Subject: This is really good advice.
Author:
Posted on: 2017-12-14 15:45:00 UTC
I now feel like I understand how to colour skin. I'm not saying I can successfully do it, but I feel like I understand how. You have explained very clearly. :) Thank you.
hS
Ok, I am a day late posting this, but I am going ahead anyways. So, December has begun and I am here to here to announce the beginning of another monthly challenge called Character Drawcember. Yes, this is an art challenge not writing challenge; and PPC is a writing community. However, I think writers benefit from this particular challenge as well, especially in terms of characterization. I'm probably going to do this over two months because exams.
The rules are pretty simple, there are basically no rules. You can use whatever medium, whatever style, whatever characters you want (you could use your agents or even the results from that superhero round robin we did).
Here is the link for the prompts:
http://laurenwallaceart.tumblr.com/post/103949352875/introducing-character-drawcember-this-is-a
I highly encourage you guys to try this out, especially if you are in the middle of creating some characters. You don't have to be a good artist to do this; art is art regardless of technical skill, I'm not a good artist myself. You don't even have to finish it on time, I'm probably going to do this over two months.
I did the third prompt first, because... well, I felt like it. Anyways, here is my redesigned character. He isn't old per se, in fact, he is actually pretty new; he did go through a lot of changes though, which is why i chose him.
Ah, my little brother, where to begin. He's pretty smart, and strong too, I can always rely on him to back me up. He can be a bit demanding at times, but I allow him his bratty moments.
-Shinonome Azusa
Kaede is great, I really admire him. He is really smart, and could always think of something to get us out of a bad situation. Although, there was that one time we were hopelessly outclassed. I just wish he would be less hard on Azusa for making rash decisions.
-Shinonome Tsubaki
I sort of copped out on the senior part by using an immortal character, but 90 percent of the characters I am working on are immortal anyways so yeah. (I'm just making excuses here) 
Awwwww! Captain, you were so cuuuuuute!
-Yin, upon seeing a photo of him as a child
Omigosh! I can't believe we got selected for his squad, I can totally see why they call him *insert cool epithet here that I have not thought of yet*. He's so cool, I still can't believe he beat all five of us during training.
-Azusa, being super excited
I really like the flare effect on his magic eye; it's nicely done.
I think the cloak would probably cast shadows on his skin? It looks like you might have a bit on the collar, but adult!Captain's left-hand side (over his sword) could probably do with some darker shading, to capture just how shadowed it is.
I like the fact that you've managed to keep his hair the same at the front, while still differentiating it at the back.
Oh... but I'm adding this to the list of Drawcember Men Don't Have Nipples images. ^^ (I, obviously, have neatly avoided this issue by only drawing women - and women with their tops on, at that! That means I get to poke at it each time it comes up. ^^)
hS
Okay, here it is, the inside of the Shinonomes' room. I'm still not quite sure if this is going to be a student dorm or some kind of military barrack. (Damn, I really have to finish my worldbuilding.)
Can you tell which bed belongs to whom?(including the third bed with a teddy bear behind the camera)
P.S. what are we going to do once this thread gets bumped off the main page?
What mad alternate universe is this?
(As you will see when I get my #4 up in a few minutes, this is rampant hypocrisy.)
I think the differentiation of the beds is a nice marker of personality, but... where's all their stuff? Having nothing makes it look like you forgot it exists, whereas having only a few things - a lamp, a mug, essentials of that kind - looks like a deliberate choice. You could also use that to distinguish the two bed-sides a little more - you just know that the one on the left has glasses of water from the last three nights left on the table in various states of fullness.
hS
I really need to work on my background skills. Usually if I really need a background, two characters are interacting so I never really drew a big background like this.
Other than that, it looks pretty good as far as lines and angles go. I can tell you didn't use a straightedge the whole time, but it's only really obvious on the left-hand table and the books.
With all that wall space, though, it's very apparent that there's nothing on any of them. I guess there wouldn't be if it's a barrack, but there would if it's a dorm. Posters, weapon displays, mirrors, lights, sheets, whatever else people hang on their walls... anything to show the personalities of the people who live there. And your characters clearly have personality to display. {= )
(I'm dreading this prompt. So many details go into a well lived-in room, and it all has to line up with the vanishing point, and scale properly, and ugh.)
