Portarit help

kevin_

Alright so I am doing portraits for school and I really need critique. Also tips would be nice too if you have any for me. These are just "rough sketches". The finished product needs to be in "realistic" with smooth shading the whole bit.

Self portrait -




Study of my lips -


A girl I sit across from -


I forget her name -


Me getting pissed cause I can't draw Lennon -


Conté practice -

JohnTWM

Can't tell if this is because of the angle at which the photo is taken, or because it's actually skewed, but most of the faces appear to be lopsided. You did a pretty good job with some of the individual features, but they don't fit into the whole quite right. Take the first pic, the left side of the guy's face (our left) looks lower than the right. Same in second.

kevin_

Oh no its just cause of the camera and how i was holding it.

I have been really focusing on getting facial features that make me (and others) unique.

Iruka

Its going to be hard to get crits on these if you dont take the picture from strait on or scan them. They are too blurry and skewed to judge properly.

That being said, it looks like you are drawing football eyes and placing the features on the face with haphazard regard to the underlying skull structure. Some of its there, but it feels like alot is out of place.

kevin_

My eyes actually are "football shaped eyes" believe it or not. Also the skull structure I totally agree with you on with the structure. Tomorrow I am going to work on that.

Mustang

kevin_ wrote: »

My eyes actually are "football shaped eyes" believe it or not.

Nope your eyes are round sphere's like everyone else's, it's the skin around them that gives them an eliptical shape. That may sound very fucking obvious, but really understanding that is the key to getting eye's right. So you may want to ponder it for a while before thinking I'm a dickhead.

Scosglen

kevin_ wrote: »

My eyes actually are "football shaped eyes" believe it or not.

No, they aren't football shaped. Nobody has eyes like this.

The eye is a complex structure that requires subtle attending to get right; it is much more than just the eyeball, iris and retina visible between the slit of the eyelids. You have to note the tear-duct and nictating membrane, and how the insides corners of the upper and lower lid anchor around it. The upper lid is larger than the lower and while open the excess skin becomes folded back into the socket. On and on.



The facial features in all of these portraits are highly symbolized, misplaced and skewed. The attempts at rendering are extremely crude, scratchy, and don't seem to be placed with any logic. the more smudgey attempts at shading are not much better and still don't follow any kind of sensible lighting model.

If you aren't working directly from reference then you should start right now. If you are, then these truncations of detail point directly towards poor observation skills, which is a topic in its own right.

And please, please find a scanner, or at the very least try to take your next pictures from direct angles with the camera stationary.

kevin_

Thanks for the eyeball comment. I will keep that in mind next time I am drawing.

Also I will keep the rest of your comments in mind too. Thanks guys.

Also a thing you should know is that I am still learning how to "do art" seeing how I am still in high school.
I found a good tutorial on how to draw a realistic eye. Its in the tutorial section.

Ponge

Isn't there a condition where a persons eyes are rugby ball shaped?

Astigmatism? I'm not saying that this would change the advice you gave him but maybe thats what he meant when he said he had rugby ball shaped eyes.

Belruel

no, i had astigmatism, its a vision thing, not a disfigurement.

what he meant was that he doesn't yet know how to observe things quite right yet i would assume.

also, being in highschool has nothing to do with anything kevin, what does have something to do with anything is the fact that you are just learning, which is obvious. keep practicing and draw what you see, not what you think you see.

that is a major problem with many people, drawing brain images and not the actual object

Castle_Builder

if you have a digital camera and some kind of paint program on your computer try this:

Take a picture of yourself and toss it into the art program.

If you can, lighten the picture or lessen its saturation, and then take a thick black drawing tool and trace your eyes and other features you think are most important to your face.

This is better if you can print it off and use a sharpie marker or other pen in my opinion but on the computer its faster.

Youll learn 2 things. The first being what features need to stand out in your portrait in order for the finished product to be recognizable as you, and the second being how the curves and contours of your face are not exact shapes and have dips and changes you need to account for.

JohnTWM

Castle_Builder wrote: »

if you have a digital camera and some kind of paint program on your computer try this:

Take a picture of yourself and toss it into the art program.

If you can, lighten the picture or lessen its saturation, and then take a thick black drawing tool and trace your eyes and other features you think are most important to your face.

This is better if you can print it off and use a sharpie marker or other pen in my opinion but on the computer its faster.

Youll learn 2 things. The first being what features need to stand out in your portrait in order for the finished product to be recognizable as you, and the second being how the curves and contours of your face are not exact shapes and have dips and changes you need to account for.

Wow this is actually a really good idea.... I'll have to try that myself.

ManonvonSuperock

Iruka wrote: »

... take the picture from strait on or scan them..

kevin_

Castle_Builder wrote: »

if you have a digital camera and some kind of paint program on your computer try this:

Take a picture of yourself and toss it into the art program.

If you can, lighten the picture or lessen its saturation, and then take a thick black drawing tool and trace your eyes and other features you think are most important to your face.

This is better if you can print it off and use a sharpie marker or other pen in my opinion but on the computer its faster.

Youll learn 2 things. The first being what features need to stand out in your portrait in order for the finished product to be recognizable as you, and the second being how the curves and contours of your face are not exact shapes and have dips and changes you need to account for.

Woah thanks for that awesome tip.