Eärendil's daily self-portraits #50

[Earendil]

Self-portraits! My goal is to learn how to draw, then paint, not the other way around like I've been doing. Need to learn better linework, understand how line creates form, and then when I'm ready, I'll explore with value, then color.

These are today's, both around 45 minutes. I'm going to look up SP tutorials if any exist, as I'm not really sure about the process. I usually block in the outline first, then place the features, but if there's another way of going about this, let me know and I'll give it my best.

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[Earendil]

No. 3!

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[Earendil]

The real number 4! The other was an imposter. Tried drawing a surprised/puckered expression, and learned that I should probably wait on drawing expressions, until I understand what the heck is going on underneath all that. On the other hand, it helped tie together the contour of the face with the muzzle around the lips. Moar studies!

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[Earendil]

Number 5...I setup lines for top and bottom of face, then divided in half to find the eyeline, then a line for the bottom of my nose, and my mouth. This is my best to date. It's cool learning the particulars of my face, and how really little things can change the likeness. For example: My face is asymmetrical. I kept looking at my lips going, "huh?" until I realized my face was skewed. Whoa. But it looks more like me. :)

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[Earendil]

No. 6! I'm trying to figure out what to do with my jaw. It seems I have a real round face, and no sharp jaw line, so I'm wondering if there are other ways to show it. Hatching/shading? A lighter line? Gotta figure it out.

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[caulitomaz]

Earendil, i think you are starting to get the likeness well. I really don't know you, but both 5 and 6 looked more natural to me. The main problem right now, for me, is the line. I think you should try to do a less jaggy line. An uniform outline will bring a lot more "Naturality".

Then try starting to fix values with the pencil. "Lay it down" and darken the shaded parts of your face.

Try not to smudge it. Never smudge it with your finger (maybe when you are a master, but, oh, this always messes up everything).

Keep drawing!

[Earendil]

caulitomaz> Thanks for the info. I'll work on better lines. :lifedrawing:
When you say "lay it down" what do you mean? I'll definitely work on getting some shading going.

Here is number 7. Movie villain? :davi:
I'm beginning to learn how to compare stuff to each other. My eyes were just flicking back and forth comparing relative sizes/distances. Moar studies.

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[caulitomaz]

I think you are already making better lines.

Oh, you're workin with your tablet, right?
Then by "lay it down" I mean: pick up some bigger brushes to lock values.
(When you think you are ready to do it, of course)

I thought you were doing it with pencils, I meant "tilt it to draw with the side of your pencil".

I'm sorry for the lame english.

[algenpfleger]

Ahaaaaaa man, nice to see you starting a thread! I think these are looking great.

But seriously, why do you do them digitally? Doing lines on the tablet is a pain in the ass. Better concentrate on more important things! On paper you can also make sweeping motions, and draw from the arm, which is extremely important.

Like, for warmup, draw circles and lines and blind contours, that helps your lines a lot. You should also get into Loomis' books to learn more about facial structure and features, it's good to have things you can "search" for on the real thing :)

The last one looks really good, the eyes are a LOT better than on the first ones. Awesome work man! Keep doing those!

[Earendil]

caulitomaz> Thanks for clarifying! :)

algenpfleger> Convenience really, but you're right, it's better I do this from the arm.

I went through Loomis and tried head constructions, then I did this SP traditionally, starting with a Loomis head and trying to overlay what I saw on top of that. I don't think it worked. I'm not sure I understand enough of how the head/features/planes/shapes look in perspective, to connect that with how a sliced ball looks in perspective. Hell, I'm having trouble drawing correct curved lines denoting the form of the sphere. He never really says how much to slice off the sides either and both are causing me trouble. I found an earlier thread where Dose recommended reading Successful Drawing, and absorbing everything in it regarding perspective, so I'm going to do that. Seriously, I can draw a decent SP by comparing 2D elements, but don't understand how to draw lines over a sphere's surface? Definitely moar studies! :painting: Advice greatly appreciated!

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[reme]

Heya, i would also advise drawing traditionally like what algenpfleger has said. Drawing with arm is really important :P Enjoy drawing :D

[algenpfleger]

Loomis is fucking hard to implement :| I studied his stuff a lot lately, and while my construction improved a bit, I still just draw by starting with... well, anything but ball and plane.

But you got the "More studies" part right! Just keep practicing! :D

[Earendil]

No...9!

Instead of trying to make Loomis fit me perfectly, I was mindful of his presence, and even used him to get the construction down in the beginning. There were still some tweaks near the end, I always seem to have trouble with the lower jaw.