When this thread drops off the front page, we can start a new one.
~Neshomeh
Here is my protagonist. I know she is not wearing very much, there is a reason for it other than "it's sexy" and has to do with how a certain type of magic works in universe. I'll be happy to explain if anyone asks (long story). Coincidentally, it is the same reason as to why Kaede and Yue aren't wearing much either.
She's strong, crazy strong. There is no one else I would rather fight beside. Unfortunately, she's impulsive; if there is something no one is stupid enough to do, Azusa is going to do it.
-Shinonome Kaede
She is always so cheerful and energetic, even on bad days. It seems like life is just one big party when she is around, if there is something interesting happening near by, she is definitely going to charge head first into whatever is going on. Maybe she should try and be more careful so she doesn't get in trouble as often as she does.
-Shinonome Tsuaki
Is that the English bowmen "come and get 'em" gesture she's making, or something else?
I think her chest came out really well. It looks three-dimensional and well proportioned to her torso, and the top looks like something that would actually stay on. ^_^
Her shoulders could use a bit more development, especially if she's meant to be a strong character. The raised arm in particular, with the small, round joint, looks a bit doll-like.
~Neshomeh, trying to spread the concrit around.
Well, here is my antagonist, with the loosest definition of antagonist being applied here.
Yue may be a criminal, but he isn't a bad person. He would never hurt someone defenseless and is the most loyal person ever. I know he would never betray me. It broke his heart to have had to fight the Shinonome trio, we used to be so close.
-Xing
He caught me off guard last time, I never thought he would get so powerful so quickly. He almost killed Azusa, I'm gonna get him for that. Yue, Xing... when did it go so wrong?
-Shinonome Kaede
He's, um... he's missing something... ^_~
Once again, I have to complement the facial expression here. Yue looks super excited to be in this fight; I'd imagine it's a training bout, possibly from before he turned against the Shinonomes. And the way his eyes stand out from the rest of his face really draws attention to them.
I think there's something subtly off about his proportions, though: it looks like his head is to scale with his arms, but his body and legs are a bit too large for them. Might be worth taking a look at.
I really have to comment on those trousers, though - the rumpling is very nicely done. Not overdone, but clearly and cleanly evoking exactly what you wanted. Nice.
hS
A good rule of thumb (lol, shush) is that the hand should be about the same length as the face from chin to hairline.
The body has lots of convenient lengths like this, such as the foot being about the same length as the forearm and an average person being about seven and a half heads tall. Here is a tutorial by my favorite drawing resource artist with some of these proportions included.
Everything gets exaggerated a bit when you're doing anime characters, but it's good to have an understanding of real anatomy anyway. {= )
~Neshomeh
I do agree it is necessary to know anatomy. As for hands, those are a b*tch to draw, but I will practice more, I really want to improve.
You need more hand practice, but the rest is solid.
[Checks] Well, it still says PPC Board, so I assume yes... :D
I'm going to start by saying I really like the expression on Kaede's (I assume his full name is Shinonome Kaede, but 'little brother' could be an idiom I guess) face; I know it's pretty simple, but he really looks like he's intensely focussed. The whole image looks like he's doing something like telekinetically lifting a heavy object - it's hard, but he's not letting it beat him.
The eye is most definitely drawn to his face and hand, but I feel like his hands are slightly out of proportion. I think the thumbs are too short? I'm personally appalling at hands, but that doesn't mean I can't comment on them. ^_^
I'm also going to highlight your shading here; as another thing I'm trying to learn, I'm impressed in particular by the legs. Nicely done.
(Also, I don't think the prompts are 'in order' - you do those 3+1 images in each week, in whatever order you choose.)
hS
I'll never make it, but I've been blocked for so long, I'd like to try and shake out of it. I'm in.
Now, who the heck counts as an antagonist...?
~Neshomeh
Here's a protagonist (Derik) and an unused character, redesigned (his dragon). Except the dragon was never really mine, and is more, er, deceased than unused. So, cheating. But I've wanted to draw this image forever, so close enough. {= )
It's obviously in a rather early stage, seeing as I haven't figured out what I'm doing with Derik's right hand or Skepnadth's whole body yet. Nor do I know what Derik is sitting on. Maybe a rock or a log or something, I dunno. I think he's gonna stay topless, though, because a) it's fun, and b) his revised backstory has him serving somewhere in the Southern Continent, maybe Eastern Weyr, so it's hot.
