Blonde Portrait

[handrawn]

the hair was worth the effort very good

[iamtheblues]

I have to agree with Steve, a good hair day!
Very nice work indeed, Michele.
Saludos,
Bob.

[Purrfeck]

Hi John, Penny, Steve J, and Bob and thanks for taking a look and your comments.

[JokeArtist]

Just a few constructive points, that you might or might not want to play about with - which might improved the final image and make it a little more life like.

Firstly, before I launch into it. I assume that you've used layers to create the individual parts of the face. If not it might be a bit hard to implement this ideas.

1. Under the the hair it would be nice to have shadows (darker parts) around the sides and under the fringe. Hair will always cast a shadow over that part of the flesh where the two join.

2. Eye sockets - at the moment the eyes just kind of sit on the face. Even the eyes are not deeply set then there should still be a certain amount of shading around there. this also helps define the t-bar (i.e. nose and the forehead join)

3. Tear Ducts - this helps eye's look more realistic. People always think they're smaller than they actually are. If you look at any eye. you actually usually see a lot of the inner lower lid.

4. Over all face elliptical gradient - I assume that the overall back of the face is one shape and then you've used transparencies to do the highlights and shadows - so you should be able to put an overall subtle gradient fill on the face.

5. Don't be afraid of black - You have only used back on on the eyes - and it's always the way with portrait painting you want the eyes to stand out - so I've seen that you've avoided using black shadows everywhere - and went for brown so the eyes still stand out. But strangely enough if you use black on other parts as well - like the crown / split of the hair and over the shoulder-under-the-hair and under the chin - it will actually make the eyes stand out more and not less.

6. Use the same technique for the eyebrows as you've used for the hair but build them up with lots of very transparent lines rather than a few hardly transparent lines.

7. Like black - don't be afraid of white either - you can add some to the hair as transparent lines and it will really bring it out. Good painting is all about understanding two things - structure and light - and as such highlights and shadows - i.e. transparencies of black and white are your best friends. To the point you can almost forget about colours you use (look at Cezanne, or any other of the impressionists).

8. As for the background. I would get rid of the borders of black and red lines - the extra detail takes away from the face. Also the same with the two spheres in the top right hand corner - distracting.

Just a few ideas - you can completely ignore if you want. Just wanted to be helpful. I'm learning about doing portraits at the moment - although I'm more interested in using vector brushes at the moment. And mixing them up with gradient transparencies.

Have fun and and nice start to an image.

[ss-kalm]

Nice work Michele. If you decide to try JokeArtists suggestions, I would be very interested in seeing how it changes the original.

[gray]

Excellent portrait work Michelle.

[Purrfeck]

Thanks Keith and Gray for taking a look and leaving a comment!

To JokeArtist

Thank you for your enthusiasm and points on how to succeed with this piece, this is only my second attempt at a digital portrait (done in my spare time I might add), and I know its rather cartoonish in nature. But I was not really aiming for a 'realistic look' at this stage, just experimenting with techniques...
I was just wanting to be able to share with people on the forum like everyone else does. I know that there are other folk out there that may like to see this at a different level than where you are at - so that they are encouraged to have a go themselves.

I believe in supporting and encouraging people no matter what level their art has evolved to. I try to refrain from going overboard with comments and try to concider other people's feelings in the mix and perhaps their desired outcomes are not text book perfect so we should just let it be...

I'd like to think of the forums as a place to learn, grow, gather new ideas, share information and creativity in non confrontational manner...if that's possible, otherwise I wouldn't bother with it as would many others.

There are many ways and styles of doing anything particularly in the art world, should we criticize Ken Done as an example for using strong colours, or someone else for prefering charcoal or mono tone. If it is picture perfect that is required why not just use a camera and forget the artist personal style.

*Hint... How about pointing out ' just a couple of major points' along the lines the artist was trying to achieve.

After you have read this you may like to take a look at my website which may interest you, especially when it comes to portraiture, after all didn't you say you are a student of portraiture yourself... www.MicheleMowat.com

Cheers
Michele