Weekly* Portrait Activity Thread: Stretch/Squish

Surfpossum · July 2018

Hello everyone! I've been having a lot of fun doing portraits the last few days, and maybe it would be more fun with friends! I have a couple of ideas for activities that should hopefully produce neater results with every additional participant, so please feel free to join in.

First up, we have this video featuring Alan Rickman making a cup of tea. It's in super slow motion, which makes it great for picking out a particular expression (and he goes through quite a few) and also is just fun to watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eob7V_WtAVg

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to select a spot in the above video and draw it. For example, I'm taking a stab at the 4:00 mark, as seen here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8l-pkd0TLFo

I'm probably going to try to render it in a very boring and realistic fashion, like the last one I did, but feel free to do yours however! Maybe imitate the guy that made that HOPE poster, or something like what that rascal Banksy would do, or peruse historically significant self portraits for inspiration, like this one by Matisse.

Here are some handy resources in case you want Tips and/or Tricks!
http://www.portrait-artist.org/basics/step-by-step.html
Creating a grid is basically like cheating, except without the bad parts! I highly recommend it, the only reason I'm not using grids RIGHT NOW is because I'm specifically trying to train my eyes.
https://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-use-a-grid-to-enlarge-an-image-while-drawing--cms-20593
This video provides some nice visuals regarding what to look for when comparing likenesses.
https://drawing-tutorials-online-blog.com/portrait-drawing-tips-getting-a-likeness/
This link contains some butts but also some good pointers for how to "measure" things in a reference.
http://www.proko.com/drawing-measuring-techniques/#.W1AbFNJKjcs

If we get a decent number of participants, I'll try to make something out of the results at the end of the week* like a comic book page or slideshow or something. Wouldn't that be neat! It might also be helpful to post the timestamp or initial sketch of the frame you are drawing, so that people can avoid doubling up if they want to. Anyway, I hope you have fun!

* I have no idea if a week is a good timeframe for something like this, we'll see!

Doodmann · July 2018

So is the "Due Date" Sunday or Wednesday next week?

Surfpossum · July 2018

I was thinking Wednesday, to make it a full week.

I've made a bit of progress, most of which I'm about to undo now that I've remembered that I can zoom in on my reference.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBuW2Gnc1-0

I have also created waaaaaaay too many gridded screenshots and grid templates, in case anyone wants a bit of a guide while doing this. Here's the first one as an example, and links to the others are in the spoiler.

Doodmann · July 2018

I started up on it this morning...I kinda fell down a sketch hole.

I chose alanrickman09.jpg

Surfpossum · July 2018

I think we’ve both subconsciously tilted his head, or at least his face; me way more than you. I had a wedding interfere with my weekend so I haven’t gotten much done since then, but today’s task is to see how much I can fix this:

After not looking at it for a day I noticed the tilt and that I’d squished/rounded the face, so I did a quick draw over to really highlight the shapes and now I’m gonna use the magic of digital art to move stuff around a bit.

I really should have spent more time measuring angles/distances while doing the initial sketch, but say la vee.

e: calling this pretty done for today. hooo boy the last one I did took a fraction of the time since I actually got all the proportions right the first time.

Doodmann · July 2018

Damn you you beautiful muted palette bastard. I forgot tomorrow is wednesday. I think my piece will be a little more "sloppy oils"

Surfpossum · July 2018

Doodmann wrote: »

Damn you you beautiful muted palette bastard. I forgot tomorrow is wednesday. I think my piece will be a little more "sloppy oils"

I actually assumed that was gonna be the finished style of yours!

After seeing how badly I messed up on the original position of his head, I think later/tomorrow I'm gonna try to just do some quick sketches using the templates I made.

Also, I should note that I saw the instructor in the second to last link I provided doing a draw over of various features to highlight differences and that's what made me do the two comparisons above. It's worth watching it to see what he focuses on and how he goes about comparing stuff; I found it very useful!