Despite using Gerard Butler as a reference, there is still some ephemeral Gerard Butler-ness I seem unable to capture. Argh. Also, I may have gone too far with the near shoulder, but he is supposed to be kinda huge in the shoulders, so I dunno. What do you think?
~Neshomeh
I'm gonna start by saying that I love the detail on the heads - all three of them, counting that beautiful harp [/Dafydd]. Skepnadth looks completely relaxed, just gazing at Derik, while Derik looks both focussed and faintly amused. And harp!dragon is just super proud to be here, guys - it's her big break, so she's giving it all she's got! [/Dafydd... again]
I don't think Derik's shoulder flags up as wrong (though I note that he, too, is missing something ^_~), but I can't follow the line of Skepnadth's neck for love nor Marks. I think he's got a 90-degree bend in it? There's definitely something weird going on with him spine.
(I'm also being thrown off by the lack of him body. It ought to be curving waaaaay up as it heads to the right, but as it is that sweeping curve looks like a back leg, making him the most truncated dragon ever.)
(Also, confession: at this point I realised I had consistently referred to Skepnadth as 'she'. :O I apologise profusely, and have no idea why that happened.)
I like this picture. I hope you get it finished, because I think it'll be really good. And I really do like that harp. [/Dafydd... nah, it's just me, really]
hS
(No, Dafydd can't have it; he's got one of his own. And Derik doesn't have this one anymore, anyway, though he is due to come into possession of an Elvish one in an unwritten mission...)
I think Skepnadth's neck is going to have to decline away from the POV, and then his body will incline back towards us, so his back end will be more forward. Something like that.
And I will make sure there is a bulge. Just for you. ^_~
~Neshomeh
Though probably also true. I wasn't looking.
hS
So... nipples, then?
~Neshomeh
This is what I did in a couple hours this morning. Gall, being a brat with a mace, just prior to having it taken away from her and broken in two.
If other people are going to give concrit, I won't do it for them. I will just say, though, that foreshortening is a b*tch and I know I'm bad at it. ^_^
~Neshomeh
Here it is all colorified:
It may have come out a little over-saturated? I used saturated colors on the costume on purpose, because it's a superhero costume, bu then I tweaked the value and color levels a bit in the GIMP to whiten up the background. I dunno. But I'm very pleased with it in person. ^_^
~Neshomeh
Kaitlyn's comment: 'That person looks way too happy for someone who wants to kill me,' which I think speaks to Gall's character. :D
You're right that the pose fixes itself when coloured, and I have to highlight both the hair (look, I'm an elf, it's our Thing) and rhe muscles as well-done.
hS
Because who needs three sketches when you can obsess over one! {= D
While this is definitely more readable, I feel like the first one had more energy somehow? Eh, oh well. I like being able to show off her musculature in this costume, anyway. Gall is buff.
~Neshomeh
I think, unfortunately, it's because of the pose - the way her arms are now, she looks more like she's going 'ta-da!', or possibly dancing. That mace is heavy - it should be drawing her arm after it as it swings.
Moving onto the rest: that hair! O.O I love it. I can see exactly what you're visualising, and it works really well.
You've fixed the armour problem, and I think you've conveyed the muscles really well; that single line on her shoulder (plus the shape of the shoulder) works excellently. (Though... she is pulling a Female Comic Character pose, with that near-ninety-degree twist of her hips...)
With that said, I have to wonder what's going on with her forearms. I assume it's meant to be armour, but - particularly on the one holding the mace - it's pretty much a cylinder. I think you've got the 3-Ding of the rear hand off, too - the armour is tilted away, so we shouldn't see it coming up around her wrist like that.
All in all, a big improvement from where I'm sitting. I do miss the skirt, though... (and Derik grabbing the 'neck' of her armour has just gotten, uh... exceptionally suggestive. ^_~)
hS
Maybe I'll make the mace-head smaller, and tighten her grip a bit. That might help fix the problem without me having to redo the whole arm again.
