WIP rendering excercise

[m.engdahl]

Hey guys!
My mentor gave me this assignment: take photo, draw with 5 different shades. Im trying, please help me out Like... does it show he has a leather jacket? Are the shades too random to follow the lil squares in the left corner? Everything and anything is welcome!

[Rabid]

There is too much of a sharp contrast in the ear shades which tends to make them look flat. Leather is a tough medium to convey but it deals with alot fo detail work and shine. Try mapping out the face and getting a base shade down so we can see ti completed and give better point areas. Since the face is about half the piece your missing a big chunk of area that I or anyone else can't give you ideas on yet....

[Sepulverture]

Looking good, when you start rendering the face be sure to keep soft shadows in mind to contrast the hard edged shadows you have for the fabric and what looks like metal. Don't forget the rule of thumb when rendering though, hard edges for bright areas, soft edges for dark areas.

Render the face, and we can crit you better.

[bluefooted]

I think it's coming along nicely.

The way I would approach the assignment would be to first decide on my lightest and darkest shades and the others in between (which you've done, apparently), then I would carefully draw some linework from my reference, making sure to define each of the areas that would have a different shade.

The face is obviously going to be the most difficult part: softer surfaces tend to have softer transitions between shades, so it's going to be harder to go from one shade to another. Big jumps in shading will make his face look like a hard surface. The shiny jacket looks 'shiny' because the transitions are sharper.

edit: Or what those other guys said while I was typing

[m.engdahl]

Sweet, thanks for all the input guys! I might have gotten the assignment wrong... this is what I got:
1: Get a nice B/W photograph, draw 5 tones going from white to very dark on your paper, and try to draw the photograph using these 5 tones where you think they should be (but start with a light linedrawing first to get proportions right.
I wonder if she means with soft transitions or just with sharp areas like in this one http://www.conceptart.org/forums/att...1&d=1195144297

Now Im all confused... again! Thanks for helping out guys, gonna start working on the face!

[kev ferrara]

My guess is fairly sharp transitions. But low-contrast at the same time. Requires pencil control.

I think you should be afraid to use your finger or smudge tool to smear some of these tones you make into a more smooth tone. This will help you see better what you are doing, rather than always looking at all the scratchy pencil strokes.