Critiques and Help Please!! Stuck! :)

#2

After some changes to the face overall, but especially the nose, I got here:


 After a lot more struggle, finally got it to a nice workable place:
 
[img]http://i.imgur.com/yJpK1.jpg[/img]
 [img]http://imgur.com/yJpK1[/img]
#3

This was the last official drawing time I put into it:

 [img]http://i.imgur.com/GLjIq.jpg[/img]
  [img]http://imgur.com/GLjIq[/img]
  
  Now, I'm thinking of making these changes to it:
  
  [img]http://imgur.com/LeQJj[/img][img]http://i.imgur.com/LeQJj.jpg[/img]
  
  The thing is, something doesn't look "right". It's very hard for me  to know what exactly it is that isn't correct because I'm not drawing  from reference. (I'm using it, obviously, but I'm not recreating anyone  in particular). 
  
  My goal is to reach photo-realism ( I know I am far from that, but  still), so this should give you some guide as to the type of critiques  I'm looking for. So far, I've pout 22 hours worth of work on this, which  is a huge investment for me considering how busy I am, so I *really*  want to see this one through :)    Thanks everyone in advance!! :)
#4

Hey looking good. You are on the right track just keep pushing those details. I like the toned down saturation in the final image I think you could bring them back up a little unless you are going for a muted look. Just keep rocking

#5

Your lighting doesn’t look quite coherent. It seems to be lit from the front, but you made the left side of her philtrum and chin significantly darker than the other side–why?

Don’t use lines to depict contours. There are not lines in real life, only values. So in areas such as the contour of the wings of the nose, don’t give them the appearance of having lines.

Where exactly is your light source positioned in terms of height? You need to make sure your form and cast shadows on the face actually match the height of your light source. Right now, it seems like you have a frontal light, but also light coming from the bottom, since the bottom of the nose is lit. But that doesn’t make sense because we don’t see the same bottom lighting on the lips, or elsewhere on the face.

I’m not going to comment on aesthetics, since everyone’s got different taste when it comes to beauty, and I don’t even know if your motivation was to create a face that is beautiful to you.

#6

ouch, tough crit by the great Luni,

Why else would he create art if he wasn’t going for beauty? Hate to see ‘ugly’ work, But I guess what your hinting here is kind of obvious.

On top of what Luni suggested, I’de say the particles and the background need to mesh better with the whole piece and if the particles themselves (glowing) lightsources, establish the setting in your piece based on his suggestions.

#7

Actually, he PM’d me to help him out with a critique, so he knows he’s going to getting my “no sugar-coating, totally honest and sincere” critique, and I’m sure he knew it’ll be tough, but very helpful to him in the long run.

As for whether the girl is meant to be beautiful, be careful with that assumption. What if the girl is meant to be a fictional character in a story he’s writing, and the character is not supposed to be beautiful? Or maybe he’s basing it on someone he has a crush on, but that girl may not be considering beautiful by conventional standards, although she has something special about her that makes him appreciate her? (What can I say–I’m a romantic. :))

#8

I had thought you meant it in another way, not so much about the qualities of character in his subject matter but by the beauty of what technicians (‘artists’) seem to aspire to in their work. In my telling I would state all works (‘art’) aspires to defining beauty on it’s own terms, including the grotesque can be displayed as ‘beautiful’ (so long as they follow the rules of nature) . Much like what you said with techniques on the usage of reference work on another thread, not to copy and paste direct parts of a body, but to instead make every part unique to the entirety of the subject. I would imagine, this all applies to beauty (in art), which is what caused me to resonate.

#9

Well I have to admit, I knew she needed a lot of work - I just didn’t think it was so bad that it would be considered “ugly”. I’m glad I know now, instead of showing my work off to anyone and can avoid any more embarrassment. I really do appreciate the honesty I am getting. There is no reason to be nice if it is just going to keep me down as a bad artist.

Yes, Lunatique, I enjoy the bluntness!

RoundRobbin was right, though. I was going for what most people would perceive as “beauty”. I should mention here that this character has no narrative or back story, and I am not trying to elicit any emotional response from anyone. This started only as a challenge to myself by trying to paint the most realistic human being I could paint. I am only going for technical achievement here.

