Link portrait WIP

[Brocken]

Sort of at the point in this painting where it'd be cool to get some feedback. There's still a lot more to do, but I guess I'm mainly concerned about lighting and anatomy of the face. Thanks for looking!

[Dana_T]

Nice portrait so far! I do see some problems with the face and shadows, though. Nothing super serious. Would it be okay with you if I did a paint over?

[Brocken]

Of course, I love paintovers

[Dana_T]

Alright here goes!

Basically what I was missing from your portrait was depth. Where the tip of the nose fell to meet the mouth things began tilting off-center which gave the mouth a flatter appearance (especially when compared to your beautifully rendered eyes).
So basically what I did was center the nose, give it some more depths and shadows, and did the same with the mouth. I also punched out the highlights you already set around his face (like his forehead and cheeks). Hope this helps!

[Brocken]

wow, couldn't have asked for better help. thanks so much. And, you're right, it definitely lacked depth. It's one of my biggest struggles, most my stuff looks flat as a pancake. Thanks again!

[arenhaus]

To avoid the "flatness as pancake", you must keep yourself aware of the three-dimensional form while you draw or paint. Work as if you were sculpting, not drawing on something flat.

[Grunler]

Quick figure-ground suggestion: Try adjusting the lighting of the negative space to contrast with where the light is hitting the head. So, light on the right side of the image, dark on the left.

[Heavens]

Here's another paintover, I basically changed the outlining of his head, mainly to show where his jaw should be on the left, under the ear. Also took out a bit of his chin. Zelda ftw

[Luskan]

This looks lush so far

[Swamp Thing]

mnemonic -
1. imho, you would do better by changing the color of your background. First, because it is close to his face's color (focus point) and secondly because warm color creates the illusion of being close, while cold color creates the illusion of distance. A cold colored background also helps you to create depth by chosing to push elements away with a touch of the same color. You can lead the focus easily to the warmest elements in the picture - in your case this is the face. I've been overexaggerating the blue for depth in the overdrawing, to have you see better where depth should work for this picture.

2. Link's face imho is recognizable by his gentle, thin and very pointy nose, maybe you wanna change that.

Dana - you made mistake in your overdrawing: in 3/4 portraits, the shadows face half always shows a triangle under the eye. See in my overdrawing, how the nose shadow falls.

arenhaus - seriously, don't get me wrong, but you sometimes give really superficial answers, telling that general anatomy/lightning/shading/coloring is bad and he/she needs to learn more (by pencil). But you never point out anything, to rationate your arguments. In this case - sculpting it doesn't help, if mnemonic does not know to set highlight reflections, or making one face half darker, or about depth through color (like the stuff mentioned above)

[Heavens]

Dana did not really make a mistake. The triangle of lighting under the eye refers to the rembrandt lighting which is often used in portraits, not only 3/4 ones. Not using this lighting technique is not necessarily a mistake.

[Swamp Thing]

Actually it's known and refered generally from the movie, where triangles are one of many codes for unconscious feelings in the viewer. And sure the triangle doesn't appear always, but it appears in 3/4 portraits, where the further aways side is shadowed or any portrait where the nose sets a shadow. Rembrandt may drew many portraits, where this happened. Also, the reason why Dana's shadow was wrong, is, that the shadow of the bridge (the upper nose part), between the eyes is only appearing if the light comes directly from the side, and still it doesn't stand out as far a the point of the nose. That means, it is impossible to have a bigger shadow from the bridge than from the nose point, and definately it can't be that strong, not in this case.

http://img842.imageshack.us/img842/892/face1g2.jpg
ignore the arrows and everything

[Dana_T]

It does look like I missed that little triangle there but I was more concerned about straightening out the nose/mouth area at the time. Sorry to cause any confusion.

[Swamp Thing]

Let's forget about the triangle light, that's confusing maybe. I made a little drawing to explain the issue. Well, actually it should be self explaining. Think of the nose as a geometric form, the nose point is bigger than the bridge, and that's why the shadow from nose point is cast stronger than the bridge's. Some people have such a flat bridge, that it doesn't even cast a shadow. In any case, the bridge is rarely big enough to cast a hard edged shadow.

This shadow is also important, if you draw front sided portraits, and want to show how long somebody's nose is, or what form his nose has (apart from this, there are other "tricks" of course).

Also you may see portraits where you have a shadow coming from the eye sockets (something, that makes people look older, or tired, or sick, or skinny, or whatever), which could be missinterpreted as part of the nose shadow.


@ Heavens

Beside how far the bridge sticks out, I noticed in your overdrawing, that the upper nose is too broad. The bridge must not be as broad as the lower nose (and nasal wings)

[Brocken]

Thanks everyone, I'm gonna carefully re-read the comments later and try to have an update late tonight or tomorrow.

