Another portrait piece I'm currently working on. I'm not sure how to finish this yet, my classmates tell me the lady (which I did first) looks too much like a photograph, so I tried painting the man in a looser style... Although it is still rough, I was hoping to get some opinions from here, since you guys always have something valid to say that can help me out. So what do you think?
So I bumped up the contrast a tad on the woman, but she (being the client) liked the original version better, so had to go with that one. I'm pretty close to calling this finished, still need to think about getting in a background, or maybe just leave it blank to focus the attention on their faces.
Anyway, this is where I'm at now:
also, I found a drawing I did of these same people about two years ago, here it is for comparison:
I don't really know about animation but that looked really beautiful. Everything in your thread is really a pleasure to look at, including your awesome improvement!
Here's an old school portrait drawing for a change, charcoal on newsprint. His hair's all messed up though, I've always found charcoal one of the hardest media to use.
Recognize this dude?
Natri on
www.instagram.com/ceneven
+1
Mes3Lurking behind your toiletRegistered Userregular
edited June 2011
Very nice!
Charcoal is the best! Workable and them shits is black!
Thank you Mes3 and mully, I'll do my best to keep this thing going!
Here's a work in progress of another portrait for a friend of mine:
Still need to put in a lot of time finishing up the girl, they were drawn off two separate photos with different lighting, so I'm trying to make her part of the same atmosphere as the guy and apply the same light source.
Ugh that
Is so good
but yeah, definitely fix up the lighting. His lighting is vastly preferable. She just looks like the photo was taken with flash turned on.
BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
edited June 2011
damn natri, you are an inspiration
the lighting and shadow on him is wonderful, I love the cooler tones on his forehead!
watch out for rendering the hair on that beard, it'll be difficult to keep the texture looking right while keeping definition on his chin, right now it's looking a little muddy
I should have done a lot better on the girl, but I only had 2 days to complete it and time ran out. There's a lot of things I am not quite happy with, but it was good practice.
The first of many more acrylic paintings to come this month, I'm hoping to get about 20 of them done before school starts again. I find I have a hard time getting details down with acrylics, especially the hair has proven to be quite troublesome.
Sorry for the blurriness, wish I had better means to get a quality image of this on the web!
You're right, Iruka, I should get some better poses for the football player. I've been concentrating on the coach for now, but I'm definitely going to change the other guy. I'm thinking about changing the composition too, right now I've got it all cramped up screen left. I'll post an update when I've got some significant changes.
I'm using TVPAINT for this animation, it saves me a ton of time. I only have until the end of next week to get this thing finished, so it takes away some of the pressure of doing it on paper and having to scan it all.
Chromatomic, thank you for the comment, I'm glad you like it! I only just saw your thread today, really digging the nolan movie posters!
Yeah it's a nice program to work with, I love the brushes it provides. And the pencil strokes are probably the best I have ever encountered in a digital program, in that you can hardly tell that the drawing on your screen isn't just a scanned-in real pencil drawing. No other software has given me that feeling before.
Still needs a lot of tweaking and drawings to get it fluent. Also haven't done anything new about the football player, thought I'd tackle it one person at a time. Shifted the composition a bit more to the center and put in most of the mouth shapes for the coach.
I'm struggling like hell with this environment painting I'm doing for school. I was hoping you could give me some pointers/feedback on what I could do to improve this thing, because I feel like I'm fishing in the dark here.
The assignment is to paint an italian market square from a bird's eye view.
Holy crap, that's one ambitious attempt at perspective- fisheye 5 point perspective with about a million buildings. It's so ambitious that in trying to explain it I completely ballsed it up myself, so my paintover here is kind of fudged to look 'ok', and isn't really all that accurate (I'll explain why below so you don't make the same mistake). Honestly I should probably redo it to be better but I don't have the time. Hopefully it's close enough that you can get the idea, though.
In any case, the main thing that I think is a sticking point currently is you're kind of slamming two 2/3-point perspective drawings together to make a kind of 4 point perspective- the left building follows its perspective, the right building follows its own- everything is done in straight lines. This would work fine if each of these buildings were in different drawings, but put next to each other they don't quite seem to tie together. That's because when you've got this wide angle fisheye thing going on, those nice lines leading off to vanishing points are going to curve from one to another, rather than just continuing on their own paths forever. (see the second graphic on the page here: http://www.2d-digital-art-guide.com/multiple-point-perspective.html)
Now, what I did was take the elipse tool in PS, and made an ellipse centered at the central vanishing point, and roughly fit the corners of the roof of building on the right, giving me a nice curving line to base the linework off of. And it gave me a pretty decent start to getting that fisheye feeling working, it starts tying the left and right sides together in a more cohesive fashion.
Where I fucked up is that I started using concentric ellipses inside the first one for the rest of my guidelines, rather than using curves that converge properly towards the left and right vanishing points (it's early and I didn't have my 'hardcore perspective wonk' hat on yet). This works ok closer to the center of the picture where things are more parallel, but if you notice closely (as I did, after like an hour), it becomes a problem on the right building, because it makes it look like it's getting wider the further away it is from the camera. So...don't do what I did, because it'll drive you nuts. Use a perspective grid like in that link (or just copy-paste it onto your PS doc as a guide). (Also this'll still drive you nuts just because it's a complicated thing to wrap your head around when drawing, but at least it'll drive you nuts in the right way.)
