Portrait critique

Started by Myinah, Wed 03/06/2015 08:55:07

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Myinah

Hey

I have next to no experience with digital art or painting, not since my GCSE days anyway, but I would like to improve so I had a crack at a self portrait and tested out art rage 4.

Would love some constructive feedback and if you have any recommended tutorials or books for digital painting they would also be greatly appreciated. I have no clue what I'm doing and I have definitely aged myself in the picture and the eyes are kinda weird.


vertigoaddict

It's not that bad, I have that problem where I end up aging people too. I'm not an expert, but this is a very rough... "line-up" of areas I feel could be fixed to match the photograph better.


^ does that make sense?

Right off the bat, I could tell that you softened/rounded your eyebrows, they are sharper/more angular in the photograph. Your right eye has less eyeshadow showing under the arch of your eyebrow. Add some eyelid detail on your left eye and make the edge near the nose a bit sharper.

SilverSpook

Looks pretty good for not knowing what you're doing!  Also you have a very striking face, which is good for making your work instantly recognizable.

The oldness is a factor of the hard edges, I think.  Take a smoother or a smudger or something that airbrushes (can't remember the specific Art Rage tools) to youthify the portrait.  Especially between the cheeks and the mouth.  Maybe consider adding a bit more ruddiness / blush to the cheeks.

Looks great, keep goin!!

Myinah

Vertigoaddict - Thank you for the highlighted areas. I did a bit of work on them, and especially in the eye area things have improved. You were totally right about the brows. I was doing my usual cartoon brows not really focusing on the angled shape. I also realised I had done my face too wide. I have a long face so thinning it out has helped a bit I think.

SilverSpook - Thank you for the comments and suggestions. I am using the free demo so I am not sure if I have all the blend tools but I did use the air brush and lightened up the cheeks a bit which I think has helped. And remove a few of the darker lines which were probably the aging culprit too. So I think it has improved a bit.

Here is the updated pic. If anyone notices anything else or has any advice its all welcome. I do think the eyes are my problem area.






Grundislav

I'm also currently in the process of studying faces and how to draw portraits, so I figured I'd chime in and share some of the helpful things I've picked up. (Bear in mind I'm still learning too, and there are people on this forum who are waaaaaaay more talented at portraits than I am, so take everything I say with a HUGE grain of salt.)

I'll start off by saying that DRAWING FACES IS HARD. It's probably one of the most challenging and frustrating things in art, because if you mess up even one tiny detail, the whole thing will look off. You have to be some kind of masochist to want to draw faces. That being said, let's begin!

First and foremost, you need to establish your facial proportions. The easiest way to do this is the "ball and stick" method. That is, where you draw a circle to represent the cranium, then define the area of the bottom of the chin, brow line, and nose. Keep in mind that the distance from the bottom of the chin to the bottom of the nose, bottom of the nose to top of the brow, and brow to top of the head are all the same.



Next, and in my opinion most important, you need to draw out the planes of the face. This is pretty much something you need to look up and memorize. Once you start thinking of faces in terms of planes and 3d shapes and start to understand the bits that stick out, bits that go in, and how light interacts with all of them, it makes things somewhat easier. It also means the difference between a realistic looking face and something that looks like it was copied or traced. Trust me, I used to trace photos all the time, and the difference between doing it that way and doing it properly is night and day.



Next, draw a rough sketch, blocking in the darks and the lights, following the facial planes and comparing them with the lighting in your photo. In this case, since we're going for likeness, you can base it on the photo. In this particular case, the lighting is pretty even and straight on, so we don't have to worry too much about shadows on the face. I personally feel more comfortable doing this in black and white, because it helps me get a better feel for the contrast.



Finally I go and refine everything. This is the tricky part, especially eyes. Eyes are very hard. It's really easy to make them too big or too far apart, like I did in this portrait. This is pretty rough, but you get the idea. Usually I'll spend a good 2-3 hours on a portrait when I do my studies, and it takes a long time before I feel like I'm getting anywhere.



Anyway, I hope that helped you out a little bit. If you want a great resource to help you learn, I'd recommend Drawing the Head and Hands by Andrew Loomis. It's helped me out a lot in the short time I've been reading it, even though there's still a long way to go.

Good luck!