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My head was tucked down for this, but I'm not sure if that comes across. Comments? :)

[kidult]

The jaw line seems a bit too big for the facial features. Also think more about the structure of each part as you draw it. Definate improvement as you have been going along!

[Earendil]

No 10! I've decided every 10 portraits I'm going to do something fun. So, here's the color blue! The values seemed to make more sense with the drawing already there. Moar structure! Moar studies! :painting:

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[Earendil]

Number 11. Tried to render the hair out a little better.

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[Earendil]

No. 12. I had a harder time with this one trying to get the size/shapes of the eyes right, in relation to the brow in relation to the nose, in relation to the sides of the face. I kept unconsciously moving my head too. :P

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[algenpfleger]

Great stuff man, keep doing the different perspectives and don't forget the neck!

[~Faust~]

I'd say you're improving too :)! But beware of concentrating too much on the features, the more you hassle yourself in rendering the eyes and the mouth, the more they become hieroglyphs and not representations of something substantial. A good thing would be to forget about stuff like eye-lashes and so on and concentrate on the area around the eye, see were it bulks out and presses in.

[Earendil]

In the words of John Arbuckle..."ARRRRGH!"

Thanks algen. And Faust, I tried what you said, and thought about different areas coming forward/back.

Major problems with the overlapping nasal bone vs right eye again. Gotta break this down and get some "salient points" plotted if these proportions are ever going to be right. I'll get it right tomorrow! :yayca:

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[Earendil]

No 14! A quick pen SP to get me to stop fussing over extraneous stuff. Gotta get bolder lines, even if I make mistakes. Also learned that my face shape isn't really oval, but more of an extended oval or rounded square shape.

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[Earendil]

No.15! A low light attempt, and you know...it was hard to sEE! Genius! :eyeloss: :)

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[Earendil]

No 16! This one seemed to hit closer to the mark. I'm beginning to wonder if a line is necessary around the lips, they seem a bit heavy-handed.

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[Gorgoleon]

Yes this last one looks real good ! Ya i prefer not making lines around the mouth atleast not strong ones, it can make it look like the lips been glued on sometimes :)

[Earendil]

SP 17! Little under an hour to do this, I'd like to get fast with the blocking in and rendering. Anybody know of any good resources on hatching? :) I think I'm starting to understand what Faust was talking about earlier...

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[~Faust~]

Actually, that one is a HUGE improvement! It feels much more 3D- mainly because you nailed the form right this time, espescially around the eyes. Maybe you should try to see planes for a change, go aay from the lines. make stenches! You can use digital to do it, but coffee is fine, too. Anyways, not much to crit only that maybe the line to the ear is a bit too much, throwing the head someho out of form.

[reme]

Wow great improvement already xD im still so slow Dx

Faust> Heya, do u mind teaching me how to paint with coffee? I wanna try it out :P Please? :(

[Earendil]

Faust> Thanks, I'll look into planes soon. Very soon. Thanks for pointing that ear-line out, you're absolutely right. What are stenches? Coffee?

Galaxis> Moar studies! :P

[Earendil]

Oop, forgot to post yesterdays :bashful: Was wondering why there were no comments.

Here are No. 18 & 19!

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[Earendil]

No. 20! Took around 3.5 hours for this one. Just wanted to have fun and push it. :)

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[Earendil]

No. 21. Trying to get faster, here's a 30 minute one.

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[algenpfleger]

Hahaaa, massive improvement man! Post #29 especially, you took your time there to study the whole jaw area and it really shows. Keep it up! :)

[~Faust~]

Jep, that is one structurally sound face. I suggest you get some routine in your pencil-redering, though. Or do lines. But don't try to do both at the same time, right now I'm not sure wether you want to emphasize your outlining or your hatching (Both need some more routine though)

You're way on your way!

[Earendil]

What do you mean by "routine"?

[Earendil]

No 22. Low, monitor lighting. 1 1/2 hours ish. I tried to hatch better, then overlay some good washes of value. Let me know what you think. It seems like It seems like I'm able to get my likeness down with enough time (90 minutes), but I'm wondering how I can speed up that initial block in. Probably spending too much time on details again.

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[polipol]

heya bro! these are coming along very well bro, digging your progress... the hatching and washes in the last one really captures the anatomy and bumps and stuff of the face .... my crit would be try and watch out for the contrast from the darkest darks to the lightest lights...music, chillin and drawing :D headphones in an sp:D .. keep it up man :)...