I disagree about the Female Comic Character Pose. I see why it looks wrong, but I'm pretty sure it'll make sense once it's all colored. She's small-chested, like most really buff women, the breastplate curves around to the side a fair bit, and there's really only a little side-butt showing. Most of what you see there is leg, rotated forward. Maybe there's not quite enough hip on the far side, though?
Glad you like the hair, and the muscles! But yeah, serious facepalm on Derik grabbing the front of the breatplate. My brain filled in a silly costume design with something that made more sense, what can I say? ^_^;
~Neshomeh
... I don't spend that much time looking at women in scanty body-armour, so my reading is entirely possible to be off. ;) As usual with my comments, don't read my confident tone as indicating that I actually know what I'm talking about!
I think part of the issue with the mace is that it seems to be coming off at an (upwards) angle to her arm; I feel like the only way that could happen is if she's deliberately holding it that way. A swing would tend to draw the mace straight, even if the arm was bent.
... ow. So, having just tried swinging a poker around with it raised above the angle of my arm, I can confirm that doing that actually hurts. It pulled wrong on a muscle somewhere near my elbow. (Don't worry - I'm fine!)
hS
I think the key is not lining things up directly in front of each other - you lose the depth. If Gall had her arm slightly bent, or her arm at a slight up/down angle (which people generally do - holding your arm straight out horizontally feels very unnatural, though I guess less so when you're swinging a heavy object), you'd be able to see part of it and avoid the 'maceborg' look. (The way the shading on the side of the mace joins with the armour to look like scar tissue doesn't help... ;))
Apart from that, I was immediately drawn to the hair and the (visible) hand. I know the hair is only roughly sketched in - you can see the shape of her skull under it - but if you ignore that construction line, I think it looks very good. It speaks to her character, and actually looks curly. (Is that a braid behind her ear? It kind of looks like one; I might need to crib that sometime.)
As to her hand, it's good! I think the shading might be slightly off - it looks like she's got a substantial pad on the non-thumb side, which I don't think is right? - but that's nitpicky; just looking at it, it'd good.
I feel like there's something going on with her armour, which I think comes from treating it like cloth. You've got it near enough in the plane of the page at the shoulders, but skewed round with her hips further down; a solid plate (metal or leather) wouldn't do that. It would... I guess it would ride up on the back shoulder? Not sure.
In contrast, the skirt works very well, and (though they're only loosely sketched) her legs also worked out. They look leg-shaped, and capture the dynamism of her movement.
hS
Yeah, I'm gonna have to do something about the leading arm. I think it might be better if there were any way to know how big the mace-head is supposed to be, but there isn't. For all anyone looking knows, it really is the size of her actual head.
I'm probably gonna change the armor completely. I just threw on a Generic Breastplate to have something there and a leather skirt so it didn't look like there was nothing between the breastplate and her legs. >.> She has thigh plates, too (which I'm sure have an actual name I'm not recalling right now), but you can't really tell anymore. Anyway, in the RP where this actually happened, she's dressed up as Hawkgirl a la Justice League, and I think I'm gonna use that. Though I was surprised to be reminded how little that breastplate actually covers. Derik grabbed the edge of the plate at the neck at one point, but there is no neck. Just cleavage. *facepalm*
The hair is supposed to be braided, yes! I've yet to decide exactly how, but it's good to know the back part works for that. ^_^
Thanks!
~Neshomeh
It looks correct except that you chose a pose that doesn't give an interesting silhouette. At first glance, her mace head seems to be coming straight out of her shoulder.
... And I find an old series of mugshots I started back around when I was doing the ID cards, and a reasonably decent sketch of Ilraen, too! These don't count for the challenge, of course, but I thought I'd share anyway.
These are... okay. Not great. Details in the dA notes.
I like this! Except for the hair; curly hair is really annoying and hard to get right. I might finish this at some point, though.
~Neshomeh
Henry's hair is so scruffy, I just want to ruffle it. ^_^
I'm actually having difficulty offering concrit here, because you've already done it all yourself! I think Castor is a pretty good stab at androgynous, but would probably peg them as female if pushed (or young teenage male, I guess). And I absolutely agree with you about curly hair.
One thing I will note is Henry's pose (he's the only one with arms, so...). There's a definite air of 'hiiiiii, there's nothing wrong here, don't, um, don't look in the kitchen' about him, both in his face and in the positioning of his arms. I don't know if you were aiming that way, but if so - it worked.
hS
This is kind of cheating, because she's a pre-existing AU character in her own right, but...