Ykni

That is a very good start. Here is my first try at a portrait in Artrage :S



Artrage is my favorite painting tool so if you have any questions about that I might be able to help. I don't do a lot of portraits but I have made some, both in Artrage and in Acrylic on paper. There are some different ways to explore a portrait, the one that I like best is looking at the face, place your charcoal on the paper and just start tracing while you continue to look at the subject. Don't take your charcoal of the paper, just lessen the pressure when you move from one area to the next when there is no clear line visible. You keep on doing that, just tracing the face over and over again. This leaves you with a very lively sketch of the face. Here is an example of a self portrait I did in Artrage, closed my eyes to make it a bit easier on myself ;)



You always start with the nose when using this technique because that way your portait will always be centered on the paper. This doesn't give you a good basis to start painting.
As for the blending. I do think the demo version contains all features. I usually use the ordinary round brush for painting in Artrage, but I do turn autoclean off when I want the colors to blend better. I don't mind seeing the brushmarks though, in fact I rather like that about Artrage. I usually just apply a series of small strokes and let them visually blend. For a smooth look I would use the pallet knife in blur mode on these strokes. Here is an example of an avatar that I made in Artrage using this technique for a friend.



I think you used a pen to paint the eyelashes and eyebrows. I think it would look better if you use the brush for that as well. The pencil doesn't blend with the rest of the paint, the paint on the brush does which gives your painting a more natural look. You can see that in the image above with the hair on the forehead. The brown paint mixes on canvas with the skin tone paint, which gives a lighter brown paint.
Some advise on the hair. Use the dark color to paint the hair, don't paint an area but use a wider brush and paint long strokes following the flow of your hair. Then use a light color to paint the highlights in your hair, again using long curvy strokes. The brighter color mixes with the dark color giving a wide variation of shades.

I hope this helps you improve your Artrage/Portrait skills.

Myinah

Grundislav that was amazingly helpful, thank you so much for taking the time to do that! I think I downloaded the Loomis books to my phone so I will have a look through my iBooks tonight and give it a peruse. I feel better knowing they are difficult, in particular the eyes. I definitely went big with them in my portrait. I should have done so minimal marking and planning but I kinda just went for it to feel out painting without lines. I usually draw cartoonish line figures.

Ykni - all of this is very helpful and I'm sure I will pick your brains regarding art rage. I'm hoping it will be in the steam summer sale so I can get it for a steal! I will have to try your charcoal suggestion as an exercise. I like your avatar too, I think the brush strokes come down to personal style preferences and I do like them too. I will have to try the palette knife.

I did use the brush tool on the eyes but I went down to like 1% so that might be the issue.

Your first portrait looks similar to the line art I did when I first opened the software. It's going to take me a while to get used to the pen and tablet. I have always used pencil and paper, and if I coloured in it would be with colouring pencils. I recently started dabbling with digital art on my phone. I got an app called inspire and I've been using it to colour concept art for the next game Sox and I are working on for Dropped Monocle. He is tidying up my concepts and animating them as well as doing all the backgrounds because I suck at lighting and perspective. Basically anything technical!

But this is what I managed to do on paper and on my phone but I couldn't get anything near as clean with my pen and tablet. Hopefully it's just me needing to practice.



Low res version because I can't get the zoom to work on my high res one and it comes out huge!

SilverSpook

The eye contains I think more visual information for the human species than any other object, and thus it gets the most scrutiny.  The magic trick with eyes for me is there's an artist tendency to want to make them bigger and brighter than they actually are, like, "Your eyes are too big for your stomach", but too big for your face in this case! 

When you wax the whites out around the irises, this is what starts giving that creepy puppet-like effect, I find.  The whites of the eyes are actually not that white, but a muted grey/mauve.  Also, it's easy to forget they have their own topography, generally spherical, and generally they are brightest near the center, and get darker towards the lids. 

Here's a sample.



I didn't touch the irises, but might want to darken them a bit, with a few brighter highlights.

Frikker

just my quick input following on from Silverspooks great example. eyes are obviously convex so the brighest highlight on each will usually be just above the pupil if your lightsource is front and slightly above. however, when you render the iris , it is actually concave under the clear lense of your eye so it will be brighter at the bottom rather than the top like the rest of the eye.

Ykni

Yeah it takes some time to get used to the pen and tablet. Did you know Artrage has a monthly competition where you can win a free Artrage copy? You might want to try that, it's on Deviant art.

Monsieur OUXX

Same as silverspook: you fooled yourself into believing that the "wider eyes effect" obtained by using make-up was actually real. But it's justy make-up. the eyes are not so big.
 

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