PDA

View Full Version : Portrait - First go.

Zed2210
09-07-2007, 01:46 AM
I had just got a late placement into uni after a spell of not knowing what i was going to be doing with my life, and mainly through two very good sites; both this one and 3D Buzz. It really inspired me to get back in to what I love doing, which is art and creating things.

I have been admiring all the wonderfull art on this site and it really motivated me to get a wacom graphics tablet. I've been getting used to it for about 4-5 days now and I think I have done something worthy of sharing for my first post I believe.

There is so much to learn, and I get so carried away reading everything and not taking it all in and not in the correct chronological order as usual, but I hope this is a good start. Starting to get comfortable with the pad anyway which is a big save on paper ;)

Well enough babble... here is a link to what I came up with, took about an 1 hour and 50 or so.

http://img385.imageshack.us/img385/3232/aliciasilverstonecopyxh8.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

The reference I used - http://features.yahoo.com/webceleb/alicia/

I've played around with trying to create some simple landscapes and as I was quite into anime before I got the wacom, so I've been messing around with that too aswell, but I'm not very proud of them yet and still want to learn and understanding colour before sharing.

Anyway this is just sort of a hi to get started with the comunity, and I hope to learn and join in with of a few of the things going on here in the future :).
thePoet
09-08-2007, 12:43 AM
I see this is your first post! Welcome to the CGtalk forums, which are in my opinion, one of THE best the web.
Bad news - you've got some problems with the piece. Good news - I think they won't be too hard to correct. So here we go. First thing, the photo you picked can be very difficult to work from because there's so little shadow to go on. Shadows create form so without them it's very tricky. Proportionally the face is to wide. If you look at the photo the model has the usual one eye width between her eyes (maybe a hair less); yours is about one and a third. The eyes are also off level a bit. This next two are big and can make a drastic improvement in the quality of the piece. 1) Consider and understand the form of what you are drawing. Don't just copy lines and tones. The image comes across as rather flat because it wasn't built on forms, it was built on lines. This is difficult because of the photo; again very few shadows to indicate the form. 2) Softer. Look at the images side by side and see how much softer a feel the photo subject has than the drawing. Do not however reach for a blur or smudge tool! Understand why it's soft and achieve it by hand. Visual edges are made of two tones meeting together not a line. Look at the lips. They have no lines around them. The top lip hardly has a definible edge at all.
Don't let this overwhelm you. Do what you can and as always, keep at it and enjoy the journey. Cheers -thePoet
Zed2210
09-08-2007, 02:28 PM
Thanks a lot for the crits thePoet. I see now where I have gone wrong, and I think I have done this a lot, and after some hours more practice and working on the piece I came up with this:

http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/1276/aliciasilverstonecopy2sl4.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

I still think the proportions arn't quite right but I really worked on getting the form to look more real and less flat. I think I'll do a few more portraits from better reference material and try work on it a bit more. Perhapse even a self portrait :)

[edited - I couldn't resist playing a little bit more to tidy it up]
iadagraca
09-12-2007, 12:23 AM
the face needs darker shading/shadows, thats why it looks so flat or pops out to much...
CGTalk Moderation
09-12-2007, 12:23 AM
This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.