(How's that for a crit, a crit where wind up I critting my own crit more than the original picture. :P)
Wow. Just wow. Thank you so much for taking the time to do the paintover and trouble yourself with this whole perspective thing, this is extremely helpful! I never stopped to think about the curving perspective lines. Going to rework it and I'll post an update, which hopefully will be more or less perspective-okay. Thanks a lot for your help, AoB!
Thanks ninjai! Had an unfortunate fall during a sports game, apparently tore something from my "rotator cuff". Twice. Ah well, (sh)it happens, but now it's back to drawing!
Posts
Another portrait piece I'm currently working on. I'm not sure how to finish this yet, my classmates tell me the lady (which I did first) looks too much like a photograph, so I tried painting the man in a looser style... Although it is still rough, I was hoping to get some opinions from here, since you guys always have something valid to say that can help me out. So what do you think?
You could try playing with your colour more if you wanted it to look less photo realsitic?
You could experiment with the colors a bit. The woman is also pretty low contrast, especially compared to the dude.
Also, what is wrong with making it photo realistic? I realize it's not that creative from a style standpoint... but dang.
Anyway, this is where I'm at now:
also, I found a drawing I did of these same people about two years ago, here it is for comparison:
Dance in Red
facebook.com/LauraCatherwoodArt
Here's an old school portrait drawing for a change, charcoal on newsprint. His hair's all messed up though, I've always found charcoal one of the hardest media to use.
Recognize this dude?
Charcoal is the best! Workable and them shits is black!
Here's a work in progress of another portrait for a friend of mine:
Still need to put in a lot of time finishing up the girl, they were drawn off two separate photos with different lighting, so I'm trying to make her part of the same atmosphere as the guy and apply the same light source.
Is so good
but yeah, definitely fix up the lighting. His lighting is vastly preferable. She just looks like the photo was taken with flash turned on.
the lighting and shadow on him is wonderful, I love the cooler tones on his forehead!
watch out for rendering the hair on that beard, it'll be difficult to keep the texture looking right while keeping definition on his chin, right now it's looking a little muddy
Here is the 'finished' version:
I should have done a lot better on the girl, but I only had 2 days to complete it and time ran out. There's a lot of things I am not quite happy with, but it was good practice.
I wish I had something more useful to say!
Here's some quick random doodle I did the other day:
Sorry for the blurriness, wish I had better means to get a quality image of this on the web!
I love your tonal control, and your brushstrokes are really nice and confident. Keep it up!
And some quick referenced doodles:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isWAUENNfio
I'm about to pull out some really advanced intricate art words, but I really love the sketches, there super "flowy" and natural.
The portrait of the elder couple up top is just amazing.
I'm using TVPAINT for this animation, it saves me a ton of time. I only have until the end of next week to get this thing finished, so it takes away some of the pressure of doing it on paper and having to scan it all.
Chromatomic, thank you for the comment, I'm glad you like it! I only just saw your thread today, really digging the nolan movie posters!
Anyway, here's where I'm at so far:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8-lDf8SLEA
Still needs a lot of tweaking and drawings to get it fluent. Also haven't done anything new about the football player, thought I'd tackle it one person at a time. Shifted the composition a bit more to the center and put in most of the mouth shapes for the coach.
What do you think?
Ignore the font if you will.
I'm struggling like hell with this environment painting I'm doing for school. I was hoping you could give me some pointers/feedback on what I could do to improve this thing, because I feel like I'm fishing in the dark here.
The assignment is to paint an italian market square from a bird's eye view.
Any comments you have would be appreciated!
In any case, the main thing that I think is a sticking point currently is you're kind of slamming two 2/3-point perspective drawings together to make a kind of 4 point perspective- the left building follows its perspective, the right building follows its own- everything is done in straight lines. This would work fine if each of these buildings were in different drawings, but put next to each other they don't quite seem to tie together. That's because when you've got this wide angle fisheye thing going on, those nice lines leading off to vanishing points are going to curve from one to another, rather than just continuing on their own paths forever. (see the second graphic on the page here: http://www.2d-digital-art-guide.com/multiple-point-perspective.html)
Now, what I did was take the elipse tool in PS, and made an ellipse centered at the central vanishing point, and roughly fit the corners of the roof of building on the right, giving me a nice curving line to base the linework off of. And it gave me a pretty decent start to getting that fisheye feeling working, it starts tying the left and right sides together in a more cohesive fashion.
Where I fucked up is that I started using concentric ellipses inside the first one for the rest of my guidelines, rather than using curves that converge properly towards the left and right vanishing points (it's early and I didn't have my 'hardcore perspective wonk' hat on yet). This works ok closer to the center of the picture where things are more parallel, but if you notice closely (as I did, after like an hour), it becomes a problem on the right building, because it makes it look like it's getting wider the further away it is from the camera. So...don't do what I did, because it'll drive you nuts. Use a perspective grid like in that link (or just copy-paste it onto your PS doc as a guide). (Also this'll still drive you nuts just because it's a complicated thing to wrap your head around when drawing, but at least it'll drive you nuts in the right way.)
(How's that for a crit, a crit where wind up I critting my own crit more than the original picture. :P)
Twitter
and the one I posted in the doodle thread:
Guess I might as well post the environment thing I was working on way back too, even though I was unable to finish it:
These days, I'm really trying to do something different for each and every drawing I make, we'll see where it takes me..