Doodmann · July 2018

Yeah, I just realized I'm not going to have any time tonight anyway. Are you going to do another one next week? I like the idea of presenting a video and telling everyone to pick a frame (ideally more people will start doing this).

Surfpossum · July 2018

I will try to have something for tomorrow, yeah.

Here’s where I ended up:

And then I did a quick sketch just as an example of the sort of thing that it would be Totally Okay and Cool to do:

https://youtu.be/w4pa7udTSEk

e: it looks like you can't really see it in the video, but there is a grid there. Grid is good.

Surfpossum · July 2018

So for this week, I was thinking that we should try to do at least two sketches of the same subject; in my head I was imagining the same pose but with different lighting, but it turns out finding a cool 3D model is a bit harder than I thought it would be. *twenty minutes pass* So anyway, I bought one of these. Did I just give away my credit card info? Who knows!

Anyway, I've generated a couple of examples, and if you'd like me to do a specific angle/lighting combo just lemme know.

Disturbed's cover of The Sound of Silence also has some good choices; there's a bit around the 3:10 mark where lights flash across his face and if you play it at a quarter speed you can probably grab a few bits.

Then there's always the ol' selfies with a desk lamp approach.

I want to focus more on how light falls onto features this week, personally, but whatever whatever!

Doodmann · July 2018

The lack of butts is devastating, but I see why this would be helpful.

Surfpossum · July 2018

For extra credit, you can construct the face out of butts.

Surfpossum · August 2018

Okay so No Man's Sky and Destiny both pushed a bunch of content recently and I am merely human. Anyway, this is what I ended up coming up with:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxsKo_TRIvY

Each sketch was super quick, maybe eight minutes on average, so they aren't super consistent:

I think it would have turned out much cooler if I did a more detailed sketch of the face instead of just the outline, but I also wanted to just sit down and blow through this this evening.

It was pretty enjoyable to just loosely throw down light and dark without worrying too much about accuracy, but I'm not sure how much I got out of it. Again, feels like having a more detailed base to put the shading on top of would maybe have been better.

Doodmann · August 2018

Agreed, I got caught up with a wedding and trying to finish that Starship Troopers poster.

Maybe I'll take a crack at this tonight, fast and loose like you did.

Surfpossum · August 2018

This next weekish I think I’m gonna try to put a grid over a reference and then stretch or squish rows and/or columns on my drawing grid and see what happens. As a visual example:

A being the original reference, and B and C being what would end up getting drawn (so you wouldn’t actually modify the reference, just the grid you are using to draw). If that makes sense.

Doodmann · August 2018

I'm confused, wouldn't I want to stretch it and then laydown a grid? Or is the point to get used to odder shaped sections?

Surfpossum · August 2018

I feel like perhaps stretching a section mentally as you draw it instead of copying directly from the reference might stretch some new brain muscles along with maybe allowing you to make it look better (because simply stretching stuff the way an image editor does looks p unnatural).

But I dunno! I'll try to note my thoughts on it once I've done it; maybe it'll be interesting, maybe it won't.

Angel_of_Bacon · August 2018

I dunno how usefully skill-building this idea is going to be as you've laid out here; but it suggests to me an idea using the same idea, where instead of straight horizontals and verticals on your drawing's grid, you draw a grid in perspective, or projected along the surface of an object. IE: I want to draw this face in my ref as if it's drawn on a photo in this scene, or as if it's being reflected in this car door/funhouse mirror, etc. I could see that being a pretty pragmatic (if difficult and brain-busting...in a good way) way to use the grid drawing method in a way that'd test some of your other skills as well. Maybe a suggestion for the future?

Surfpossum · August 2018

That definitely sounds like it would be more useful; I was trying to come up with something that would let me indulge a random desire to draw a face with some exaggerated features but also make me use a grid, since the last two both strongly impressed upon me the feeling that I ought to do some more strict grid-based work.

I'll keep that idea in mind, tho, for whenever I have the mental energy to create a bunch of fancy grids with Illustrator or Blender or, like, an actual ruler.

Penny Arcade

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Weekly* Portrait Activity Thread: Stretch/Squish

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