[algenpfleger]

Why hatch when you're going to put washes of value in anyway? :) Hatching is the pencil/pen/no, line equivalent of values in paint. I think. Heightening it with white makes sense, but darkening it further with washes doesn't really work. Concentrate on one of the two! :)

In fact I think that even when hatching you should think in patches of values, and, if the tool allows you to (pencils do), leave no space between the hatching lines and regulate the value via pressure. It's hard, but definitely worth learning. Wes and DanielC do it all the time, at least it looks like they do rfom my noob point of view.

So um, what I'm trying to say is, hatching digitally is a pain in the butt o_o Why not pencil more?

[Earendil]

poli> It was low contrast, low light, but yeah, maybe push it a little further.

algen> When you're right, you're right! Hatching digitally was becoming annoying, so once I got something, I proceeded to just use big washes for the rest. Laziness! I'll keep the hatching offline, and the washes online. :)

Here is a 3 value SP. I don't think it worked. :P

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[polipol]

reminds me of the resovoir dogs movie... very graphic like representation.. i likes!:D... has a sinister appeal about it...

[Earendil]

Here's a stab at color, No 24. I learned a lot about how things can stay close in value, so all the sculpting of form has to be done with shifts in hue and chroma. Let me know what you think.


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[~Faust~]

I think you miss an important point here: Color is Value! The moment you shift from the red spectrum to the purple spektrum you are getting darker. Apart from that, this is an awesome SP, well done!

[Earendil]

Hue value chroma, hue value chroma, hue value chroma....Moar studies! Thank you for pointing that out Faust! It's gotta stick!

[Earendil]

Here's another one, No 25, low monitor lighting. Creates such weird subtle hues, desaturated...rrgh...:xpld: Gonna go back to hatching and values again, I'm getting sidetracked. Gotta get drawinz down first.

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[reme]

Heya, try not to touch on colors first until u know where to place ur values in ur face xD ( i know greyscales are boringgg which is why i get bored easily if i paint with greyscale ) But its good to learn where will the shadows will light be on ur facee aftter that maybe u can try paint cool n warm colours. xD

Btw your using ur webcam for the latest 1? xD

[Earendil]

Galaxis> Thanks! No, no webcam. :P

My drawing hand hurts like hell today, so I'm happy that it's getting used a lot, not happy that it's kaput. :)

Here is a left handed SP. Tried to have more confident lines despite inaccuracies. Frustrating, but there's not much I can do except learn to control my off-hand more until the other one gets better. :dead:

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[Earendil]

Issues + bad day = No 27.

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[~Faust~]

Good to see you getting it on even if your frustrated.

[Earendil]

Speedy. No 27. 20-ish minutes.

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[~Faust~]

What did you do all those 20 minutes? Seriously in 20 minutes, I can make 2 or 34 of those heads. Don't do every stroke over and over again. Be confident in your linework, that means also that you let your strokes stay where tey are and don't fiddle around all the time.

[Earendil]

Dang I wish I had checked this again before doing todays. :\ No. 29....25 minutes. I usually never nail proportions until after much niggling. 3 or 4? Well, I guess that's something I can aim for. Going to try and break this down. Hatching is still some nebulous concept which I don't understand fully, and more. Arrrghh!

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[Earendil]

No 30! Mortal wombat! er...Kombat! Incorrect spelling == marketing genius! Funny story: I always thought he said "Tiger bubba dayyy!" whenever he did his horizontal-flying-push move.

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[Earendil]

No 31. Planes O.o:dead:

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[reme]

Wow im impressed u learn things so fast :( Sucks to be a slow learner like me D:

[Earendil]

Galaxis> And I feel like a slow learner next to algenpfleger and others! Your signature says it all. :)

Here is No. 32. Ma was right, the face does get frozen! Oh noes!

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[Earendil]

No 33. I found this great website that I'm going to study before the next one. Tried to look surprised with just the muscles in the upper part of my face.
http://www.face-and-emotion.com/dataface/anatomy/anatomy.jsp

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[algenpfleger]

Good, good! Keep focusing on the form. And do these in fineliner or pen or pencil, to train your lines.

[Earendil]

No 34. Pen. EEK! Scanned in with mah brand new CanoScan 5something. Yay!

Now we can see the crap in high quality! :yayca:

algenpfleger> Thanks, I'm going to do what you say!