Connie of Wessex, battlefield medic with the Transfictional Canonical Defence Authority. And yes, she really does dress like that. (It's Steampunk, what can I say?)
I've tried out multiple 'new' things with this image. It's drawn about twice as large as my normal scale, to hopefully work more details in. It was also drawn from a photo which includes none of the details - the costume design was done freehand, including the hair (and in fact her face - I realised with this image just how different mine and Kaitlyn's face shapes are).
This is a picture I've wanted to draw for a long time. If I can figure out where the shading goes (and fix that crossbow!), I probably will colour it - her outfit is entirely white, so it's just her face and arms. (She's wearing white silk stockings, because style is one thing, and cold legs are quite another thank you very much.)
I think this is the official halfway point, or near enough. Never thought I'd get this far.
hS
The pose looks well done, and the crossbow is actually pretty decent, if a bit plain. Remember, all you really have to do is suggest to the viewer and not include every single detail, and you have certainly suggested the orientation of the crossbow decently. However, on closer inspection it looks like her crossbow is aimed straight back and out of angle with her arm.
A bit of a concern is her hair, you drew a border then added streaks to it to simulate hair. This turns the hair into a block. Hair, especially the tips, don't really have a defined edge in realistic art, so a suggestion here is to just border the sides of the mass of hair, but leave the tips open. Then use a really fine pencil and make strokes.
I feel like I lost some of the emotion in her face with this redrawing, and also a lot of the curviness of it. Now she looks angry instead of exhausted.
Beyond that... colouring. This is the first time I've tried to colour+shade, so I'm interested in comments. I did it by literally colouring over the shading; is that the best way? (I also alternated between light and heavy colouring, to add highlights to what is otherwise a fairly lightly-shaded image.)
While I'm asking for advice... my home scanner absolutely refuses to pick up the skin-tone colour, and taking a photograph doesn't work; I had to borrow the scanner at work to get this picture. How do other people get scans that preserve the colour - or are you colouring digitally? (I used coloured pencils, which is probably fairly clear from the image.)
hS
I don't know what to tell you about the scanner, unfortunately. It should just, y'know, do its job. Check your settings, I guess? Make sure you're scanning a photo/image, not a document or something? And closing the lid is important, I think?
As for coloring plus shading, that's gonna be a no. Adding color over graphite is just going to give you greyed-out colors, especially on lighter tones like skin.
When you get into colors, shadows often tend to actually be slightly blue or purple (though it depends on the color of the light source and blah blah, not really important right now). You can also tone down or deepen any color you're using by adding something from the other side of the color wheel. For instance, I used Tuscan red for the darkest shadows on Gall's leggings (dark green brightened with grass green, white highlights). I used the same combination to create the near-black portions of her cuirass and gauntlets, plus indigo where I wanted it darkest. On her skin, the darker shades are henna and a slightly greenish sandbar brown. Again, I used indigo for the very deepest shadows. Only a very little black to bring out the outlines that were muted.
Using opposite colors like this is a thing I've only just started doing (this was an early experiment in using blue shadows to make the light seem more yellow), but I have to say it works!
... And I realize it's all more or less Greek to you. But you did ask.
For reference, I'm using Prismacolor pencils; the names may or may not translate to other brands.
~Neshomeh
Including a somewhat different facial expression that I like rather better.
I think this one has gone better, but I'm still not that happy with it. I think I'll probably stop trying to use colour until I can figure it out - it's a lot of effort for results that aren't working. Connie here has a combination of greens and probably-blues in her shadows, while her dressing gown is mostly greens.
One of the problems is that I don't have any truly dark colours in my pencil set. Heck, I had to use graphite for the hair, because my 'black' is a mid-dark grey! If I ever get the hang of this, I may need to buy something different.
