Mug help!

[Smash]

In other words, this means anatomy practice.




[/WIP]

I though a tinted greyscale was a good start for mugs.. Got the idea when I saw an edit Helm made in an old thread here.

C&C apreciated

[Mathias]

Bridge of the nose is too vertical, the part of it between her eyes should lay flatter against the face. Sex is ambiguous.

[Helm]

I think you might have too much of a manga influence still. More reference, basically!

[Smash]

I saw this coming. This seems to be your specialty, I believe.  


Now working on it.

[Smash]

This is progress

[Smash]

I do really recommend this thing people call practice

Here's a revamp a few studies later:


Crits are welcome


Thanks EvilEye!

[Ultimaodin]

OK I'm going to put this as best I can. The new result definitely came out better for anatomical means and the softness of the face and the colour usages also improves the piece however...

Personally I feel like you've totally altered this person's personality. (yep that's a messed up sentence)
Essentially before the new edit she looked like a determined young lass with some sort of inner struggle.
The after contains the same inner struggle however now she looks like the more mothering type who supports a main character.

At least that's what I see. oh and our right side of the face looks odd, made up of two straight lines for the edge. Still better than I could do.

[EvilEye]

The color balance there is a bit out of whack.

Way too heavy on the black and blue on the edges of the shoulder and the back of the hair. It draws the eye to that spot and takes it away from the face. It's not good to have so much dark color on one side and not the other. Or on the edges and not on the middle.

About the anatomy / proportions. I don't know how you started, but the best way to start something like this is with a solid base like so:



Ask yourself, do the basic proportions look correct? If so move to the next step, if not fix them.

Then add the base color ( usually midway between lightest and darkest ) and add some basic shadows:



If everything looks decent then add some basic highlights:



Then start refining and fixing stuff:



And after 10 more hours of headaches this would probably be done.

If I was lucky


Oh, and I used some reference for this and you should too. You don't have to make your picture look like the reference, it's just there so you can glance over and get an idea of the correct proportions and lighting. Lighting on faces is very tricky. Many times when you think there should be a shadow / highlight somewhere there shouldn't and vise-versa.

I assumed your picture was a girl but looking at your first post that might not be correct.

[st0ven]

yeah great stuff evil eye - i was just doing an edit here and you definitely did the breakdown part. smash, definitely check that out for aweosme breakdown reference. (and speaking of reference yeah references are always helpful!)


i was also going to mention that the lighting on your shoulder from that ominous back lighting was too severe on the skin. maybe you can get away with it a bit more on the hair, but it looks a little funky - also you are using some bright highlights back there which make it look brighter than the primary light source which can make for some confusion to the viewers eye

more importantly the structure needs a lot of attention - i cant really break it down for you better than evil eye step by step, but i just applied some of those concepts to your existing girls face - sort its a bit rough, i didnt really want to go through and make it pixel perfect.

the chin and cheek line are aligned too far right compared to what the rest of your facial features would suggest. l so i gave i a bit more volume on the right side to even this out, and adjusted the positions of the eyes, nose and mouth slightly to get them more aligned. next i think the neck width should be a bit thinner, also check your alignment with where it attaches to the head (ala evileye's example). The hair line was also inconsistent with the rest of the face's angle, it needs to come further to the left (even on my edit its still a bit too far right) so that the center of the part acts as the centerline of your face.

palette wise i wouldnt really use those blue hue values in the skin tone, it tends to drain out all the warmth the blood under the surface of the skin would otherwise provide. reserve those blue values for your back lighting and it should really balance out the piece's hue balance. Whites of the eyes are never that white, i like to use one of the brighter skintone values for this. Also i adjusted the lightest skintone's hue to shift more in the direction of orange/yellow rather than being so red. reason being is that your next value is a big shift in t hat direction anyway so it makes that transition less jarring.

Another fun trick with skin, particularly with female skin, is to keep the skin values fairly light, not too much contrast. let the edges (linework) in the portrait use your darkest values

[Smash]

Well yeah, I've been analyzing this for a good while, too many a things to learn here


Even so, I think my problem lies here:

About the anatomy / proportions. I don't know how you started, but the best way to start something like this is with a solid base like so:



Ask yourself, do the basic proportions look correct? If so move to the next step, if not fix them.

Got to stop this habit of skipping that part  



Im moving parts to match the angle now, before going to shade:

-rough edit
2: