Self portrait

[Fly]

well i painted me.
and here it is =)



And a photo of me I'm using a mirror though


critiques greatly appreciated!

[Softskin]

Can we see an actual picture of you? Everything looks very soft.. try using a higher opacity on your brushes and 100% hardness, just to draw out some stuff and make it more concrete.

[Fly]

yeah a photo would help :p
its an old photo though all I got.


hardness in painter? ill have to have a fiddle with the settings.

[Izzard Axel]

The hairline is what stands out to me most, the hair doesn't seem to belong on the head, it looks detached in a way.

Don't quote me on this, but I also think there shouldn't really be so much skin showing in the hair area, and the parts that are showing should be in shadow, so they'd look like the hair color anyway. Oh and there's floating skin on the right hand side of the head if you didn't notice that yet.

The only other problem presenting itself to me is the eyes. They look too bright for the lighting used, they seem to have a bit of light being emitted from them. Hah, headlight eyes, that gave me some funny mental images...

Otherwise, I'm liking the colors, and the lighting so far. Keep on working, and post back.

[inspector Lee]

I also see what Izzard Axel is talking about. You've painted a very dense head of hair, and at the hairline we see flesh but no shadow cast on the scalp from that hair. I think that is what's making it feel as though his hair is floating off your head. The other thing about the hair is that it doesn't look like your hair ,which isn't that thick and goes in many different directions (at least in the photo of you). Izzard Axel's comment about the eyes is dead on as well. It also has some structural and anatomy issues, but what's really killing this for me is all the black in the shadows. Right now it looks like you just worked 14 hours in a coal mine and are covered with coal dust. The shadows shouldn't be that dark and they should have more color in them.

[Fly]

Thanks for the feedback!

Given him bit of a hair cut darkened the eyes and done some tweaks here and there.
gotta do something with the chest..

[Fly]

seemed to of broke the thread there...

[Saramel]

Another little thing is the lips - in the photo of you, you can see that your bottom lip is bigger than your upper lip, but this is reversed in the portrait.

[cl0aked]

Hey man. I'd suggest you work on the drawing a lot before adding value or color. Try analyzing every pencil stroke, with what feature is that stroke aligned, what's the distance to that feature, and so on. The key to likeness is getting the distance between the features right.

In your portrait, your eyes don't look aligned and they look a bit too big for your face. Your nose looks like it's completely vertical (the nose line is very similar to the line of the left cheek) and it looks like it's pending to one side. You shaded the right side of the nose but left out some parts. The right cheek should also be shaded, as it is on the same plane as the right side of the nose.

You did a great job with the rendering, really good, but I'd suggest going a bit back to the drawing and fixing it. Try studying a bit of Loomis, copy the drawings, specially the ones about the planes of the head. Bridgman has some too, recommended as well.

I also did a quick paintover to explain what I mean, hope that's ok!

if the attachment doesn't work: http://a.imageshack.us/img825/4909/paintover.jpg

[Fly]

Lips eye and planes redone

cl0aked: "I'd suggest you work on the drawing a lot before adding value or color."

That I definitely need to work on. Pencil I am fine with it but as soon as I go digital I get overconfident. paint overs are fine =)

[MT-Mystic]

If your neck is still the same size as in the photo, then you've painted your neck WAY too thick. There is definite improvement over the original, though, so keep it up.

[alex_86]

Ok, I've attempted a paintover, and I apologize if you don't look like this from 3/4, but I've done my best with what the photograph you posted implies. Basically, I just tried to focus on a few fundamental things...

- hard jaw line, which is very obvious from the photo
- butt of the chin is slightly taller than it is wide
- hair line is fairly flat across the forehead
- hair itself is more horizontally oriented (not buzz cut)
- nose goes from thin bridge to wider tip
- the direction of the nostrils I found also to be important
- eyebrow shapes very unique, flare towards the edges
- eye shapes also important, arched on top, flat on bottom
- skin above eye appears thin, not very bulgy
- neck is not a tree trunk, tried to suit the head better
- upper lip quite thin, and lower quite large comparatively
- face is not quite so wide as you've painted it, more narrow
- front of forehead taller than it is wide (or maybe is square)

I think you definitely got the general incline of your face correct, but then widened the face, smoothed out the jaw, and missed a bunch of other stuff that's really important to your likeness. Since you seem to not be drawing directly from reference, try to figure out what stands out to you in the 3D form of the face. Feel it out with your mind a bit, and then try to convey that from a different angle. That's what I ended up doing, and hopefully it's at least come out ok I really dunno. Let me know I guess...