[Heavens]

Swampthing, the point of my drawing was to show where the edge of the jaw should be in relation to the mouth.
I may have drawn the nose too quickly starting from the eye socket and it might as well be wrong, but that does not change the fact that depending on where you are standing in relation to the light, that triangle might or might not show (although it is better when it does).
Try it for yourself, I already did.

[Swamp Thing]

It doesn't matter what your purposes where. If you or somebody else made a mistake (or an issue that existed worse than it was), somebody actually should say something about it.


And of course, the triangle is not showing up every time, and I wonder how you couldn't see I confirmed on that so many times now, as I wrote that now for probably the 3rd time.
With my first post, I only wanted to say, that this thread's picture, in this perspective + light relation will be showing a nose shadow that will create a triangle. Eye sockets and cheekbones can create triangles too, if the light is strong enough and fitting for that. Now let's keep it like that.

[Brocken]

Okay, primarily an update on the nose and lighting on the face(I wanted to work on it last night, but couldn't get to painting). I think it's close to how I want the look of the nose, so hopefully it's okay geometry-wise. I also darkened the background a tad, and made it slightly more red. I think it makes Link pop a little bit more and still keeps the warm colors that I want to stick with. As far as overall style, I'm not going for photo-realism and I would like to stay a bit on the cartoon-y side. Perhaps a little FF: Advent Children (except with warmer/more saturated colors and a little less anime influenced). I still have more elements to the picture that I need to add (as long as they don't take too much focus away from Link).

[SoufMeng]

I think it's close to how I want the look of the nose, so hopefully it's okay geometry-wise.

Much better, it could still use just a minor fix. The alignment of the nostrils has to be quite parallel to that of the eyes and mouth. Get used to flipping your paintings in your software or looking at them in a mirror, it'll help with symmetry.
I'd also soften the edges around his mouth a little, almost loose them at places to avoid the sharp lip-stick look.
And I'd also un-frown his brows somewhat (because he looks inexplicably pissed for Link!), broaden the jaw and add some highlights? but no biggy, keep us posted.

[Heavens]

A cold color in the bg would help in making him pop out more. The blue that swamp thing showed you is more zelda-ish imo. And I wasn't kidding about that jaw either.

[Brocken]

Allll right, flipping the canvas is KICKING MY ASS hard. It really makes me see errors, and they are plentiful. But, hopefully they are less. I'm at the point where I can't spend too much more time on the face or I'll never get the rest done. I changed the background to blue, I'm not crazy about the colors I currently have for the background, but hopefully they can work out with some slight adjustments. The tree is just the first draft. I still have more to do it, but I wanted to include it to show the overall concept for the portrait and get some feedback. After any feedback I get this round, I'm gonna try to finish the portrait, then I'll post the "finished" portrait for one last critique then call it quits on this one. Also, thanks VERY much everyone. I really got a lot of good feedback so far and it should help in the future.

[kapernish]

Decent rendering I'm seeing here!

Lips:
The lips are facing as though the face is straight on while the rest of the head is a 3/4 angle. I would take a snapshot of yourself in the mirror at a 3/4 and see how the lips wrap around your jawline as well as see as they recede.

Lighting:
Watch your light sources! The lighting o the face seems predominantly on his right side by the same method of lighting is not following the rest of his clothing. Make sure your lighting is aligning properly.

[Swamp Thing]

You may changed the background, but added the tri-force with exactly the same color like the BG hbad before. Maybe change the color into a colder lighter yellow. Also I really can't tell now, how to add depth, with having something behind Link that is cold and warm at the same time. Right now, the oranges you have on his further away body parts, look like a reflection of the triforce. Maybe change that, partwise go into blue tunes. One of the reasons for the cold background color, was to have a working color for depth.

[Heavens]

I think it's starting to become awesome with the new changes . Keep it up. Although the tree coming out of him seems a bit farfetched imo, but I don't know, that's just my opinion.

[SoufMeng]

The background is now invadingly blue, blurry and with the sharp, saturated yellow-ishy triforce symbol they steal all my attention from Link's face, which is dim, desaturated and attached to a hollowed out bust stuffed with a tree... see what I mean? your image tells me "don't look at this well rendered face carefully put right at the middle of the image because this flat blurry background is probably more interesting!"
And if you really want to only have Link's bust showing how about just making him come out of the hollow triangle of the triforce? It's sooo conventional I know but I also think Heavens' right, it's a bit strange as is (you know like some weird scarecrow).



All my rambling and paintover are just suggestions, the main point really is step back and think hard about what you're really trying to say and say it with clarity, avoid confusing the viewer with visual information seemingly contradictory to the idea they think you're trying to get across.

[Brocken]

Okay, here is the final version. Unless there is any outrageous mistakes, then I'm going to leave it as is. Not because it's perfect, but simply because I still see soo many mistakes that it's at the point where I should start from scratch or call it quits. So, I'm calling it quits and moving on. I just wanna say thank you again, because there was a lot of good feed back that really made me think about how I should approach things for the future. So, thank you.