But it's been a learning experience, which is what counts. :) Thank you for your advice.
hS
Definitely reflects the caption. {= )
On the shadows, acknowledging that this might be due to a bad scan, it looks like you went too far on the face and not far enough on the robe. Partly because the the shadow across her nose and cheek has a mottled texture, it kinda looks like a bruise. I think the others would work if I weren't distracted by that one, though. It would also help if the skin tone were more saturated to begin with. I tend to use at least three tones for skin: First, a base layer, usually light peach for a fair complexion or beige for a sallow one. Everything gets layered over and blended back into it. Second, a pink or near-red for areas of high vascularity, like the cheeks; and third, a browner shade for less vascular areas. Plus whatever looks right for lip color, pockets under the eyes, etc. For Gall, the base tone was Deco peach, the pink was blush pink (this is very aptly named and I use it a lot), and her "brown" was light peach, because she is very fair. Plus the henna, sandbar brown, and teensiest bit of indigo for shadows, and white for highlights.
Skin is complicated. Hair is, too, and I use more or less the same process to do that: soft base coat of the lightest highlight color, mid-tone, dark tone. (Except for black hair. I'm working on how to make black hair less flat.) Definitely get good pencils if you want to keep going with this.
A good point: her right sleeve looks pretty good! The shape of the shadow brings out the roundness of the cuff, and it all looks cohesive.
~Neshomeh
I now feel like I understand how to colour skin. I'm not saying I can successfully do it, but I feel like I understand how. You have explained very clearly. :) Thank you.
hS
Firethorn is a native of Summerhithe who emigrated to the neighbouring (and moderately hostile) nation of Wintertide. All this is detailed in my gloriously-titled NaNo The Kraken-Knights of Wintertide from a few years back.
I looked on this prompt not only as a chance to play around with shading a bit more, but as an opportunity to explore the differences in faces between ages. All three are based on photos (the first two of Kaitlyn, the third of her mother), with clothes/hair modified to fit the story.
'Wilderness' sadly got a bit over-blended - it was late, I was tired - and the other two could probably do with a bit more. Other than that... what do you think?
hS
Or rather, two characters... welcome to the house of Constance and Dafydd Illian.
To be perfectly frank, I had way more fun than I should have with this, because it's absolutely stuffed with Easter eggs. Some of them are impossible for anyone other than me (and maybe Kaitlyn) to get; others are more generally PPC or Dafydd-related. A few of things I will highlight:
-That's Hera chilling on the window seat. Ilwion is probably off playing with the kids.
-Both pictures are direct copies of Lily Winterwood's Dafydd/Constance fanart, because it's my favourite piece of fanart I've ever had. ^_^
-The viewpoint is deliberately low and off-centre, both because it's more interesting and to tell a story - this is clearly one of the kids sneaking in.
-The Quenya scroll above the bookshelf reads 'Essenen Eruo, a auta' - 'In the name of God, go!'. This is the contract with Mandos that renders Constance functionally immortal in Middle-earth. The precise text is an Easter egg in its own right, too...
hS
How do you have time to draw a room this awesome? You're making me want to go back and pretty up my room during the 3 day catch up period. I really don't see anything that really needs improving. It's really good.
I think it took a good 3 hours scattered throughout the day, perhaps more. As to how I /found/ the time... luckily the children were happy to entertain themselves a fair bit (with the careful addition of a few new toys).
I started with the furniture, constructing all the lines in light pencil before going over them im dark. Then it was just a matter of looking at the spaces and deciding what should go in there. (The last thing I did was adjust the bedcovers to try and get them to look better. The second to last was removing high-level shelves above the ones I left, so as not to have to put anything on them... :D)
hS
Such a pretty space... and the view out the windows! I loooove iiiit.
Ahem. *wipes drool off chin* So. Concrit. The only thing I find off is the window seat. It seems way too deep, and I'm afraid I had no idea that was a fire-lizard until you told me. She is very tiny—not out of scale, probably, just tiny.
Aside from that, though, this is a very hard act to follow. I might skip this prompt and save myself the embarrassment. >.>
~Neshomeh wants to draw Henry at various stages of maturity.
She's gotten all smudged, I think. She'd probably work better in colour.
I can see what you mean about the window seat, and the bay window as a whole. Do you have any advice on drawing non-right-angled objects in a single-point perspective drawing? I had absolutely no idea how to line up the angles on the bay.
I put a lot of work into this one, so I'm pleased you like it. ^_^ It is mostly just geometry, though, and I actually learnt to draw by way of the 'break it up into shapes' method, so that's right up my alley. Shading, posed people, and - the Valar forbid - colouring are still a nightmare for me, though, so I think you still have the edge.
