.

all feedback appreciated.

[Helm]

Hello! I like to see you brancing out and trying ambitious things, this has a lot of promise.



*Women have lower hairlines than men, generally.

*Eye was too high, and I rotated it some for the sideview, you wouldn't be able to see so much of it from that point of view, right?

*Nose was strangely defined in my opinion, especially nosetril, and the shape of the ridge was a big vague, sitting uncomfortable somewhere between animeland and realopolis.

*Lips also could use forms that read better even if you don't want a smile.

*But if you don't want a smile, go for some other clear (I don't mean simple, just not confused or half-done) expression, as right now your gal has none

*I won't say much for the palette right now, I don't think Adarias pulled that sort of contrast and hue gaps off when he tried them and I don't think you will either right now, but it all depends on how you go about it, I'm ready to stand corrected.

[Feron]

Hello! I like to see you brancing out and trying ambitious things, this has a lot of promise.

yes i like to see me branching out as well.  I thought i'd try some thing a bit more traditional than the stuff ive been doing lately.

thanks for the edit, im still trying to get the basic foundations done... i dont know if this or better or worse - i think the old one had more of a character about her but this one just looks better.



i think i shall google to try and get some references, although imagination > references , theres only so much i can do mentally.

hmm...

EDIT ::

im much happier with this:



EDIT 2 ::

the eye, nose and mouth aren't on the same perspective plane

better? :

[Helm]

Actually no, the problem persists. Right now you have sorta mr potato head facial features. They look tacked on, they're not part of the musculature. You need to work on the fundamentals of how faces work. The nose for example, is a pretty intense collection of geometric shapes that gives trouble to a lot of people. Here comes the photoshop nondestructive editing (tm)



take note that there's as many lips and noses as there are women, so you should do so many studies that your hands fall off.

[Feron]

improving??

[huZba]

It's still confusing. The eye and ear are in a different perspective from the rest of the face and it throws off the whole piece. Draw in some construction instead of guessing things, it'll help a lot. Based on the chin, nose and forehead the face seems to be tilted down a little bit, so i did something similar to what helm did just to get some practice for myself as well....and i can't draw noses........ so don't look at the nose here!
 

--edit: tried finding some planes on the face to give tips on the shading.

The major things being the ear position, eye shape and lips. It's already tons better than the initial drawing, so way to go, and keep going 

[Feron]

thanks...

hows this?




i think i am ready to start refining it.

EDIT

im very fickle about things...

[Helm]

The eye socket still isn't believable. Time to break out the photo reference. Look here



Do you see the fleshy folds that make up the eyelids? Even when the lighting isn't so dramatic and closer to yours



Do you see how the shape of the eyelids implies them being there?

Study the second one especially because it's close to what you're doing. The nose especially it's a little study in itself to figure out why the lights are as they are there.

And yeah, try not to be very fickle about making art. Choose something, commit to it and carry it to where it needs to go. You're putting some progress in on this, but it'll take determination and resolve to level up.

[Feron]

i meant fickle as in... i keep changing my mind and redo-ing things.

and yeah i can see that the eye and nose are a bit vucked now.

[Helm]

That's what I mean, you shouldn't be changing your mind as much as you do if what you need to do has sank in and you understand the theory behind it. Then it's just a matter of endless application until it works.

[Feron]

getting better?

[Opacus]

Edit time:

Changed lips, nose, eye socket, chin, some of the shading. By no means perfect but I hope it's a little more realistic.

[Feron]

Thanks a lot O..

hows this? :

[Opacus]

Getting there, getting there.
There are still things bothering me though. Especially some new things I noticed, like the hair line, and the height of the head in general.
Also the neck, which was pushed back far too far.
I also took a new look into the colours. I noticed you used that one grey-blue. But I don't think that only one colour with different hue works. It kind of looks like it doesn't belong.
So I took some more time to edit:

[Feron]

i liked that pale green on the highlights, not sure about the other green though.  fixed the neck, and hairline.



also 'borrowed' your idea for red-whore lipstick 

i think its ready to be polished up now.


EDIT ::

*I won't say much for the palette right now, I don't think Adarias pulled that sort of contrast and hue gaps off when he tried them and I don't think you will either right now, but it all depends on how you go about it, I'm ready to stand corrected.

well looks like you were right   

[gliding]

I'm reaaaallly not a fan of the green in that edit- is this woman sick? There are definately a few substantial improvements though, so keep at it.

