Self portrait

**handrawn** · 19 February 2007, 11:53 PM

Originally Posted by alanstancliff

Any hints about hair, moustaches, or anything else sketch-wise would be welcome.

Regards,

Alan

Alan

ah me and my big mouth - well here's where I'd start
course, dont know the shape of your head which don't help so I've followed your drawing

my that beard still looks bird's nest

done in painter 'cos thats what I am - leave the difficult vector stuff to you experts...

what do you think?

**alanstancliff** · 20 February 2007, 06:41 AM

Originally Posted by jamesmc

For mustaches I would recommend a comb and frequent washing as food particles and nose goblins get caught in there.

I know what you mean.

I just take the gunk off the comb and put it in the water I save from washing the moustache. Then I use that to make my instant Ramen soup.

Oh, by the way, thanks for the hints about drawing hair.

Originally Posted by handrawn

Alan

ah me and my big mouth - well here's where I'd start
course, dont know the shape of your head which don't help so I've followed your drawing

my that beard still looks bird's nest

done in painter 'cos thats what I am - leave the difficult vector stuff to you experts...

what do you think?

Well Steve, you got the shape of my head, I think. The picture looks a bit like a young Fidel Castro.

My hair is quite gray and my beard is white, which makes it difficult to do hair in a black-and-white drawing. But your drawing of hair gives me some ideas.

Below is a self portrait I made from a photo manipulation several years ago in Painter and Paintshop Pro. I am just trying to get into vector graphics.

Part of the reason I'm trying to do it in black and white lines is that I'm trying to learn how to sketch with pencil and pen on real (as opposed to virtual) paper. The nice thing about Xara lines is that Xara compensates for the tremor in my hands. Naturally, I want to try that in Xara and my graphics tablet. Maybe later I'll scan some of that stuff and upload it.

**jamesmc** · 20 February 2007, 08:01 AM

Quite a talent I must say! Very nice portrait!

Here's a visual how I do it, it can be varied in a few ways though.

In the graphic attacked I used three colors from your portrait (black, grey and white), all of which are sampled from your portrait's hair.

I put the black to the back, clone that group - make the color grey - clone that group and made it white. I used the stroke seen to the left and about 0.5 width as you displayed fine hair in the portrait. I gave it a very slight feather.

It's a little bit of work, harder with a mouse though than a graphics tablet I would imagine.

I try to work in 3 shades of the hair so depth will show as well as the variety of the hair color.

I sampled the skin around the temple region to display the hair so you can see the results. I like to use lots of layers with transparent skin color.

On skin in Xara I found if I give it either a semi-transparent base of fill or plasma as the base skin, one can get that mottling that skin tends to have.

**jamesmc** · 20 February 2007, 08:14 AM

Here's a graphic what I use for skin moddle. Easier than making a bunch of tiny dots and just as effective. This effect would probably be used one layer before any out layers of skin applied. Transparency to the skin moddle is around 90 percent flat.

**handrawn** · 20 February 2007, 08:39 AM

Really nice portrait Alan I can see you got the idea of how hair lays already

Nice tip Jamesmc like it

Originally Posted by alanstancliff

Part of the reason I'm trying to do it in black and white lines is that I'm trying to learn how to sketch with pencil and pen on real (as opposed to virtual) paper. The nice thing about Xara lines is that Xara compensates for the tremor in my hands. Naturally, I want to try that in Xara and my graphics tablet.

S' like riding a bike: you'll wobble like heck until you get the hang of it; some artists have even made it a feature of their work.
No substitute for watching others do it in the flesh, and reverse engineering what you admire in print - its as different from painter as painter is from xara, especially if you wish to do representational, as opposed to interpretive, art

PS I thought Rasputin on a good day [if he had one]

**Intbel** · 20 February 2007, 12:52 PM

Alan, as I'm working on portrait stuff at the moment I did a vector version of your countenance.

Not good, by any means, but there may be something in the .xar file you can use.

**alanstancliff** · 20 February 2007, 06:30 PM

Golly James, Steve, and Ray,

Thanks a lot for the hints. You've given me lots to think about and play with. And thanks to everyone else who put in suggestions.

**GeoBen** · 21 February 2007, 05:57 PM

James...

a very interesting touch...

can you explain it a lil more?

geo.

**alanstancliff** · 23 February 2007, 08:18 AM

I had another go at it. I tried to do mostly just lines without too much in the way of shading. It's different. I don't know how good it is or how much it looks like me, but here it is.