But don't skip it! At some point I'm going to redraw and colour the Connie Sims 'coffee, stat!' image; if I can bring myself to show people that, you can do a room full of Interesting Stuff to ogle.
(Though by all means do Henry first. T'ain't nowt to say you have to do them strictly in numerical order.)
hS
I like it better than algebra, and I kinda get it, and I'm finding the "start with basic shapes" technique more and more helpful, but... all the details will just take so much time, and I don't have it to spare, especially after losing some to the stress of the above mini-drama. Hence, giving the room a miss for now.
For the window seat, the angles of the sides of the seat to the walls are too shallow, I think. They should be deeper, and we should see much less of the top of the seat and the ceiling above it. Foreshortening again.
~Neshomeh
Andromeda ("Anda") Ethrax has the distinction of never being written in her original incarnation - she was supposed to be a descendent of the protagonists from The FutureTM, but I never wrote that story.
She then had a revival for some stories with a bunch of my characters meeting up, which is when I modelled her on Kaitlyn. At that point she ended up in a sort of '50s retrofuture style, with an honest-to-Asimov silver bodysuit (which deploys from her bracelet, because scifi).
Given how simple that description is, I decided to use this picture to try out some of Neshomeh's shading advice. Reversing which pencils I was using for which really helped! I also got to try out highlights, since the bodysuit has a base of light grey which could be left out for that. How well it worked... well, I'll leave that for you to judge!
(I'd also appreciate some comments on her hands; I had to sketch them both freehand, as the picture I was working from featured a pair of small children...)
I also now need to think about how to redesign Anda. Since she's both a resident of the far future and a powerful psychic, I feel like I should be able to do something exciting, but... I'm still not sure what.
hS
Also serving as a redo of the original image, to see how good I am at taking advice. ^_^
Anda is a powerful psychic - I think the term, cribbed from or inspired by Anne McCaffrey, was Prime. She's a telekine and telepath, shown here using her wrist-mounted flechette-drones. I dunno what they do, but they look cool.
I think this is a big improvement over the last one (and not just because I took Nesh's advice about the blending, though that helped!). There's some problem points in the shading - mostly the shape of the highlights - but the hands are much better (I hope!), and I think the shading on her face has improved too. But I'm always looking for more advice/concrit, so go nuts. :)
hS
First: Yay blending. ^_^ Don't be afraid to go for really dark darks, though. (I say this as someone who has struggled with this fear for years.)
Next: I think these are some of the best eyes you've done so far, which is because you're getting away from the flat footballish shape that pretty much everyone starts off doing. Eyeballs are spheres set inside holes in the head. Eyelids curve around those spheres with the corners set more deeply in the face than the fronts, and the degree of visible curve varies with how open the eye is, the tilt of the head, heaviness of the lids and surrounding tissue, and all sorts of stuff. Eyes are complex little things!
Same goes for the mouth, kinda. The right (her left) corner of the mouth looks pretty good here, because the shading on that side of the face shows the depth where the corner sinks back into the cheek. The other corner looks more flat by contrast.
... I didn't know I was all full of advice like this. >.>
~Neshomeh
Dark darks: you're right that I could probably afford to pull out the 6B pencil (this is HB and 2B on the shading, 4B for the lines); that said, Anda's bodysuit is shiny silver, so I think it's catching a lot of light.
Eyes are a nightmare; I think thinking about them as 3D objects will help me, as you suggest (that, or drive me mad...!). It either does or doesn't help that Kaitlyn wears glasses - we'll see as the month goes on.
Looking at it again, I'm actually really pleased with the right side of her face. Okay, so it's a really tiny area, but... baby steps!
hS
(PS: Keep the advice coming!)
Definitely an improvement. There's a dark dot on her stomach that keeps distracting me by looking like a very misplaced belly-button, but I don't think that was intentional?
Next step: invest in a blending stump or two. These are basically tightly rolled sticks of paper that let you smear the graphite into smooth gradients. In the meantime, though, a bit of tissue on the end of your finger works, too. {= )
I think Remnant covered the hands well enough, so I'll mention that the jaw looks a bit misaligned. It might be the way the neck connects with a straight line to the hinge just at the junction of the ear on the left. It shouldn't quite do that; there's a muscle that runs from the pit of the collarbones up behind the ear (the sternocleidomastoid) that should carry that neck line back a little. You kinda have that shaded in at the throat, but it looks like it goes straight up to her chin rather than back.