[Hatch]

The shape of her eye looks better, but it doesn't look like it's set in her head head at all; like she has no eye sockets. Also, her lips look drawn and twisted, lending her an awkward, almost pained expression. Maybe try making them fuller horizontally. If you'll notice in Helm's reference images, lips usually stick out quite a lot on a woman's profile.

[basara]

I made a small edit that could happen to help:
mine <-> yours


I brought the ear closer to the eyes and tried to reduce the size of the head horizontally. I think the face is maybe too small for the apparent size of the skull.

I also darkened the skin between the eye and the eyebrows which hopefully moves the eyes a bit inside into the eyesockets.

I am not very good with faces or rendering volumes so take this advice lightly :P

[Feron]

taken a step back.  tried some more inventive stuff with colors (dunno if its working or not). 



ear study pending...

thanks all for advice.
 

[Helm]

That nose is still not fixed on the face. The lips are better but that line somewhere in the middle of the nosetril's edge extending towards the edge of the mouth is completely invented. You probably ment to put it at the top of the contour of the nosetril but you really shouldn't anyway since that line gives 5-10 years to a woman's portrait when it's done so strong. There's a bump under the mouth that I don't understand. These are still problems you can fix by looking at your reference in this thread.

The green tint on the face palette... green tints on flesh say disease, sickness or zombie to me. Keep that in mind and do as thou wilt.

[Feron]

update,



hows this looking?

[Turbo]

Good evolution, nice colors. Some anatomy changes i'd do:


On the nose, you should slightly shade the bone that connects the nose to the cheeks, instead of dividing the nose from the cheeks vertically as you have (look at the diagonal lines that i applied on the nose on the edit for a hint of where that bone is.) The shading should be subtle but there. The vertical shading on the cheek should be brought a bit back into the face more.

[Feron]

getting there....   

[Helm]

In all the reference shots and paintovers, do you see any noses that have a bottom separation between the nose ridge and nosetril? Also do you see any noses where the nosetril actually doesn't show to some degree? Additionally the problem with the odd middle-of-the-nosetril-line-shadow persists. Sorry to pressure you, but you can do even better if you study reality a bit more. Also looking at the ear, don't even attempt it without studying photos a lot, heh.

What's with the underlight on the bottom of the chin?

Generally the rendering on the face is a bit blobbish, it doesn't betray volumes well, and most of the initial problems with the facial characteristics feeling tacked on and/or different planes persist. I guess my biggest suggestion at this point is to fix the immediate issues here as best you can and then hit a lot of from-reference face studies from many angles, building from primitive geometrics to more refined shapes... you're hiding lack of solid anatomical understanding with rendering right now, I think.

[ndchristie]

it;s not a great reference, but i tihnk it might help you a bit with the shapes of the lower face (you can ignore the rest):



there is a lot of leeway with this area based on race and gender, but the main thing is that the lower lip is not directly followed by chin.  a few other edits have demonstrated but i feel the need to reiterate.

[Feron]

I guess my biggest suggestion at this point is to fix the immediate issues here as best you can and then hit a lot of from-reference face studies from many angles, building from primitive geometrics to more refined shapes... you're hiding lack of solid anatomical understanding with rendering right now, I think.

I would prefer to persist with this one.  I'd only be making the same mistakes on other pieces that I might aswell fix on this one.

Basically ive just gone back to the basics... again  , theres no point carrying on until the main foundations are correct.

[Helm]

Fair enough. The newest wip is a big improvement in my opinion, although the facial characteristics are all shuffled a bit on the face. Lose the hair, make a round shape and go through all the proper steps for making a human face, you'll see where you're improvising whereas you shouldn't. The nose shape is much better, but the shading.. I don't know. Why would it be so dark by the side of the nose? Do you see any photo reference with that shadow there being so deep? The eyebrow is completely misplaced :O

Also I want you to take a look at a very important line that any photo or edit in this thread has shown you:



Now, this is variable, but don't you think your version is lacking some jaw? Adarias's does as well but I'm sure his is intentionally like that.

[Feron]

 
  or

[Helm]

This shows that you lack some knowledge about facial construction and you should amend this through series of practises. Right now you have a circle and all the facial characteristics you've placed on it are on a bit semi-random positions. I wish I could find you a good face-profile tutorial online but when I google I only find how to draw anime crap. This is a difficult step, learning the gentle relations between facial characteristics on a face and I wish someone had told me years ago what I realised for myself only somewhat recently: that you can't improvise it, you'll end up with mishappen heads, you have to work from construction. I used to make small-heads-to-large-features for years without anyone pointing it out to me.

