Be Studying Color Theory and Things

[Lukeine]

Hello all.

Ever since I read some things about warm and cool and complimentary colors, and seeing some cool people painting on Youtube, all my colors suddenly look terrible. Solution? Paint moar until they stop looking terrible. Also been trying to render textures and forms better. Really should get on human anatomy too. Tried following Loomis's guide to heads a few times, then stopped because they all looked horrifying.


Stuff from the last week or so.

[blue|heron]

Hi there! If you're looking into anatomy and portrait drawings to begin with I recommend Michael Hampton's "Figure Drawing". It leads you through the basic of gesture and basic forms, and then goes into portraiture and basic anatomy. I also find it easier to understand than Loomis; but this could just be because Hampton breaks it down into small segments that I can understand. Just reading it so far has helped my understanding, but practicing on the other hand is really where I need to work harder at.

Good luck!

[Lukeine]

Hey thar, thanks for having a look. I'll try to make time to take a look at that book sometime, thanks.

Todays fruit, still trying to get this warm lights/cool shadows and vice versa thing down. Anyone got advice on how to render better faster, or is that something that just comes with a lot of time?

[Lukeine]

Some people:

[Clu]

Hi! I'm a newbie too but anyway, some tips on portrait drawing:

Looking at your first drawing it seems like you're kind of too focused on what you know the features of the face to look like from the front. If you actually look at the ref (it's good that you used a ref), the shapes are very different. For example, the eyes are almost sort of triangle-shaped in actuality. Also for the mouths on both portraits, you fill in parts that are actually not there. The refs are both pictures viewed from a bit to the side so the shape of the mouth will be different.

So basically, even though you need to be able to keep in mind what the things you're drawing are, for now you should spend a bit more time looking at what they look like as 2D shapes (just lines and shapes instead of an eye) and also what they look like in 3D. If you search online you can find some nice tutorials about how to think of parts of the face. The Loomis books are actually very nice for this if you want to try again. Besides that, it'd also be good for you to work on drawing some 3D objects so you can get used to thinking about things in space.