Could you guys be more specific about what makes her ugly? I have problems with the nose (mostly because it is unfinished), but also just aesthetic reasons. I figured this was the only the only thing, though. I suppose it isn’t, though. Is it the face structure?

Yes, the lighting is a little random. She is supposed to have a somewhat brighter light coming from the side, but I also wanted to giver her some highlights down the middle. Is it bad to have more than one light source? Or is the problem that you feel it isn’t consistent?

RoundRobbin that is a fantastic idea. I never thought of making the “orbs” as points of light. To be honest, I threw them up there just because I didn’t want to paint her in an empty background. I might save the glowing orbs for a different piece though - one that is more artistically driven.

bent1o thank you for the encouragement! I agree I think the toned down version looks better, but I will tone the colors back up a bit!

Well I am really humbled and thankful for the time you all took to comment on my picture. I will take all of these suggestions and heavily reconsider this piece. I definitely won’t be showing it around. I’m actually embarrassed I posted it on my facebook now…

Give me a week or two, and hopefully you guys will see something that will be much different (for the better). Thank you!!

#10

i said particles, not orbs. what can i say, i’m used to work a lot in effects :shrug:
but thank Luna, his crit on your lighting gave me the idea…

#11

She’s not ugly at all. She may not be beautiful in the way that society rates conventional beauty, but she’s far from being ugly. I’d say she’s objectively, above average. This really is a slippery subject though, because there’s such a wide range of tastes. For every celebrity is hyped as hot, there will be those who don’t think the person’s that attractive at all. For example, Pamela Anderson is supposed to be this sex Goddess, but to me, she’s so fake, plastic, and have this f-cked up face due to plastic surgery. She was actually far cuter before she did all that fake stuff.

I did a quickie paintover (attached as thumbnail below) to show you how “I” would personally go about giving her a makeover. It is based on my own personal taste for feminine beauty, but it’s just a really quick fix though, and if I were to really take it as far as I could, then she’ll end up looking like my Melancholic Princess painting:

The thing is, you can learn to depict objective beauty, since there are universal standards for what human beings find attractive. If you search google you’ll find articles about it, showing you diagrams and photo comparisons. There are specific traits that modern human beings find attractive, and once you know what they are, you’ll be able to depict objective beauty.

#12

Aren’t we breaching away from her original character?
Consider her original nose that he painted, he seemed to be on the right track with her facial structure and his other lines to match like her jaw and brow and eyes were good enough to match the structure of her nose.
You seemed to change it completely based on your own personal biases of what ‘true’ beauty entails in regards to the entire facial structure in and of itself, and not so much about working with what was there. I see you’ve made her face completely symetrical and flattened the bridge of her nose. This seems to be leaning towards conflicting artist vs artist bias in critical analysis.
In this regard i believe technique should be shown, which I believe your more than capable of doing.

#13

Like I said, beauty is very subjective, and there is no “true” beauty–only subjective and objective, and even then objective beauty is kind of nebulous, since it’s not like we have an official definition. But there is a kind of unspoken agreement among modern human beings, and that’s why we see what we see in fashion magazines, why certain Hollywood stars are adored, and why certain character designs are more popular than others in video games or animation.

What I posted, is just one possibility–“my” possibility–one which I feel is closer to objective standards. But it isn’t like some kind of declaration that it is “right”–it’s just another point of view. Another artist who tries to give the original a makeover would come up with a totally different possibility.

If you want to give it a shot and show how “you” would personally try to improve upon the original’s attractiveness–go for it and it’ll be interesting to see another subjective point of view.

#14

It seems to me you have a good grasp on objective beauty, but you changed the subject matter a lot. I could see you giving her the shade of your girls eyes on his girls eyes and maybe using your lighting on your girls nose on his girls nose, I don’t know, maybe he’ll understand where you were going with it and try it out himself, what threw me off was that they looked like two different people.
edit= I still firmly agree about your pragmatic crit about the subjects nostrils lines and the lighting.

