Portrait Practice

[Adcrusher524]

Hey everyone!

I'm relatively new here, I posted once probably about two years ago. I've never really painted in high res before, just once or twice, so I'm just trying to figure out how the blending and opacity and stuff works.

Okay, so I made line art for this portrait

and ref


I'm just trying to copy the image exactly how it looks. I tried to shade it twice but everytime I got halfway through Photoshop crashed which is weird... It's probably better if I post it up here first before continuing anyway.

Crits and comments are appreciated! Thanks
-adcrusher

[shiNIN]

I don't think I would be able to say much useful things till you have but a line drawing but I mention one thing. The arms in your drawing haven't really much to do with real human arms. The shape isn't that glaring in a slim woman (though still apparent, just look at your ref more closely) but if you had more knowledge about muscles, you would know they are curvy. Maybe you even know it just have problems controlling your strokes... Your line quality isn't good and even the hair has no flow just abruptly changed hairy ropes. You don't even follow the little details of the original there, just make some quick nice flowy strokes.

Oh and don't use white for background. A (not too) light gray would be better. The original has no white background anyway...

EDIT: Another. The nose line isn't right, look at the angle in the original (it's almost vertical).

[Adcrusher524]

Thanks for the response! Here's an update

I tried to work on line quality and flow and I think it turned out better. I am slowly removing the black outlines, I probably shouldn't of made them in the first place. To shade, I used 100% opacity 100% hardness, then 50% opacity and 100% hardness then 20% opacity and a low hardness. I'm not sure if that's the correct process or not. The lips look like i glued them on like mr. potato head, I'll have to redo those.

More comments or critique would be awesome. Thanks!