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[Earendil]

Can't sleep, so here's a study of insomnia. Bleah. :dead:

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[Nightblue]

Love the mood and the shapes in the new one. Keep up the great work :)

[algenpfleger]

Nice work on the edges in the last one! And good lines in the pen portrait, especially the hair are, that's what I'm talking about. Practice your hatching too, use your elbow rather than your wrist. Keep it up! :)

[Earendil]

No 35. I tried not to put too many lines down or rework, but errrgh it's WRONNG MUST fix...No erasing allowed. Must have better linesessess precious.

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[reme]

Heya i dunno if this method work for you but it certainly work for me..

what i do is measure the angle, mark out the end point, draw a light straight line after everything is done it will be a face shape made out of straight line, afterwards i will draw out the curves

No erasing is allowed is good for training your discipline and knowing your mistakes :D

Keep it up ;)

[~Faust~]

The key to better lines lies in trust. Your lines aren't perfect, they won't be anytime soon, heel mine are despicable! But if you trear them as a statement and stick with them to the end they will reward you. Having line-confidence means you have to have cofidence in your lines! mbrace the error and learn from it. As technical advice I'd say stop muggling around with the details when everything else is so undefined. hopping from feature to feature without a key underdrawing of the whole construction will inevitably result in bad proportions.

[Earendil]

Galaxis> Thanks, I'll try that more on the next bunch. :)

Faust> Thank you! That makes sense. Yeah, I was hopping from feature to feature, and that will only work if I'm allowed to make the inevitable corrections, erasures, and CTRL-Z's. I'll continue to lower my "niggling" factor.

No 36.1 & 36.2
Botched the first, so I did a second one and botched that too. Since this will obviously require much practice, I'm going to up the number of daily SP's. These will not be very rendered, but will be concentrating on line quality, the gestalt of the outline, construction, and proportion.

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[Earendil]

No's 37-1, 2, and 3. I seem to have a real problem with the lower jaw, when it turns, and the proper angle. Moar studies.

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[algenpfleger]

Oh, Faust said it perfectly. Think structure, not feature. Last ones are looking better! Hmmm maybe revisit Loomis on heads? That always helps refreshing some things O_O

[Earendil]

When you say "structure" what exactly do you mean? I want to make sure I understand correctly. When I think of structure, I think of simple objects that combine to create more complex planes. Loomis starts with a sphere, and goes from there, etc.

[Earendil]

No. 38. Tried to incorporate Loomis' head construction. Still have problems with the lower jaw, and I kept forgetting about my lines.

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[~Faust~]

Hmmm I know this opinion is unpopular, but I think Loomis is not a good source on a lot of things when it comes to learning. Concerning facial proportions and structure, his book "fun with a pencil" is the only one I'd recommend, because that's the only one that actually IS fun. Having those rigid exercises of balls with eye-lines and stuff will rip you off your plaesure, there's no discovery in it, only repetition and memorizing. Read loomis and see that here's stuff like proportions and a certain way of constructing the head and the body and it is good. Do his exercises and you'll rip apart your joy in drawing.

I see that in your latest SPs, there's no joy, only constant frustration and banging your head in the same wall over and over again. You talk about things that are not sufficient yet you want to improve that are actually a sign of draftsmanship that come with experience, like linework and technique. If you reduce your studies on those soulless and pointless things, your drawings will become soulless and pointless.
If you only copy other artist's methods, you'll quickly become apt in doing what they are doing, I grant you that, you can make your stuff look like Wesley Burt's stuff or Rich Dobie's stuff or whatever, pretty quickly, too. But you will never be able to represent an individual subject, if you are ask to answer to the problems laid out to you, you'll not be able to ind the solution yourself. That you can only do through experimentation and thorough research.

How much it is to see for yourself! The best way to study faces is just to go outside and draw people! I'm going everyday and do quick portraiture of passers-buy and scetch poses and stuff because the knowledge in books is dead ,and just suits as guidelines. Any place will do really, MCDonalds is perfect for instance because the crowd there is diverse and you can get a coke and stay for hours without anyone bothering you.

A thing that I did to get the structure of faces was take photographs and make wireframes of the faces and then render them in different lighting for example.