#15

She looks much prettier in your version, Lunatique. Her features are more doll-like and feminine, which I do enjoy. Your version has more of a dreamy atmosphere to it. It’s so cool to see how artists see things in different ways, and it would be really cool to see how RoundRobbin would change her. It just goes to show that art is extremely subjective.
While I think you’ve improved her, I do agree with RoundRobbin that it might be departing from the original vision. She has more of a illustrated look now. When I set out to make mine, I wanted to give her blemishes, oily skin, large pores in some areas, etc…

I completely see what it is that you see wrong with it, though. The lighting does need to be altered to be more consistent. And her facial features need to be made more delicate, to achieve more “beauty”. I have sincere gratitude for you taking the trouble to paint over my work, Lunatique.

You guys both agree on the lighting, and the nostrils - so that is where I will concentrate my efforts the most. I will also play around with her hair exposing one of her ears, and maybe add some sort of jewelry (earring, necklace, nose or lip ring, maybe all of these?? )

I have to say, that I am thoroughly enjoying how both of your views differ, yet you remain respectful of each other. It is so interesting how three different artists would end up with three different pieces -

#16

The paintover is just to show how I’d alter the proportions and shapes, not the surface treatment. It’s a quick paintover, so I can’t really devote too much time to doing all the skin textures–especially that I’m teaching a workshop right now of record-breaking number of students (the highest number since the debut of the workshop), so I’m completely swamped.

So if you just imagine my paintover with the kind of skin textures you prefer, you’ll get an idea how how it would look.

The interesting thing though, is that if you obverse how the media portrays beauty, they try all that they can to cover up blemishes, use foundation makeup on everyone, no matter what sex and what age they are, and in more fashion-sensitive publications, they completely get rid of any sign of pores and blemishes. It’s kind of odd how obsessed society is with flawless skin. It’s basically an unrealistic portrayal of beauty, yet everyone strives for it. What complicates it, is the fact that there really are people out there with impeccable skin, and because such rare perfection does exist, it becomes acceptable to try to make everyone look that way–simply because it does exist in nature. If people with flawless skin never existed in this world, we probably wouldn’t try so hard to replicate that kind of perfection.

Everything that the media does to push the boundaries of beauty are directly based on what they’ve seen that’s possible in the rare examples possible in the human race, and they’ve used those rare examples are references for their own attempts at beautifying everything.

Some artists also strive to portray that kind of rare, flawless beauty, while others will try to inject more flaws, to portray what they think is a more natural look. Neither is right or wrong–just different approaches to express one’s own subject ideal of beauty.

Personally, I dislike when a girl wears heavy foundation, because it looks too fake–like she’s wearing a mask. That’s why I tell my wife (who I take tons of photos of for my photography) that I would rather see her skin as natural and imperfect, than caked with foundation and look fake.

But in my artwork, I prefer to depict skin that is naturally flawless–like the kind you often see on young East Asian women (such as celebrity reality shows like “Invincible Youth,” often featuring well-known K-Pop stars without any makeup), where their skin is so fair and radiant that they look almost ethereal, but still very real and natural.

This is all subjective, of course. Just sharing my thoughts on the subject.

#17

lucky b@st@rds :cry:

#18

You really have to fix her philtrum (between nose and upper lip). The area looks as though a cleft started to form. She looks like she has inflamed skin around her mouth, too.
Also, beware of taking your shadows too dark too fast.

Here’s my wayward spin on her. I used what you have and fixed the philtrum and painted some new lips. I left the asymmetries and didn’t do too much with the eyes. She looks older in the PO, too.

#19

Real nice paint over Quarart

#20

That’s a very nice paint over, Quadart. Thank you for taking the time out to do that.

I completely see how my lighting scheme is skewed, and yes I might have over-done blurring the lips, so she might look like it is sensitive around her mouth. hmm…

Heh, a funny tid bit: the concept originally was to do a photo-real painting of a “girl” (somewhat in the 12-14 year range, hence the “Girl” title), but as I painted her I started changing features to a more mature look. By the time I was done she looks like she’s a young twenty-something. In your picture she looks a little older. It’s as if she’s pushing the vision to be more and more mature. By the time I’m done she’ll be in her antiquity.

I’m very humbled by all of the people wanting to give their feedback. I’m taking it all in without reserves; I’m hoping it will lead to a polished piece I can be proud of.

#21

Okay, I had to do another PO. This time staying on track.
Here are my more appropriate visual suggestions for your portrait.
I hope this is more helpful.