Hey guys, I was wondering what you thought of this, now that ive worked on it a bit more.
I was going to also enquire about how do you guys usually approach hair?
Yeah, Matt Bellamy may have a weirdly square head, but it's more in the respect that he has a very defined chin, cheeks, and jawline. His eyes aren't exceptionally wide set, either (in fact, I might even argue they are a little close together). His nose is close, although you've kind of got the wrong shape for the alar cartilages at the front of the nose. The bridge is dipping into them, creating kind of a U shape. In reality, his nose is more bulbous than anything, with the tip and the lateral cartilage forming a kind of lump that sits on his nasal bone.
I'm not really sure if your goal is a straight caricature, but I wouldn't have really guessed Bellamy if you had shown it to me without the name.
I'm also not really experienced with caricatures, so I'm sorry that I can't be of more help.
@ oscarman, I was following a tutorial of sorts which had an overexagerated style, I do admit that I may have
stepped that up a bit more for effect to break away from drawing it realistically which my first attempt started off
being.
Thanks Fug for your input.
I think this piece ended up being a piece to see if could kinda push the caricature boundaries.
And this was pretty much a test of my digital drawing skills as I have not done anything
at to this level of detail.
Do you think maybe doing the other band members could also help?
I mean its all practice and I can revise or start a new bellamy if all goes well.
Ive been going back to stuff that was done in open canvas and reworking it.
So heres my reworking of Jared Leto its still a WIP, but yeah this is why
i was asking about how to approach skin colour etc.
Also I have drawn and inked a few type, some from reference.
But taken these and started applying vector decoration and such.
I think working on a bright yellow background is going to make it harder to get natural-looking skin tones. It might be an idea to pick a more neutral colour to work against; you can always change up the background later. You'll probably need to do some adjustments to make sure the appropriate colours are reflected and scattered in the skin and hair, but if you use a mid-tone with the same approximate hue then it should work out.
edit: that said, the skin tones you have there are starting to look pretty good. In my experience, most of working with colour is trial and error, and not being afraid to branch out into something unlikely every now and then. The advantage of digital is that you can mess around a lot, so I would just say experiment until you find something you're happy with.
Considering I already started doing this stuff before Melting doll? started the old and new thing.
And considering these arent that old, I thought I would post them here.
Anyway they are all WIP, and I need your special critiquing powers to combine to create Captian Planet?
This was a rough paint over. (NSFW or maybe it is on beckham in briefs)
I knew the painting was bad, but when i scanned in the resource and zoomed in.
Iwas mortified at hpw badly I was off.
I was looking at help thread and all that and i realised I havent painted on this for a while, so i digitally painted over it
and plan to paint once[ i hear somethings.
Hiya Jeckal - thought I'd pop in and give my $0.02 on the ambigrams .
Is this your first time making them? They're looking awesome . I have a question for you though - are you relying on something like flipscript.com to base your designs on? The reason I ask is that your first design for "Jeckal" looks very similar to the solution that the generator comes up with when I pop the word in. It's a good starting point, but it's better to be used for inspiration or if you're having trouble with a specific letter pairing than for full designs...it's better to play with the letters on your own to come up with a solution. When I started making these I only had the ambimatic, and it makes notoriously bad ambigrams .
Of what you posted, I like your second "Jeckal" the best - it's got a unified style and is very easy to read. Excellent job!
With your "Jarrod" ambigrams, I think they're a touch hard to read because they're all the same height (or close to). Of those I think the first is the best because, again, it has a unified style, and I like how you're utilizing the top of the J to make an underline for the rest of the word. My only quibble is the capital D at the end, but that's because I'm a stickler for not mixing case . I posted a quick sketch of my solution for it in the doodle thread, but I don't know if you saw it, so here it is again.
If I were to redo it I'd probably have the second r overlapping with the o, to make the a easier to read.
Ok so started reading Loomis, and it makes sense.
I had a hurdle with drawing nice circles and then not perceiving them 3d.
Drew on an old orange with vivid and that cured that.
So heres what I did today, looks like a bunch of olives on cocktail picks, or is that just me.
A quick tonal study, i know there is a bit wrong with it, but im just testing fundamentals.
Its _super super super_ important to have correct proportions in your artwork. This can be done with sighting. Im not saying my corrections are perfect (they're not), but they should help you out.
The problems I saw and corrected were
1) distance from right eye to the ear was far too wide resulting in a huge skull that didnt match the model
2) the eye was too big ---- too open at the right corner and showing too much of the cornea
3) the nose is drawn like it slopes downward instead of going up - nostril is too small
4) the chin/jaw is too small/high up. I forgot to correct the one on the left for size or the tie
5) the suit is too small for the head
I also only really saw highlight/and midtone....it was hard to distinguish any shadow. Especially around the right eye area I only saw midtone.
