Tim's Fairly Frequent Self-Portraits

[Destinatus]

I'll put my self-portraits here. Shootin' for 1001!!

A boring one to get the ball rolling.

1 hour. I had a little trouble with balance in the eyes and chin.

[MidgardSerpent]

I think your pupils are too big and the angle of your nose seems to be steeper than the rest of your face, but maybe that's just by design.

[Destinatus]

Thanks MS, actually I think thats how my nose is, I just have a fucked-up face heh. Your right about the pupils though.

Merry Kwanza everybody! Ignore the hat, I wasn't really wearing it.

[MidgardSerpent]

Hmm.. I still think the pupils are still slightly too big, and on top of that your left-eye is too long.
Mind you, I'm asian myself, so I'm used to drawing smaller eyes by default when I do self- portraits, but I'm pretty sure asians don't have smaller pupils than average.

Maybe you already know, but one trick that really helped me get some of my main features correct is by using the nose as a guideline, if you draw an imaginairy vertical line from either side of the nose, that's where your eye is supposed to start. Another universal rule is that the space between your eyes is roughly another eye. Now, if we apply that rule to your face, you can see there's no way we could fit another eye between your two eyes. And I think that's mostly to do with your left-eye being to close to your nose and being too long in length, almost making it look cartoony.

Also, I think the shadowed part of your face is a bit flat, I think that by being more conscious of the direction of your pencil lines of the shadows would 'sculpture' the form of that side of your face more.

I like it though, nice contrast and you managed to capture an expression of warmth.

[Destinatus]

Wow MS I can't believe your helpin' me out so much. I knew about those measurement techniques but I thought that they wouldn't apply in 3/4 view. I tried doing precise directions on my hatching and shrink the pupils a bit like you suggested, I think it does look better.

I have a horrible problem with symmetry and I don't see these things until I scan them in. I will move my light source next time. I'm too sick atm to put any more work into this one, I'm not sure how long I spent on it.

[Destinatus]

Still sick. Gotta go to work tomorrow, aaah >_<. Here's a picture of me in my everyday work attire.

[Destinatus]

I'm not sure if I'm ready for color or not. Here's my next one, I need to get a haircut.

[Destinatus]

Looks like poop when I flip it. Maybe I'm not ready for value yet.

EDIT: Bonus! just doodled this one up in about 10 - 20 mins: one size, one layer, black and white

[Destinatus]

I always wear hats because I hate my hair. I think I'm almost ready for color yay! I read somewhere that you aren't suppose to rest your hand on the paper\tablet, am I the only one who does that? It's a hard habit to break.

[Destinatus]

Last self portrait this year. ugh, so fuzzy! The pencils I used really picked up the texture of the sketchbook.

[Destinatus]

I hate this one. I think this is a step down, I don't know how I made so many obvious errors.the nose is too long and the whole head is tilting a little bit to the right. Also, not very creative hehe. Well, better luck next time I guess.

[Destinatus]

New hair for a new year, now you can all see my big forehead x_x. I really made things hard on myself for my first color self-portrait. I have the glow coming off my huge 24" monitor and a standing lamp giving off a soft yellow fill light. It was terribly hard to distinguish the hues on my face, Perhaps next time I will turn out all the lights and just use the monitor light, since there really no way to get rid of that one while painting digitally. Anyway, enough rambling about light, here it is.

[Destinatus]

Welcome back Mr. Tumbleweed! For this one I turned out all the lights in my room and just used the glow of the monitor, I couldn't really help but make scary\frightened faces in the mirror. I did this really quick before spirits could manifest themselves from my mind. Excuses excuses, yes I'm very good at them.

[Destinatus]

Flipping my images in photoshop makes me sad =( symmetry is my arch enemy.

[Destinatus]

Am I getting worse?? art is a harsh mistress.

[Destinatus]

I guess I am improving, this was quite a successful one. It survived the flip effect! Special guest appearance from the girl with a bunch of ear rings in the caf&#233; and my gf. As always crits are appreciated and encouraged.

[Destinatus]

I should do some more digital ones. Theres some eraser dust on the image.

[canned_fruit]

Hey,
good stuff, its hard spending time drawing everyday (specialy when its the same thing!)
Just keep at it man, even when your drawing bad.

[Destinatus]

Thanks canned_fruit, take to heart such words of encouragement.

I used a pretty low res photo for this one. I was gonna do color, but ended up spending way on the values longer than I thought I would.

[Destinatus]

Focused just on line and symmetry. Line turned out okay, I think. Symmetry kicked my ass, raped me, stabbed me in the face, then spit on me. I think I'm like dyslexic or something.

[Destinatus]

Only concern here is balance and symmetry. I figure I will do many many frontal views until I can get it right. This one is a bit better than the last one, my hat isn't really symmetrical but that's how it actually looked. Feedback would be great. My portrait looked like a whole different drawing after MidgardSerpent told me the eyes were too big. If you see anything off please tell me, thanks.