~Neshomeh
The hands actually look decent enough. However, on closer inspection, it does look like the fingers are directly connected to the wrist. Also the fingers look like there are no bones. A good way to fix this is to draw the structure of the hand before actually drawing the hand. This applies for the body as well if you draw it free hand. Everything can be broken down into component shapes, so you first construct the hands from their components, which are the palm, the fingers, and the thumb. The fingers and thumb can be further broken down into a series of cylinders, and the palm can be represented as a trapezoid or pentagon. To construct the hand simply place the components in the correct orientation and position, foreshorten if necessary. Then outline. I just realized I sound like Lego instructions.
The body looks well shaded and the shadows are correctly oriented for the most part. Everything else seems fine, though the lineart can use some cleaning up. The facial expression looks pretty good.
(As you can see, I'm not really good at concrit.)
I actually have very little for this. The expression is great, absolutely evocative of that first thing in the morning groan. I love the shading under the chin and jaw, that's perfect.
The one thing I'd definitely change is to erase the line across the end of the nose. Not the nare, that's good, but the line connecting the nare to the tip. If you colored this, you'd use light and shadow to show where that curve happens.
~Neshomeh
Yeah, I have trouble with noses when they're tipped up. I also have trouble with shading in general, which... hey, you seem to know about this sort of thing, can you help?
My problem is that I can't get properly 'light' shading to work. You can see I've tried to get the shadows running down the front of Connie's cheeks here, but every time I try, they end up looking like old-person wrinkles. Same for the shadow under her lower lip (though in this case I think it kind of works, because of how weird her mouth is being).
I actually have a set of pencils of different hardness, and my assumption has been that softer pencils are intended for shading, but they seem to lay down darker lines the softer they are. Should I be using one of them for the main lines, and the harder pencils for shading? (Or, I guess, should I be using soft pencils for shading and then inking the hard lines to darken them?)
I'm not even going to get started on colour, though I probably will be redoing and colouring this one unless Prompt #3 turns out really well.
hS
I'm no expert, but...
First, "hardness" refers to the actual consistency of the lead, so the softer the lead, the more easily you can transfer lots of graphite onto the page. Softer pencils are for darker lines, harder for lighter lines. You want to use a somewhat hard pencil for light sketching/shading, then the rest for varying depth of shadow.
(Personally, I just use a regular old .5 mm HB mechanical pencil for everything, but I have drawing pencils...)
As for shading—again, not an expert, so take this with a grain of salt—but shadows are basically for one of two things: 1) where the light is blocked, and 2) where the contours of the shape recede from the light source and/or the eye of the viewer. Highlights are the opposite.
If you're going to finish a drawing in graphite, you'll want to pick your white point and your black point. The white point is the brightest/nearest thing, the black point is the darkest/furthest thing. On a face, the shine of the eye is likely to be the brightest spot, and the pupils and nostrils are probably going to be the darkest. Note these points are not necessarily literally white and black. They're just the brightest and the darkest shade you intend to use. Everything else is somewhere in between. It's all relative, depending on the brightness and directness of your hypothetical light source as much as the actual lightness values of the subject.
Also bear in mind that the human brain is phenomenal at filling in details it expects to be there. You don't have to show every line on the face unless you're going for super-detailed true-to-life portraiture. Art relies on memes and signifiers the same way writing does, and lines on a face signify age. You do have the faintest shadow of that nose-mouth line there, and I think that's fine for the amount of detail you've got.
~Neshomeh
I had a fair amount of trouble thinking of an antagonist I'd based on Kaitlyn - for obvious reasons, she doesn't tend to be a villain in my stories! In the end I went for this deity, who starts off her story by floating around in the sea until a poor Saxon boy comes by for her to abduct. Goddesses, eh?
This is sketched fairly directly for a photo of a woman doing the same thing; I tweaked the clothing, and a few details to try and make her look more like Kaitlyn. I don't think it was very successful, but the overall image isn't bad (I hope...!). The part I'm least satisfied with is the water, to be honest - except for the submerged parts, she looks like she's lying on a duvet!
hS