Jeckal, as far as the tonal study, make sure you put down every value relative to the entire picture. For example, it seems like you looked at the eye and thought that it was dark relative to its surroundings. But the area surrounding the eye is also dark relative to the whole picture, and this didn't translate in your drawing.
A good trick is to squint, just to blur your vision, and then look at the pictures. Try to notice what stands out as light and dark. You can see that while in your picture only small areas stand out as dark, in the reference much of his face is dark.
Keep at it!
A good trick is to squint, just to blur your vision, and then look at the pictures.
Yeah thanks lyrium, If i need to squint to blur, I might just take off my glasses lol.
And i think that the scan knocked out a little bit of the pop that i drew, as i think it looks much better in reallife than on screen.
Posts
I'm not really sure if your goal is a straight caricature, but I wouldn't have really guessed Bellamy if you had shown it to me without the name.
I'm also not really experienced with caricatures, so I'm sorry that I can't be of more help.
stepped that up a bit more for effect to break away from drawing it realistically which my first attempt started off
being.
Thanks Fug for your input.
I think this piece ended up being a piece to see if could kinda push the caricature boundaries.
And this was pretty much a test of my digital drawing skills as I have not done anything
at to this level of detail.
Do you think maybe doing the other band members could also help?
I mean its all practice and I can revise or start a new bellamy if all goes well.
So heres my reworking of Jared Leto its still a WIP, but yeah this is why
i was asking about how to approach skin colour etc.
Also I have drawn and inked a few type, some from reference.
But taken these and started applying vector decoration and such.
Also the ambigrams again.
edit: that said, the skin tones you have there are starting to look pretty good. In my experience, most of working with colour is trial and error, and not being afraid to branch out into something unlikely every now and then. The advantage of digital is that you can mess around a lot, so I would just say experiment until you find something you're happy with.
And considering these arent that old, I thought I would post them here.
Anyway they are all WIP, and I need your special critiquing powers to combine to create Captian Planet?
This was a rough paint over. (NSFW or maybe it is on beckham in briefs)
I knew the painting was bad, but when i scanned in the resource and zoomed in.
Iwas mortified at hpw badly I was off.
I was looking at help thread and all that and i realised I havent painted on this for a while, so i digitally painted over it
and plan to paint once[ i hear somethings.
Is this your first time making them? They're looking awesome . I have a question for you though - are you relying on something like flipscript.com to base your designs on? The reason I ask is that your first design for "Jeckal" looks very similar to the solution that the generator comes up with when I pop the word in. It's a good starting point, but it's better to be used for inspiration or if you're having trouble with a specific letter pairing than for full designs...it's better to play with the letters on your own to come up with a solution. When I started making these I only had the ambimatic, and it makes notoriously bad ambigrams .
Of what you posted, I like your second "Jeckal" the best - it's got a unified style and is very easy to read. Excellent job!
With your "Jarrod" ambigrams, I think they're a touch hard to read because they're all the same height (or close to). Of those I think the first is the best because, again, it has a unified style, and I like how you're utilizing the top of the J to make an underline for the rest of the word. My only quibble is the capital D at the end, but that's because I'm a stickler for not mixing case . I posted a quick sketch of my solution for it in the doodle thread, but I don't know if you saw it, so here it is again.
If I were to redo it I'd probably have the second r overlapping with the o, to make the a easier to read.
I had a hurdle with drawing nice circles and then not perceiving them 3d.
Drew on an old orange with vivid and that cured that.
So heres what I did today, looks like a bunch of olives on cocktail picks, or is that just me.
The big head/ big jaw kinda reminds me of me, without the big jaw.
Its _super super super_ important to have correct proportions in your artwork. This can be done with sighting. Im not saying my corrections are perfect (they're not), but they should help you out.
The problems I saw and corrected were
1) distance from right eye to the ear was far too wide resulting in a huge skull that didnt match the model
2) the eye was too big ---- too open at the right corner and showing too much of the cornea
3) the nose is drawn like it slopes downward instead of going up - nostril is too small
4) the chin/jaw is too small/high up. I forgot to correct the one on the left for size or the tie
5) the suit is too small for the head
I also only really saw highlight/and midtone....it was hard to distinguish any shadow. Especially around the right eye area I only saw midtone.
A good trick is to squint, just to blur your vision, and then look at the pictures. Try to notice what stands out as light and dark. You can see that while in your picture only small areas stand out as dark, in the reference much of his face is dark.
Keep at it!
facebook.com/LauraCatherwoodArt
Yeah thanks lyrium, If i need to squint to blur, I might just take off my glasses lol.
And i think that the scan knocked out a little bit of the pop that i drew, as i think it looks much better in reallife than on screen.
And will do so till ive copyed a bit more then, you will see some ref copies of ears, eyes, etc