[saa]

i personally think that you are doing very fine, don't bother too much about symmetry, i would suggest you to concentrate on values to have a larger tonal range.

the shadows for example are way too bright in your pencil drawings, and the white of the skin isn't white in real life. i'm sure that you'll soon get the hang of it.

keep going, cheers

[Destinatus]

This was a painful reminder of how far behind I am. Jason Manley said that artists need to be at a professional level upon graduation or a year thereafter. I graduate next spring, I just don't see myself improving that quickly. I suppose I'll just go down swingin, don't want to say I didn't try. Here's my lame attempt at color.

[MidgardSerpent]

Only concern here is balance and symmetry. I figure I will do many many frontal views until I can get it right. This one is a bit better than the last one, my hat isn't really symmetrical but that's how it actually looked. Feedback would be great. My portrait looked like a whole different drawing after MidgardSerpent told me the eyes were too big. If you see anything off please tell me, thanks.

I think drawing a face straight-on trying to achieve perfect symmetry has a tendency to look a bit stiff and boring, same goes for the composition if you just place it in the middle, so you'd might watch that. Making a conscious choice to depict the hat as asymmetrical (along with other things), as long as it's not a result of flawed pencilwork, is a good thing to make a drawing more interesting or more "mature".

An example is your latest self-portrait, it's far more interesting than some of the straight-on selfportraits, because you do more with composition and angles.

I also had problems with symmetry by the way, mostly with one eye always being higher or lower, it's crazy but even with the mirror I'd still had problems with it. During the course of doing a self-portrait I just hold the sp to the mirror a LOT. Basically chipping away all the problems till it looks right.

This was a painful reminder of how far behind I am. Jason Manley said that artists need to be at a professional level upon graduation or a year thereafter. I graduate next spring, I just don't see myself improving that quickly.

Happen to have the link? I'd like to read more.



Oh, and on another note, take everything I say with a grain of salt, I'm not a high-level (or even mid-level) artist or anything, just a fellow artist who also does self-portraits.

[Destinatus]

MidgardSerpent: Yeah I agree with you about all that. However, my purpose with this thread, for the time being, is just study. Once I'm confident in my technical skills I will start to make them more pleasing to look at and compositional correct. I don't have a link to that quote because it was just a forum tagline a while ago.

I decided to look harder at the values this time at get more of the mid-range like Saa suggested. Unfortunately, it appears everything else suffered as a result >_<.

P.S. 20 down 981 to go hehe

[Soja]

hey destinatus!

Nice portraits and i see good progression!
U can try puttin a circle on ur paper first...
and build around ur face...so u can decide
where ur head should be on the paper....
easiest way to get ur head there where u want it!
Keep it goin!

[guilefine]

Symmetry in the face is a really complex concept but one that needs to be understood to capture the likeness. Its not the details in the face that are symmetrical but the basic face shapes, solid forms that wedge into each other.
There are cases where there are alot of details that are symmetrical, there face is usually in a fashion magizine, but the asymmetrical details in these basic shapes is something one should work on only after they capture these big shapes.
To understand these big shapes you should look at your self at many angles. You don't need to look at these shapes at many angles to draw the shape but it will help you understand them so much more clearly. You should know what you look like in profile, use a couple of mirrors to do this and look at your jaw line, nose, ect, every thing.
Make sure you measure every mark before you put it down, you can do this sight sizing or with a ruler, and do this measurement with the height of your head. Find your first likelyness.
Always step back from your work, flip it in ps, look at it in a mirror, look at it upside down or what ever just to look at it with fresh eyes.
All this works for tone and color, work very simple first and get your measuremnets right when every thing is easy to correct. Big tonal shapes should be developed along with the big shapes of the face.

Make sure you have a range of pencils from 9H to 8B, you don't need that many but its better. You should go from light to dark when working in pencil because you can always go darker but its harder to lighten once its already dark.

I like your portraits they are really good. Remember to get the basic shapes down whether there symmetrical or not, measuring will help you figure this out, then move to the details like the hair line, is the hair line really symmetrical? I like the icchi the killer portrait, don't bite anybodys hand now. Get portrait books, every body has a little bit different way of going about the face but to me its all the same. look up George B bridgman and study his books like you have never studied before.

[blacky]

Try implementing BG some more (dark flat area opposed to lightstruck form of face) , pay more attention to eyes, they are too cartoonisch right now and pop out too much Try to block in the face some more
How about side or almost back view (2 mirrors)

nice progress
real good one
keep doing these

[Destinatus]

Soja: thanks for the advise. Yeah I have been doing that circle thing since "How to draw manga" in Jr. High hehe.
guilefine: You made some really good points here. I actually own quite a few bridgman books, I should go back over them.
blacky: I usually don't make backgrounds because it destroys my hand, it ends up covered in graphite afterwards. But heres a half background just for you hehe. Yeah I want to do a sideview, I only have one mirror though. Maybe I'll take a photograph.

[Cavematty]

Nice work mate. I agree with others comments.
On the issue of proportions watch ur vertical spacing. I think u tend to place the yes too high on the head. Watch that, but great work and great improvements.
keep up the great thread