Please Crit The S@#$ Out Of This

[eyetooth]

you need to fix your anatomy i found a great reference for anatomy online by an artist called andrew loomis. i think his site was somthing like saveloomis.org but do a search on his name and study his books they are a great help with getting proportions an anatomy right.


keep it up, practice makes everything better

[jmBoekestein]

saveloomis.org, yes your anatomy isn't very good. But your shading and colour use are damn good for someone who doesn't do the anatomy well. Sis you follow some tutoprials for that or is that just talent? I think it's quite impressive.

[Loulu79]

Didn't Enayla had a tutorial right here on CGTalk, exactly on the eyes? I'm sure you can find it out here...Just look for it in the Articles forum. And be patient with it. It'll come. If you're damn frustrated...breathe...get up from your chair...and have a nice walk. It's the Zen way for artist's block. Happens to the best of us...you'll get it.

Right now I see you're focusing on the eyes...you're getting somewhere don't worry.

[BMunchausen]

Yes, those are very good suggestions - looking at the Loomis stuff. what I think you need to do is conceive of the entire head, not just the face floating free like this. The features wrap around the head, which is a rounded form. This dictates the manner in which they lie upon it - they don't lie flat, they lie on a curved surface, so take that into consideration. So far, you've drawn only the front plane of the face - the face looks really skinny because you're missing the side planes.

Once you get a feel for the way the skull is constructed, placing the features will be easier...or, making them more convincing will be easier. It looks like these here are a little long (although it's certainly plausible that someone could look like this) - the nose looks long and the space between the nose and the upper lip looks long too.

Anyway, take a look at the Loomis and try to think of the face in terms of planes before you think of it in terms of specific features. Good luck! Try not to get too frustrated. (easier said than done, I know)

[LadyMedusa]

It looks like you just mirrored the eyes.. Thats a huge "no no". Draw bout of the or atlest shade bouth of them individually.
Otherwise, the others said pretty mutch everything.

[wchristiansen]

Thanks for crits guys/gals!!! So here's what I have now. Something is up with the lips. I did mirror the eyes, I changed the lighting a little now. I'm not quite happy with the eye though. I'm going to practice a few eyes I think. I shortened the length between his nose and the lips, now he looks more like kevin spacey, lol. Okay, CRIT away!! I tried adding side planes, my difficulty now is that the right side of his head needs to be in the light so I can't quite get a good feeling of light hitting it withe there be a plane there. I might need to take a picture of my head..... but I really don't want to use any photo reference.

http://www.cgcreo.com/cgtalk/head1.jpg

I think a strait forward view of the head is way no good. I'm going to do a 3/4 when I finish this... but this is only finished when you guys say it is :)

-Will

[Loulu79]

I know what you're talking about. Photos don't give you the truth at what you're really seeing at the time. It's stale. Nevertheless...do you have a portable mirror? Any type of mirror? I say take a mirror and have your character take a good look at itself. You'll see something's not right...like your right ear is not in good proportion with the other. You need more wrinkles and a tad of dark "purple" tones under the eyes...where you usually see men's saggy bags. He looks like ... say ... forty...Observe during the day at work: Men have bags...and wrinkles ... and more fleshy skin tones! Light skinned people have very interesting skin tones. Finally yours is coming along swimmingly (I told you ya need fresh air!:D )

Need more skin tones.:bounce:

Oh and another thing!: Take a good long look at your eyes...they have those thready like streaks...and more shades at the top...and more reflection. You'll see that when you look at your own eyes.

[JTD]

Not that the feedback you have received isn't just dandy but I think we're all forgetting the most important question: Where are you going with this piece? If you want to draw a cartoon pig on CGTalk, forget it because everyone here will direct you towards photorealism. Is that what you want? If so, then the advice you've received so far is really good but you still might want to scrap this and start over because you'll just be erasing or painting over it anyway.

But maybe you want it to be some kind of representation of a portrait. In that case it looks great. I totally recognized it for what it was. I also recognize Cartman on Southpark for what he is and I don't hear anybody recommending that he be re-drawn to fit their view of what it means to be human.

Which leads me to my rant: Forget all the "you need to learn anatomy" advice that you get, because your own personal representation of anatomy will come off better than some cookie-cutter example of stock proportions that you'll never find in real life anyway. I mean, have you ever looked at people? There is no standard whatsoever. Some people have a huge nose, or their eyes are too narrow, or the distance between their nose and their lips is unrealistic...or is it? Study real people, actually go out and study them, even better, join Bobby Chiu's Subway Sketch group (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=210734) and familiarize yourself with people. An anatomy book is only going to teach you that the eyeballs are usually located above the nose. Real people don't look like Poser models...or do they? End of rant.

But I digress – back to the direction you want to take with this piece:

Maybe you want to set a mood with the colors or lighting? Or maybe you want to make a statement, something out of the ordinary. You haven't told us what you want to do with it because I suspect you're not sure yourself. Or maybe you really are going for realism; well, you're in good company with the folks who've already replied to you.

But here’s the point of this whole little response of mine: Take all the dandy advice you get here and use it to your liking but don't let it dictate your actions. Otherwise that advice may lead you to something you never intended (good or bad) – but certainly something which you can't call your own. The greatest thing about being an artist is to do what you want, otherwise you aren't the artist of the piece in question.

Figure out where you want to go with this painting or someone else will take you where they want to go.

My crit on the actual piece? The face is decent for children's books but the composition is boring. Nothing is happening in the piece. You could put a smile on his face or distort his features to show anger (I know you can...I believe you can), but then again that’s just my opinion...my dandy little opinion. Good luck and keep going. :)

[CodeNothing]

too concerned with asthetics.

get the whole face "carved" in 5 minutes or less. If you dont succeed start over. In 2 days you will see improvement.

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