your structure is in place, just try to spend more time getting a likeness, and nudging the proportions to make them as true to the original as you can :)
@Fedodika: Yeah good crit dude, I definitely need to keep on nudging stuff that is wrong until it is right.
Another study of the same dude - this time in acrylics. I've been trying to be more sensitive to the psychology of making art - and it's interesting at the block-in stage my proportions were way off and I felt quite demoralized with this piece but pushing on through and nudging the proportions improved the painting and psychologically it boosted me. Going forward I can remind myself of the fact that it doesn't matter that my work looks bad when I'm starting off because as I progress, it will improve.
“Today, give a stranger one of your smiles. It might be the only sunshine he sees all day.” -- H. Jackson Brown Jr.
and a little note about abstract splatters in the background, i mean you can do anything you want but they should show a clear rythm. So the left splatters show a diagonal rythm, then you have another diagonal rythm flipped, which blocks the movement of the eye, so the eye cant comfortable travel to the next abstract splatter. If i were you i'd just have two strong diagonal rythms going behind him, instead of three, and they are all going in the same direction, so its clear where the eye should move :)
@Fedodika: Yeah thanks for the crit dude, you're right those abstract splatters are a bit of a mess. I saw some work by Romel De La Torre and loved his abstract splatters so tried to emulate him with this next piece.
Study #7 of The Crow again in acrylics. I changed my process - this time I did a careful line drawing and followed up with a more controlled block-in using a smaller round brush. From a psychological perspective, I enjoyed the whole process a lot more since the block-in didn't look like a mess. However from an artistic perspective, I still failed to get a great likeness - must try harder next time :).
“Today, give a stranger one of your smiles. It might be the only sunshine he sees all day.” -- H. Jackson Brown Jr.
The Crow study no. 8 again in acrylics. I skipped the toned background and just went straight in with the linework this time to speed things up.
Messed the linework up and I should have fixed it at that stage but I went ahead and started painting, this probably cost my a bit of time and extra paint.
Again I did the careful block-in with a smaller round brush - that worked well.
Psychologically, I felt quite demoralized because my linework looked bad (eyes were too close together), but when I fixed the problem I felt good again.
“Today, give a stranger one of your smiles. It might be the only sunshine he sees all day.” -- H. Jackson Brown Jr.
Crow study no. 9, this time from memory. Trying to see if doing multiple studies of the same subject allows me to paint straight from my head. Not perfect but definitely better than I could have done before:
“Today, give a stranger one of your smiles. It might be the only sunshine he sees all day.” -- H. Jackson Brown Jr.
Crow Study no. 10 - invention. So drawing on my previous 9 studies, I wanted to see if I could invent something. I definitely found I could do a lot more from my head and also my brush handling skills have improved. Also it was great fun doing a comic panel in acrylics :).
“Today, give a stranger one of your smiles. It might be the only sunshine he sees all day.” -- H. Jackson Brown Jr.
You always make hard edges on everything, try blurring things here and there, smearing and what not. It also never hurts to draw more because 80% of that selling point is in the accurate likeness, the rest is just edges
Hi, @Artloader.
You have very interesting process of studying. Could you please tell me, why are you redrawing one ref 10 times? What was a purpose of the crow's study? Likeliness? Structure? Light\shadow relations? You've done a great work here and I admire your patience.
I'd like to add that although you were studying from a decent photo, breaking his face into structure is for understanding form and tweaking shadow patterns for better design. For example, our foreheads have at least one top plane and two side planes. Take a look at your photo at the man on the left. It is a prominent division between frontal and side planes. You've got pretty nice frontal and side planes of the face (I mean cheeks or cheekbones), but why didn't you add a side plane of the forehead? it looks too round a big.
Actually, I know why you did so, because on the photo his forehead is completely white. This may be because of his white paint or post production. But you should rely more on the structure not on the photo ref.
Although I noticed that my processes for likeliness and studying structure are completely different. And when I try to draw from a structure, I didn't get much of similarity.
Good luck with your next study. <3
BTW, I adore the Crow movie.
@Fedodika: Spot on crit. with the edges dude, appreciate it :). I took that on board and did a bit more smudging in this next piece.
@Roanna: Thanks for stopping by :). Yeah always good to have my methods questioned, it makes me have to think hard about my goals again. So I have two objectives for doing so many studies of the same ref. over and over and they are:
1. To internalize the reference into my Visual Library. Having to study a reference so many times will hopefully mean that I record as many details as possible into my mind so that I can draw upon them when I am inventing an image.
2. To continually refine my painting process. It is really easy to see the difference each time I tweak my process when I am using the same reference over and over.
I got this idea from reading The Art Of Learning by Josh Waitzkin. He has a chapter called "Making Smaller Circles" where he argues that a deep understanding of what may well be a basic set of techniques will beat a broad but shallow repertoire of techniques.
Also, thank you Roanna for the reminder to remember to think in planes, I've been so focused on rythmns and shapes that I forgot to think in 3D.
Anyway here is my second study of the above De La Torre painting:
“Today, give a stranger one of your smiles. It might be the only sunshine he sees all day.” -- H. Jackson Brown Jr.
Try to mixing your color next to the greyscale version if you can do you know how to turn a color image into a greyscale on photoshop if that what you use as digital painting software? If you own a tablet you can put the tablet next to the canva since it much harder to paint next to a desktop than it is next to a tablet.
@Darktiste: Awesome thanks for the ideas dude. I should've thought to put in a study step where I compare side by side on the computer like that, I can instantly see a few mistakes in proportion and value. Looks like I need to push my dark's to be darker.
In the meantime I've being doing some studies of heads viewed from beneath with some Reilly rhythms to help me with construction.
“Today, give a stranger one of your smiles. It might be the only sunshine he sees all day.” -- H. Jackson Brown Jr.
youre very close! (his) top right of the skull is sunk in, the skull rounds out near the top of the head, bear that in mind, find a 3d skull ref and double check that. Sure some people have flattened sides on the forehead, but they always have a bit of roundness to them.
Ill attach an asaro head to really exaggerate what im talking about
Its rouuund on the top, be sure to compare it with skulls, also the nostrils on yours look strange, Try to go for a more graphic shape, not necessarily like this but in the ballpark so it clearly reads as a nostril and not a slit so to speak. Same with the eyes, remember the upper and lower lid are there, and bulge out with the rest of the eye
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