Here are a some of my most recent drawings. As you can tell I've been concentrating on portraits of late. As you can tell no color, because right now I just don't understand how to do color. I have considered colored pencil, but haven't gotten any instruction books on the techniques yet. I've only been able to go so far with my pencil shading and then I feel lost. When I have pushed farther and tried to do more shading the end result is usually more cartoon looking than realistic. My shading technique needs a lot of practice. You asked for sample of my work in my post in the help forums so here it is.
0
Posts
Are there any long-term goals that you have that you'd like to develop? Either for your work, or as an artist in general?
I've watched video's and read books on how to shade, but I haven't been able to use the techniques correctly. I use smooth Bristol board and I've tried using a set of graphite drawing pencils on some and then tried just a mechanical pencil with 2B like Lee Hammond uses on others. I've tried layering the graphite, but after one or two layers the paper feels like your pencil strokes aren't doing anything, just gliding along the top leaving no marks. If I put any pressure on the pencil to get a darker value then my pencil strokes are visible. Trying to shade large areas are a nightmare.
If you stay within your comfort zone always, you will get nowhere - you really will need to become ok with 'ruining' a drawing if you want to progress. But that's something that will come naturally once you're drawing enough - it's hard to be precious about studies when you do dozens or hundreds of them. Get some cheap butchers paper and get used to the idea that your art is disposable.
Are these pictures representative of all your output, or have you worked in other mediums/done other things besides photo portraits? Especially, have you ever done any figure drawing or gesture drawing? If not, I think that's something you should embark on immediately, for a whole bunch of reasons.
These show a good eye for general detail transfer but a deeper understanding of the construction, like NightDragon is suggesting, would help, because right now these are basically just transferring visual info without necessarily understanding what is underneath. (that's not a bad thing! Just a good area of study to look at next since you're already developing good basic representative skills.)
Uncanny Magazine!
The Mad Writers Union
Do you want to do celebrity portraits specifically, or are you just using those celebrity photos as a means to study portraits in general? Because most celebrity shots are TERRIBLE as learning resources, because celebrities are usually shot with flat, ambient light coming from a dozen different directions. It's totally confusing, so much so as to be almost useless for beginners. You need to use reference with a CLEAR light source and clear light and shadow patterns. Here's a good link with some good information on the subject: http://www.freshdesigner.com/good-figure-drawing-reference-guide/
I'm curious what books or videos you've tried to use? Honestly, you're not going to get a step by step tutorial that's going to answer every single question you have about figure drawing. It's just too complicated. Sometimes you just need to study the resources you find and take a leap of faith as you try to apply that information to your own studies. With that said, my personal favorite books for beginners are Andrew Loomis' classic "Figure Drawing for All it's Worth," and Michael Hampton's newer "Figure Drawing Design and Invention," which is more accessible than most popular figure drawing books in my opinion. Pick up those books, read them and try to absorb the information, and copy the drawings in them as best you can. The idea of both books is to take a constructive approach to figure drawing, instead of just copying outlines and applying superficial shading. And both break down the major planes of the face, which will help you place the features correctly, as NightDragon was pointing out. Use that information and apply it to your drawings as best as you can, then seek feedback online. It's a long hard road, but it's the only way. Good luck and I hope to see you post here more!
I'd personally be interested in seeing your technical drawings. If employment is your goal, you should keep your strengths in mind. It may take you years to get to a level where you could sell portraits, and if money is going to be a concern before then, it is probably worthwhile to look at where you found previous employment and try to build on those skills first.
Think about making a stone carving. You aren't going to go to the specific details right away. First you have to chip away the stone to get to the basic shape of your desired sculpture, then you will continue to make passes as you make your forms more and more specific.
Additionally, construction gives your drawings volume, in a way that contour drawing (basically, drawing the outlines of a figure) generally can't. You don't have to come up with these on your own, by the way -- there are many many many abstractions that have already been invented that you can find in the figure drawing books that have been recommended.
Of course, this skill relies on your ability to draw those simple box forms in perspective to begin with, which is a whole set of skills unto itself.
Anyway, here are some examples I pulled off Google image search real quick.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EPNYWeEf1U
(I highly recommend digging into those videos on Proko's Youtube channel, by the way, it's a great resource, especially for beginners.)