Sula's Sketchbook

[Piotr Jasielski]

Ursula, I had (and a bit still have) the same problem as You. I'm pretty bad when it comes to shape recognition, but I realized it mostly comes from my hastyness - I'm very impatient when it comes to the first phase of making the illustration, that is establishing the shape. My piece of advice would be to cool your head and approach the problem with calm precision. Analyse the shapes, what makes them characteristic and what is different in your image from the source. The key are eyes and a little space around them. This is a place where we focus our sight when we look at a face. Next is the relation between eyes, nose, mouth and the shape of the chin.

I'd also recommend You to study with a pencil and focus on the shape and values, rather than colors. They are secondary. good shape with bad rendering still looks better than bad shape with good rendering.

Hope that helps <3