[Kazuya Mochu]

well a face structure does vary a bit from person to person. and even though theres a template I think theres allways room for some disproportions.
I think the issue here is that you should learn how to draw a face before you try to pixel it, cause at such small sizes a row of pixels more makes all the difference.
my advice would be to go back to pencil and paper and try out following some templates.

[Feron]

my advice would be to go back to pencil and paper and try out following some templates.

pixels are my pencils and paper.  I don't practise any other art forms (except the odd doodle in my maths books) so what would be the point in trying to draw a face with a pencil.  I'd make all the same mistakes i have when i pixel.

Helm, i did look for profile tutorials last week, but like you say all i could find were shit anime ones.  Perhaps you could write one , cheers for the edit, i am happy with this so far:

[vedsten]

my advice would be to go back to pencil and paper and try out following some templates.

pixels are my pencils and paper.  I don't practise any other art forms (except the odd doodle in my maths books) so what would be the point in trying to draw a face with a pencil.  I'd make all the same mistakes i have when i pixel.

Well, paper is just quicker. You could've made like 10 sketches playing around with different approaches in the same time you've pixeled this. Not that I'm to talk, since i tend to do the same thing, still i wish i could pull my self together to do more pencil stuff tho.

Anyhow, I think the new draft is way better than the old ones, seems like a good idea to start over. Minor crit - The distance between nose and mouth is still to great i think.

[Terley]

I think you'd get so much more out of this if you just leave the dithering and AA until it's needed, It's something thats said so often yet people always do it. Work on your forms first because parts of this just seem unnecessary for this stage.

Great progress btw.

[Feron]

Well, paper is just quicker. You could've made like 10 sketches playing around with different approaches in the same time you've pixeled this.

time is relatively unlimited.  I can see where your coming from, but would 10 bad sketches really help me?  my pencil sketching is terribly terribly shit.

I think you'd get so much more out of this if you just leave the dithering and AA until it's needed, It's something thats said so often yet people always do it.

adding a little aa takes a few seconds, plus the eye and nose is almost done anyway so i won't need to do that later.

thanks peeps.

[Turbo]

It's time to hit the books, Feron, study the theory behind human proportions. Read Andrew Loomis' book on head anatomy (you can find the link in the tutorial section, but here you go: http://www.fineart.sk/index.php?cat=14). I personally learn head anatomy from Burne Hogarth, the first book i found about the subject, but it has some flaws. I remember quickly perusing a book which was loaned to me, written by spanish painter José M. Parramon that i recall was much better than Hogarth's stuff, i think it might have been this one http://www.fineartstore.com/Catalog/tabid/365/CategoryID/11286/List/1/Level/a/ProductID/8288/Default.aspx

Anyways, you need to study the theory, practice a bit, and then see the improvements for yourself instead of flailing around without any base to build from and not getting anywhere.

[Feron]

It's time to hit the books, Feron, study the theory behind human proportions.....

......Anyways, you need to study the theory, practice a bit, and then see the improvements for yourself instead of flailing around without any base to build from and not getting anywhere.

indeed i should read more, I did read a lot of the link you posted, however im not doing this to get amazing at anatomy, im just doing it because i fancied doing something new.

small updates:



cheers

[JonathanOfDrain]

I don't really see the harm in improving your anatomical knowledge. You've already improved a little bit, let's keep it up then right ?
I'd like to see the hair as you progress.

[Turbo]

That's much better! You've improved from a inconsistantly formed face to a quite realistic one. When you follow the basics of anatomy construction, you move away from the amateur/begginer look into something solid. Anatomy study, as with everything, is a continuous process, so there's always the need to keep at it, even if you're not aiming to become an expert.

There's still some room for improvement. Suggest the bone that connects the nose to the cheeks horizontally; draw upper and lower eyelids (the upper one could be a just a dark line above the eye, the lower should be a vertical line that goes from eye to cheek).

Smooth the lower cheek to make her appear younger (as i think was your initial purpose). Smoothen the connection from jaw to neck (you can suggest it with just a light shade rather than go to the darkest shades to say "there's a jaw here".

If she's using eyeshadow, use a different color than a skin shade to indicate it.

[Helm]

Well, paper is just quicker. You could've made like 10 sketches playing around with different approaches in the same time you've pixeled this.

time is relatively unlimited.  I can see where your coming from, but would 10 bad sketches really help me?  my pencil sketching is terribly terribly shit.

Pixel art can hurt your artistic growth exactly because it allows you to endlessly fiddle with something until it sorta by-accident falls into place. This isn't real knowledge, you should study so you know what you're trying to do from the beginning, without making many mistakes. If your pencil art is bad, be brave and take the plunge and study from the beginning. Your pixel art will only stand to gain. That book Turbo linked to is very good from what I can see.

