01-11-2015, 01:02 PM
Sup Buddy! Cool stuff, nice to see you struggling and trying hard, you certainly have a thing for hard surface, it seems to come out wasier for you than organic stuff, which is a pretty cool thing.
Regarding advice on faces I have a few tips since I've been where you are and I know how fucking frustrating it can be ( it still is haha). I feel that your problem is that you're trying to define in a very specific way every feature and every structure, and while that's important for you to do when studying and understand, it's something that isn't very heplfull in the stage you're in, since it will be very complicated to get proper proportions and the overall results won't look apealing to you.
My sugestion to keep advancing on your portrait studies is a bit long, but I think it will help you if you try it out:
First of all, keep up studying the asaro heads and skulls and al that good stuff, loomis, whatever you feel helps you understand the actual shape of a face, but here's a REALLY IMPORTANT tip on this. Try not to copy what you see at all, just focus on the shape you see on the facem on the major shapes, just that, and try to make it as simple as you can, don't dig into the needy greedy details, only focus on the propotion overall, in a very abstract and simple way, the really detailed shit will come a long time after you really master that ( it hasn't come for me yet).
And second, when studying faces from reference, try to focus on a more pictoric approach, trying to see, where are generally the darkest spots, and why is that, what natural gradients you think make faces interesting ( the nose tends to be a bit darker and more contrasty for example) and exagerate these properties to the point where they don't look natural or real, try to see how much you can get away with and what works or doesn't.
Third , when building your initial heads, be very loose, instead of trying to do rounded shapes, do squarish block-ins and ve very loose when placing your features, try to allow your subconscious to guide you and don't be afraid to erase or redraw stuff over and over till you find proportions that are satisfying to you. I made a really quick demo for ya on this topic, on the left being what you shouldn't do ( it took me longer to take this approach and the result sucks) and on the right being what more or less you should give a try to. Remember, you don't need to be as precise as a surgeon when drawing faces, make them resonate with what you think a real face looks like instead of trying to get an exact copy. If you want an example of this just check out Wesley Burt's pencil portraits and really look: how realistic proportion-wise or feature-wise are those faces? and why do they seem realistic anyway?
![[Image: quickdemo.jpg]](http://i267.photobucket.com/albums/ii308/Suira/quickdemo.jpg)
Hope this helps a bit, also try to paint, and forget about drawing every now and then, some of the things you will learn will intuitively apply when you get back to your pencil.
And lastly, faces are imho the hardest subject to learn and mastering it is really hard and really time-energy consuming, so don't get discouraged if you feel your progress stagnates.
Regarding advice on faces I have a few tips since I've been where you are and I know how fucking frustrating it can be ( it still is haha). I feel that your problem is that you're trying to define in a very specific way every feature and every structure, and while that's important for you to do when studying and understand, it's something that isn't very heplfull in the stage you're in, since it will be very complicated to get proper proportions and the overall results won't look apealing to you.
My sugestion to keep advancing on your portrait studies is a bit long, but I think it will help you if you try it out:
First of all, keep up studying the asaro heads and skulls and al that good stuff, loomis, whatever you feel helps you understand the actual shape of a face, but here's a REALLY IMPORTANT tip on this. Try not to copy what you see at all, just focus on the shape you see on the facem on the major shapes, just that, and try to make it as simple as you can, don't dig into the needy greedy details, only focus on the propotion overall, in a very abstract and simple way, the really detailed shit will come a long time after you really master that ( it hasn't come for me yet).
And second, when studying faces from reference, try to focus on a more pictoric approach, trying to see, where are generally the darkest spots, and why is that, what natural gradients you think make faces interesting ( the nose tends to be a bit darker and more contrasty for example) and exagerate these properties to the point where they don't look natural or real, try to see how much you can get away with and what works or doesn't.
Third , when building your initial heads, be very loose, instead of trying to do rounded shapes, do squarish block-ins and ve very loose when placing your features, try to allow your subconscious to guide you and don't be afraid to erase or redraw stuff over and over till you find proportions that are satisfying to you. I made a really quick demo for ya on this topic, on the left being what you shouldn't do ( it took me longer to take this approach and the result sucks) and on the right being what more or less you should give a try to. Remember, you don't need to be as precise as a surgeon when drawing faces, make them resonate with what you think a real face looks like instead of trying to get an exact copy. If you want an example of this just check out Wesley Burt's pencil portraits and really look: how realistic proportion-wise or feature-wise are those faces? and why do they seem realistic anyway?
![[Image: quickdemo.jpg]](http://s267.photobucket.com/user/Suira/media/quickdemo.jpg.html)
Hope this helps a bit, also try to paint, and forget about drawing every now and then, some of the things you will learn will intuitively apply when you get back to your pencil.
And lastly, faces are imho the hardest subject to learn and mastering it is really hard and really time-energy consuming, so don't get discouraged if you feel your progress stagnates.