[Fly]

sorry bit of a late response again....
fixed a few bits here and there.
alex_86 and MT-Mystic
thanks for the replies.

oh and my nose isn't straight..it sticks out in he middle =)

[RufousPlumage]

Yep, looks a lot more like you now. I was going to suggest you take in the jawline a little but it appears you've already done that. Now I think just sharpening up the shadowed areas would be a good idea to give the thing more volume. c:

[Sunny]

I think this is mainly tough for people to critique on because we dont have a photo of you that is the same angle and content of your image. you should have one for reference. if you are making stuff up then you will be off in a big way. Trying to do a side portrait based on a front image and being accurate would be very very tough.

edit/ I took the last image you had done and reworked it into a more finished portrait. I had to do this based on your front profile image so it was a fun challenge, i think I made your neck too long, but otherwise I hope it looks like you.

The first thing I did was flip the image. I did that to be able to look at it in a new way. Then I reoriented it and started adjusting the skin color. You made your skin very tanned which doesnt look right compared to the image. I chose colors that were the same as the image, this was to get it to look similar. Then I used the liquefy tool to move parts around till they had the right proportion, mixed with painting. The trick really is to start simply. Yours starts out very details, like your trying to put in painterly details. The truth is that painterly details come out as you try to make a clear image. It just depends on the brushes you use. So I softened a lot of the areas and kept working at it.

I hope it helps.

[Fly]

This should make it a bit easier. me about 5min ago.
using a mirror though to paint :)

[Sunny]

thats a great reference. the lighting is quite dark but its a good photo for being able to see the shapes of your face. Wouldnt take much to alter what I have to look like you now. I wonder if a mirror is actually harder to work from than a photo. If it is then I suggest you start with the photo.

[Fly]

yeah a mirror is defiantly harder. Why I am doing it that way.

Small update. ill get there eventually =)

[TASmith]

You're drawing the features, but with no structure, so it bears no resemblance. Here's a collection of links on anatomy/structure of the head:

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/sho...64#post2906664

[SoufMeng]

Tas, I agree but !

Fly, you're drawing things that arent there and not drawing things that are. You really need to do it the other way around.
Plus you're overmodelling in the shadow; look at yourself with eyes squinted and you'll see a lot of details disappear but it still looks like you. Get the broader shapes of light and shadow correct and it'll be a good self portrait before you render the chaps on your lips.

Might help:
http://www.gfxartist.com/features/tutorials/7731

[Angelsway257]

Hey, when i first looked at it, i thought oh no, he has too many wrinkles. But i think you've fixed it well on the second image!

[Fly]

right been away for a while practising. Thought its about time I do another one of these see how I am doing.

First I should probably post the final of the last one...
And the new so far
first task working out how to take better photos

[Kiera]

Just one person shouted Loomis? How come?
The main problem behind those portraits are not skin tones or color but lack of structure and knowledge of face anatomy. Try to get those down.

Just one quick critique: Touch the underside of your jaw - how many fingers can you fit between your chin and the beginning of your neck?

Right now it looks like your neck is directly attached to your chin.

Edit: Solution to the whole photo thing:
Laptop/Mac with Photobooth (it has a function that lets you shoot 4 photos within 2 seconds or so).
Take some photos from your pretty face and draw it from all different perspectives and angles.
30 small portraits will give you far than trying to paint this portrait until perfection.

[Frida Bergholtz]

Remember that likeness to a specific person does not depend so much on the shape of the eyes, mouth and nose and so forth but rather how those feautures align to each other. Measuring the distances between the eyes and the tip of the nose to the lips and so on is how we recognice eachother. And beacuse of that we can see who is who despite all the different facial expressions humans make that changes the shape of the eyes brow and mouth completely.

So before you start trying to paint the perfect eyes you have to get all the distances and angles right, because if you don't get that right, it will never look like you no matter if the lips are a perfect likeness.

[Fly]

Right had a quick fiddle with the neck and chin area. 3/4 fingers..
Frida that's an interesting point never thought of it like that.

[Fly]

quick practice with the planes before I make a mess of everything in real paints...

[Fly]

..and the mess in real paints

[Fly]

Right another attempt.
Think i messed up the top of the head and made it too high...

Oh and thanks for all the replies =)

[Fly]

tried with a photo this time....

[Swamp Thing]

The reference photo is NOT good. The light is really bad (too dark, too ambient and light source comes from behind you...) and it was captured too close, creating a distortion.

Also some side notes:
If you have the chance, don't use photographs as reference. Especially when drawing self portraits, you have the great advantage of using a mirror. You can analyze your face and learn understanding the forms in a 3dimensional room, how skull looks underneath the skin and how it is crucial for the shapes in your face, and how it defines hard and soft light to shadow transitions. Read Andrew Loomis - Drawing the Head and Hands for some useful information, especially for constructing heads before starting the actual drawing.