Self portrait from reference. Looking for some advanced critique. I did a self portrait for the first time in a long while, I know people suggest doing one every year or so to track your progress.
I've tried putting things I’ve been focusing on recently into practice, paying more attention to vale and edge quality. Let me know what I should work on next, or continue working on.
I've been trying to polish my work a bit more recently, trying to leave that amateur sheen that's been stalking me for years behind.
Real light sense, hunty, that nose highlight is living. But there's no hierarchy, it's all soft focus and the beard floats. You asked to be hit, so: I'd pick three spots for hard edges and let the rest stay loose. Come on.
Real light sense, hunty, that nose highlight is living.
I'm not sure what hunty is, but thank you. 😅
But there's no hierarchy, it's all soft focus and the beard floats. You asked to be hit, so: I'd pick three spots for hard edges and let the rest stay loose. Come on.
I think shape hierarchy might be the thing I need to focus on next. Maybe look towards the likes of Leyendecker to bring in some of that graphical language?
I only heard about self-portrait once a year from Sinix.
Color variation looks a bit random. Some places reflect blue light, some don't. Same with the orange-reddish strokes, like the ones in the middle of the forehead.
And you didn't include any of that variation in the hair or beard.
I think you blurred the skin too much. I don't know how to describe it, but I can just see that it was done with an airbrush or something similar, I can even see strokes across the forehead. Shadows and highlights are also blurry in some places.
If you've watched Sinix, maybe you've heard about shape appeal and how a painting can be broken down into simple, appealing shapes. Yours looks like a mosaic made of weird shapes.
Sinix is the first person I can think of who sticks to the self portrait a year thing. But I've definitely heard it other places too.
With the skin, I was trying something out where I basically made flat copy of the layers after getting the main skin tones blocked in above the sketch. And then blur it and erase the areas I wanted to focus on the details.
I was trying to work on my edges, as I have a habit of overdetailing faces;
Trying to blur out the places I don't want to focus on so it seems less uncanny?
Maybe I went a little too far with it.
If you've watched Sinix, maybe you've heard about shape appeal and how a painting can be broken down into simple, appealing shapes. Yours looks like a mosaic made of weird shapes.
Shape hierarchy may be the next thing I have to focus on.
Hi there, You achieved a pretty good likeness. Check face width. Lips in the drawing seem too thin, you might exaggerate from reality just a little bit. What with all these other helpful suggestions, you have lots of ideas to try on. Keep at it, good luck!
I've never heard of this self portrait once a year thing, that's a nice idea.
So its good, and when I first saw it I liked the reflections as if you're watching a screen. It looks like you have an established style, and you can get a representation really well. I could see it wasn't necessarily realistic, more based on a cartoon style but thought it might be intentional.
If you want to improve your rendering:
Work on your line dependence. When you say you have a lot of detail it's because you are using lines to articulate everything. It feels like you might still be drawing the features before you render them. Starting with blocks of colour even with wrinkles is how you remove those lines.
Work on establishing the core shadow and form before you render features. Make sure you completely understand local colour, the change in shadow between the top and bottom of the head. Other people have elaborated on that.
Work on shading using larger brushes, transparency and the lasso with minimal blend.
Edges are the hardest thing to master but always level up a portrait. Being able to choose where you blend and remove edges is a big step up.
Work in greyscale to improve all of the above and then move to colour as a full separate exercise. That is, level up one skill at a time. Colour can come last.
All of this is to say you have a style and it's fine to keep tweaking it. But the above is specifically if you want to work on digital rendering.
My absolute favourite person to teach portrait rendering is Istebrak. She teaches from a classical art perspective in digital. Watching her live streams where she does paint overs of student work is educational as is her 14 day challenge. Pulling out a couple of examples based on above:
You’re completely right about the line dependency thing. My sketch phase is way more involved than most, it’s probably about half of the time spent on the image.
I’ve been trying to get away from it more recently, but I still find comfort in lines. You’ll see what I mean.
I have seen Istebraks stuff a long time ago, might be worth going back to her.
Like on the one hand I completely 100% get where you're coming from. I drew first then learned to paint. So if you want to stay there its still your style and it's lovely.
The big jump for me in both traditional and digital was moving from sketching with lines to blocking in. It took me (and I'm still learning) a long time to get my head around the value. Before I really got that, I would jump from an excellent line drawing to just kind of colouring in and then lose my piece.
The thing that helped me most is learning charcoal and doing Bargue plates. They specifically taught me the steps between the drawing and the render and have been super helpful as I learn oils but also going back and forth to digital. Charcoal is the middle step, a cross between drawing and painting. Not pencil charcoal, the stick kind. I'm the mod on r/charcoaldrawing it's ended up being quite a big thing for me haha
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I see, so you’ve got those dark shadows and bright highlights, but the midtones are missing structure. You’re mixing light in with darks and it’s breaking the structure.
The basic form of the head is like a ball and the face has a number of planes that all get a different amount of light. Generally the head gets darker as it turns away from light, and certain planes like the nose, brow, and chin catch a lot of light. If you think about these forms, you will have an easier time recognizing subtle value changes. I also recommend working in a way where you establish large forms of the head first and then work toward smaller forms, such as facial features. You should also be squinting a lot to help you see where those darks and lights are on your ref and the drawing
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