I'll give you some of the scetches I did that mark some form of milestone in my pursuit of the understanding of the human mask:

http://img324.imageshack.us/img324/1658/scan1828gs.jpg
http://img57.imageshack.us/img57/6766/scan1780fh.jpg
http://img354.imageshack.us/img354/2117/scan2237ti.jpg
http://img505.imageshack.us/img505/1682/scan2720rv.jpg
http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/4057/scan2753yb.jpg
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=393641&stc=1&d=1213744002
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=404684&stc=1&d=1215039683

i know that my development is slow compared to what others might be doing, but nonetheless I'm proud of the knowledge I have obtained all by myself and I can apply so much more than a lot of people who only bothered to do tutorials on how to construct a face. I can do Ethnics, age and all that shabang, because I have made my own mental representation of the facial form, so that I can mold and squeeze it as much as I want and ultimately, make faces from head. Still a long way to go though.

Sorry for my rambling, I hopw I didn't bore you to death!

[Earendil]

Faust, there's too much in your post to thank specifically, but...thank you! :)

So no more constructions for SP's, I'll save those for practice drills in the SB. I'm behind a day, so I've got another one coming later tonight.

In this one, I concentrated on establishing the hair mass first, then the brow line, and from the brow to the hair, establish the proportions for the rest of the face. The thing is, I keep losing the likeness, and I think it's because I'm sticking so rigidly to the 1/3d's Loomis proportions. My nose always ends up looking longer, and I look more Elvish for lack of better term. I'm more of a hobbit, round face, cheeks, funny nose.

That being said, I'm immensely overjoyed that I got something resembling my jawline on the near side. There's the jaw bone, and then there's a bunch of fat and muscle and BS that I could never get.

Still, as far as likeness goes, my "Insomnia" is the closest yet. Weird.

Moar studies! :)

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[Earendil]

No 40. Tried Painters' Sumi-e brush, very cool. Again with the chubby face, but this time...too much. :^^:

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[~Faust~]

Is that digital? Funny, looks like charcoal- I think I'll build meself a brush like that too :)

[Earendil]

Yeh, me and Painter have never really gelled, but it's growing on me.

Here's No. 41.
This time, I blocked in my initial stuff very lightly, sometimes just using dots to denote the extremes of features. Then during rendering, there wasn't too much to adjust, and I kept erasing to a minimum. Didn't get my nose shape right quite right, or the jawline, but I've noticed some things this time around that'll hopefully help with that.

Also, I noticed I didn't conform to the Loomis proportions down to a T, the distance between my brow and hairline is greater than the distance between my brow and nose, not an exact 3rd. Learning is good. :yayca:

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[Earendil]

Visiting family last weekend, so I did 3 today to get even.

No's 42,43, and 44.

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[kikindaface]

the selfportrait #41 is really good, you've made some improvment since the beginning of this thread !!

[throtailer]

Omfg what an awesome progress

[Earendil]

No 45! Lost track, the last post was edited accordingly.

Tomorrow I start at MindCandyMan's Atelier. EEE! :steph:

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[Earendil]

No 46. Teh drama.

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[Gorgoleon]

Nice progression so far! Portrait nr.32 is great :D
I dont have any advice to give that you dont already now <--(this sentence took me a long time to write, i was confused if ive got it right and im still confused, to many dont's..ok only 2 dont's but still :) )

Oh and thanks for your comment!

[Earendil]

No 47. There's something about monitor lighting that's really cool. Or other low lighting setups. Either way, I really love doing them.

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[kikindaface]

Wow, the last one is great !!

[oomgawa]

Agreed! Number 47 is magical!

[Earendil]

Gorgoleon> Your sentence made sense. Thanks for dropping by!

WalidD & oomgawa> Thanks! :)

No's 48 and 49. Pthbbbbtt!

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[Earendil]

No 50. Best game ever.

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[Leysan]

Number 47 looks great, why don't the ones done traditionally look so well?

[reme]

i think its because the chin is abit way too low for the traditional ones? :P

[tandy1000]

hey just stopping by to see your daily headshots~

Imo the practice of a self-portrait itself is not bad but when doing it everyday can become a problem. You start being too accustomed towards your own features and those habits start flowing over towards your other head drawings. If you are including other head drawings with your self-portrait throughout the day then I don't see it being a problem though.

I think one good practice to get the overall features of the head accurately and quickly is the Reilly Method. It breaks down the face into symmetrical rhythms that allows the student to concentrate on the construction of the face rather the features that you are seeing. One suggestion I'd like to make is that if you are using the Reilly Method make sure you don't fall into the trap that many students usually fall into... The method allows the student to help them draw correctly but it isn't accurately defining the character of the face.

Keep it up~ ^^

[bounchfx]

your digital ones are great! start spending more time on your line drawing ones though, the jump in quality doesn't feel right.

but great job and consistency of putting some out!