some random guy that could use some help(wip)

[insomniac]

bah...took me a long time to get used to painter after jumping ship from ps. did this as part of a series of portraits i'm doing.
the hair is really messing me up, really could use some help about it as well as the skin tones.
any help or cnc would be greatly appreciated.
http://www.angelfire.com/art2/dumpsite0/images/elve_armour.jpghttp://www.angelfire.com/art2/dumpsite0/images/elve_armour_noline.jpg

[Hunger_Artist]

For skin tones, try starting on a multiply layer above the lines with the darkest tone you are going to use, then work up from that.

the hair looks ok to me, and I dunno what advice I could give for that.. but I would suggest mabey lightening the whites of the eyes a little to bring out the personality of the character more. Painter can be fuN! Experiment!

[Joeslucher]

The forehead is generally slightly yellow while the nose and cheeks are more red and the mouth and chin are usually more purple. It's very subtle and difficult to do. A useful technique in painter is to get Smooth Opaque Guoache and turn the resat down to 10%. Pick the the lightest color you want an area to be and make your other color the darkest color you want an area to be. Use you keyboard shortcut to switch between the two and build up some quick value without constantly changing opacity or hue. If you want the image to look more like a painting, I'd just work on one or two layers and eventually get rid of the line art.

[johanson]

Joeslucher, is hitting on a good point. Things change color (sometimes subtly, sometimes not), depending on how light is hitting them. Skin is more complicated. Skin’s color is dependant on both how the light is hitting it AND, because it’s translucent, what is under it. Right now each element of your piece is monochromatic. The shoulders are blue, so the darks are dark blue, and the lights, light blue. Same with the hair, light yellow, dark yellow. Try mixing up your color a little bit. Choose a color for the main light source and the reflected light. You might also want to check out the tutorials section. Prometheus, and fredflickstone both have some nice thoughts on color. Keep us posted.

Hope this helps,

-andrew

[SEVANS]

If you want REALISTIC lighting and colour, you NEED a reference.
Is this from a pic?

Even if this character doesn't look like you, grab a mirror and set up a light and STUDY the areas of light and dark, warm and cool etc.

Johanson makes damn good points about colour too.

[insomniac]

here's a small update on the skin tones... getting do this only during the weekends cos i'm another conscript in the army:(. thanks for all your pointers and i've read up on prom and mr lemens' articles. hopefully, i've got it right...or at least i'm getting on the right track. i've added the layer of blue reflected light on the face and neck... but i think something's wrong about how i placed it...

hopefully you guys could come to my aid and enlighten me further..thanks
http://www.angelfire.com/art2/dumpsite0/images/elve_armour1.JPG

[Sularia]

Try doing the hair on a separate layer, or layers. Paint it in sections, some lighter, some darker. If you are going for a realistic look keep in mind that canary yellow isn't a very natural shade - well, at least so much of it. But, you might be going for a more comic-type look, in which case canary yellow might work ok.

Here's a couple of good tutorials on hair that helped me.

http://div.dyndns.org/EK/tutorial/hair/

http://www.merekatcreations.com/html/tutorials/hairmain2.html

I don't do cartoon or anime style hair yet, but it that's the look you are going for this tutorial seems handy.

http://artcorner.org/tutorials/lessons/hair/keiiii/

I hope that helps some with hair.

Sularia

[SEVANS]

Big improvement just by adding the warm and cool colours to the image. Brings more 'life' into the image.

Just keep on pushing yourself.

[insomniac]

back for a loong and much needed break from all things military:) . touched up on the eyes and hair. couldnt really find a suitable brush for the hair, werking on that though.

as for the eyes, something seems to feel wrong about the eyes, though i'm not quite sure whether its the contrast between the eyes and the rest of the body or what... well, i've depended on ur critics so far and it works wonderfully well for me, so please do cnc on this.

http://www.angelfire.com/art2/dumpsite0/images/p1_line.jpghttp://www.angelfire.com/art2/dumpsite0/images/p1_noline.JPG

ps. i'm not sure whether i should scrap the linewerk now, so please do give some comments.

[Drumwhore]

From now on, I'd recommend you to remove the sketchy outline and work only on the colours, which are a lot more defined :) What's wrong with the eyes? not much with his right one, but it looks weird because there's not that much shading in the rest of his face/hair.. just add some darker values to some parts of his head, which are supposed to be more shadowed.. according to the blue light source, there also should be some blue hilights on the bottom of his nose (on which you should add some red values like on the chin/cheeks), his bottom lip, hair and the upside of his eye socket :) Add some more sharp hilights to the blue light, and reflect it on the armour too :) I hope this will help you.. :)

[insomniac]

small update before i leave off for overseas duty.:(
http://www.angelfire.com/art2/dumpsite0/images/p2.JPG

[Sularia]

Nice... big improvement without the lines.

Good luck overseas.

Sularia