Creating portraits with Xara

[Gare]

I started this thread because a lot of us basically hijacked Frances' Self-Portrait thread in the Xara Art Gallery, even though she's an excellent sport about it, thanks Frances.

I did this using some of the techniques we covered here. I began with a well-lit image of the woman, then used an Exposure setting in a different software program to almost posterize the photo, wiping out a lot of the midtones, to leave only the brightest brights and the shadow areas. This was what I was looking for both artistically and cosmetically. I wanted to reduce Tamara's portrait to the most flattering essentials we can see in a woman's face: a small recognition of the nose, most of the emphasis and detail on the eyes, a few shadows in the hair, and the rest of the portrait rendered using negative space and a lot of suggested shape without actually bothering to draw it.



Then came the auto-tracing, which required an awful lot of clean-up and manual drawing to replace awkward shapes, and then with a four color palette in violets, I recolored the image from a greyscale copy, exactly as I did with the Piper picture right here

At best, drawings that are intended to mimic photos almost parallel the photo itself (unless you draw each grain of silver, or pixel). But as the artist gradually backs away from every single detail, there grows room for interpretation, and the 2¢ the artist contributes to shape and ultimately make the drawing a part of their own portfolio. Naturally, you need to take the photo yourself or ask for permission, but my point is: sometimes, an artistic treatment of a subject is to reveal as little as you can while still retaining the meaning of the portrait and the message you want to share. The photo of Tamara had her posed a little shy, and I pushed that to the logical extreme...much of her face is so shy, it's hidden.

My Best,

Gary


My Best,

Gary

[gray]

Interesting technique, Gary. After you posted Patrick Nagels name I looked up his work. His drawings are so simple yet so very complex and stunning to look at. They lend themselves well to Xara vectors. I thought I would try to draw a face in the same style as Patrick's work. The nice part about these types of drawings is they don't take 50 hours to complete yet they still tell a story. My effort below.

[stygg2003]

Nice image gray, is your image a complete free hand drawing or a line drawing from a photo, either way it is very good.

Stygg

[Gare]

Graham, you nailed it in one!

Bravo!

(Add a few highlight strands to the hair to break up the solid field of black)

I used Patrick Nagel's style to draw both male and female portraits for years, marker and colour pencils.

I'm happy to have rekindled an interest in a very influential artist during the 1970s and 1980s as part of a return to Art Deco in American Pop Art.

My Best,

Gary

[Manoj]

Thanks for the reference to Patrick Nagel. I'm always looking out for simplified ways to do portraits! My inspiration for that has been Julian Opie...his style lends itself very well to vector work. Though sometimes you get people saying "but my eyes don't look like buttons..."

Here's a more detailed image I did a year or two back. Portraits are always tricky to do!

[Gare]

I really, really like the posterization of the tones on Pam, Manoj.

It distracts me from the skin tone falloff, and makes me concentrate on the geometry of her face, of which you used minimal lines.

Great work, and there's a simple technique for drawing eyes, not around the eyes but the eyes themselves, if anyone cares for my 2¢.

My Best,

Gary

[gray]

Stygg, that was just a quick little drawing to duplicate Patrick's style so it's just a simple trace. If you wanted to add the step of free handing it would be fairly simple to make a pencil drawing first, then upload it to xara and draw it in vector. I wouldn't try to draw it free hand in vector though.

Manoj, that looks great. Love the style you've used for the portrait.

[gray]

This ones for Stygg. I drew a crude and quick freehand drawing in pencil, took all of two minutes, just to see how easy it would translate to this style. Scanned it and uploaded into Xara and then drew in vector, refining where I needed to. I'll call this one pretty lady 2. One could have a lot of fun with this style.

[Gamerprinter]

When I create portraiture in Xara, I shoot for it to resemble a painting and not vector, even though its entirely created in vector. I created this illustration of Tomoe Gozan, a famous female samurai from the 10th century. I created this about 2 years ago, as an illustration for my Way of the Samurai (PFRPG) product.

[stygg2003]

Thats pretty good for a pencil drawing gray, it certainly translates to the style of your first one, I'll give it a go, although my freehand pencil drawing is 0. Thanks for posting.

Stygg