Pixel art allows people to draw from beginning to end a picture in relatively little time and the finish is very precise and oil-like. This is addictive for artists, to know they can get near-photorealistic results in such a small space, but what it also does is make people not study their fundamentals and care more about finishing rendering (what you're doing with aa and dither when you're nowhere near that stage yet).

Heed my warning Feron, you don't want to be Lazur. You don't want to be able to render very lushly in pixel art and yet still not be able to draw a human being comfortably with paper and pencil. Study your fundamentals.

[JonathanOfDrain]

I need to agree with helm here, every art form gives you a new perspective on art. I used to paint miniatures and I was taught/told that if you wanted a darker color you add black to your paint. If you wanted a lighter color you'd add white. I did that for a while and somehow got into pixel art and tried to apply the same thing, I understood shading and highlights so I figured I was good to go. Coming here I learned about hue shifting which quite literally blew my mind. It made so much sense and I was surprised I never thought this before!
Now imagine what you'd be able to learn if you picked up another art form. Pixel art will still be your primary love but you'll be able to do a whole lot of learning through pen, pencil and paper. Your people will have more structure and maybe more dynamic to them.

To get back on topic, I think you should get some references for hair ready.

[ter-o]

I quote:

          Drawing fundamentals repeatedly over and over again is boring to only those who refuse to learn, interesting to those who are curious, and fascinating to those who need to know.
 

[ndchristie]

Pixel art can hurt your artistic growth exactly because it allows you to endlessly fiddle with something until it sorta by-accident falls into place. This isn't real knowledge, you should study so you know what you're trying to do from the beginning, without making many mistakes. If your pencil art is bad, be brave and take the plunge and study from the beginning. Your pixel art will only stand to gain. That book Turbo linked to is very good from what I can see.

I third this statement, and would go as far as to suggest sharpie/pen for learning exercises.  There's nothing more damaging than second guessing every stroke.

Pixel art allows people to draw from beginning to end a picture in relatively little time and the finish is very precise and oil-like. This is addictive for artists, to know they can get near-photorealistic results in such a small space, but what it also does is make people not study their fundamentals and care more about finishing rendering (what you're doing with aa and dither when you're nowhere near that stage yet).

I agree with everything but the idea that you can achieve oil-like qualities with anything but natural oils

Heed my warning Feron, you don't want to be Lazur. You don't want to be able to render very lushly in pixel art and yet still not be able to draw a human being comfortably with paper and pencil. Study your fundamentals.

Lazur still blows my mind for this very reason.

as for this piece i have two bits of advice -

1 - PAY ATTENTION TO ALL THE EDITS OF THE CHIN YOU ARE STILL MISSING THE MOST IMPORTANT ASPECT::



2 - Move on, this piece has been flogged to death

[Feron]

Thanks guys.  I think i'll probably do a lot of sketching this week, and reading more about faces.  I think one thing I can conclude is You can't really draw anything without using a large amount of knowledge and references, until its buried in your skull.

2 - Move on, this piece has been flogged to death

I think perhaps you are right.  I think I'll just render the rest of it, despite the anatomical flaws (i mean its not completely screwed and I wouldn't like this have all been for nothing), and start a fresh next week.

Thanks all for input.  This thread is quite the gem of advice and definitely shows community spirit.

[Helm]

Finish this since you want to get some closure, but it's never for nothing! If only I had gotten threads like these when I was your age, I'd be much more of a proper artist today. Methodology is key. If you're hungry and I give you fish you'll be satiated for the day. But if I teach you the method of fishing, you'll provide for yourself always. That's the same with art. If we help you fix this one image, then this image will be good. if we make you understand the proper methodology, then you'll be able to help yourself become as good as I know you can be.

[big brother]

If you're hungry and I give you fish you'll be satiated for the day. But if I teach you the method of fishing, you'll provide for yourself always.

Yes, but nobody ever drowned by staying at home and sitting on the couch.

I feel like every artist has their own version of a "generic" face, cliches usually related to their own visage. I've noticed that a generic face and one "drawn without reference" tend to go together. For instance, if I draw two portraits -- each depicting a person from a very different walk of life, there will be some remarkable similarities. Usually, it'll be things I don't consciously vary, like the appearance of a philtrum or the depth of a nose bridge where it meets the forehead. When drawing from life, the artist acts as an interpreter, so a portrait becomes less of a collection of design choices.

Reading this, it seems obvious (and an underwhelming observation), but maybe someone can glean something out of it.