Help me please!

[Erik]

Hey,

Sorry if this offends anyone but it seems that if i keep posting in the same thread (neat and tidy) nobody looks after a while, or at least nobody crits... *whine*

Soooo.... a small *repost* of some questions here in a fresh thread. Let's see if that helps.

Please help me finish the pictures. I can't paint the hair right and i seem to desaturate my color too much. Tell me what i might do about that.

1.
--------------
Gangs of New York. Never saw the movie but the pictures are just too good to let go.

Got me into trouble though - i can't paint hair!

Here's a non-finished one with the ref pic (i am not trying to copy exactly so it is off in some areas, just trying to learn how to paint - and it is not finished.)

Help me out with the hair and the dress! I tried to do the hair but it didn't work out, i seem to have a sort of 'mental image' or trick to paint hair that is nice in some style but it is not realistic. Need to break that!

I also need to upgrade the color. My second monitor had its dials juggled so it was all yellow... Noticed that only when i put both images on the same screen. :-/



http://www.xs4all.nl/~erikedf/art/wip/gangs2.jpg

and the ref
http://www.xs4all.nl/~erikedf/art/wip/photo_8_small.jpg

2.
---------------
More attempts below. This picture also is not finished. It was done in around 1 hour to the stage you see below.

I posted the reference also, it is again not a precise copy (no measurements were taken, maybe i should do that) but just practice. I'm not entirely happy and the background mixes way too much with the foreground. That will probably take some more time but by getting more detail and definition in the fg and makeing the bg more 'out of focus' the problem will hopefully go away. The photograph has a better distinction because the composition is better there. The color is too yellow because my monitor still sucks.

I posted a number of steps and the ref pic. Please criticise anything, from the workflow to the picture. I need to learn and advance!



http://www.xs4all.nl/~erikedf/art/wip/gangs3.jpg
http://www.xs4all.nl/~erikedf/art/wip/gangs3_2.jpg
http://www.xs4all.nl/~erikedf/art/wip/gangs3_3.jpg
http://www.xs4all.nl/~erikedf/art/wip/gangs3_4.jpg
http://www.xs4all.nl/~erikedf/art/wip/gangs3_5.jpg

and the ref
http://www.xs4all.nl/~erikedf/art/wip/photo_9_small.jpg

[Gossamer]

Hair's a big problem for me too, short of drawing every hair individually (meep), I can't seem to get a realistic result. I'm sure suggesting texture here and there is more effective, can't get it right though. Erk :(
There are one or two tutorials out there, most seem to support the render-every-damn-hair aproach though.
Sorry for not being much use

Your skintones rule though :)

[Erik]

Thnx for the reply!

Yeah i have seen the tutorials and did them too but they are a technique and i would like to be able to paint what i see without a technique per se ... i mean, i regard the tutorials as great esp. when doing free / no-ref work, but my goal is to be able to hint at the hair stuff but not following a 'trick' too much. I have a trick that i am trying to break because it sticks out like a sore thumb if combined with the rest of the pic .. as in the top most picture can be seen.

... hope this clarifies it a bit ...

[Gossamer]

hmmm.

Having looked at you pieces a little more closely- you have the shapes of highlights and shadows laid down nicely, might do with a little more contrast to make the detail pop out a little more? Comparing the ref and the picture, there's a larger range between the lightest lights and the darkest shadows than what you've been using.
Just thinking aloud :)

There was a thread on the Sijun forums that covered a way of painting hair rather than using tricks. Might be useful to you :)

http://www.sijun.com/dhabih/ubb/Forum2/HTML/006506.html

[behemot5]

it seems there is a mistake in the position of leonardo's face ine the 2nd picture.... a little bit higher...to paint hair i think you must paint "large" area with the colour you need then draw details like highlight with pencils...it is the technique this painter uses meinrad froschin (http://www.froschin.de)
meinrad froschin 2 (http://www.turtle4dog.com/froschin/index.shtml)
i try to find a tut of him...i have one in a book perhaps i will find it.....

[Erik]

Hey thanx

The second picture Leonardo's face is much too big also ;-) the interaction is not in the picture like in the ref... But oh well, that happens when you dont look at the whole pic all the time...

E.

[Molin]

Erik.
Great stuff.

However, are you looking for photorealistc hair or just the impression of that it is hair?.. I tend to like the stylised hair techniques depicting hair without painting the actual hairstrands one by one. Although Keith Parkinsson would do this ofcourse....;D hes a bit crazy about details. Painting every leaf on the branches and so on.

I think you did deserving hair on Leo without keeping it to simple. Perhaps abit more movement in the strokes there but thats probably a personal view.

Great stuff you do anyways.
Keep it up
/Moiln

[behemot5]

i'm sorry but i can't scanned the tutorial for hairs i have in one of my book for a photorealistic paint....my scanner has some big problem (sorry for my english):(

[Dementist]

Hm... I think in the second pic the forground could be pushed forward a bit more if you moved Leo closer to Top Hat Man, which would create a tighter focus as well as not show as much of the distracting extra.

By the way, what program are you using? And if its Painter, what type of brush?

[Erik]

Thanx!

You're right about the position of Leonardo in the pic it's way off. I use Painter 6. I dont get how to scale stuff in Painter though - marquee is seriously stunted in that program.

The brush i use is oil pastels. I'm trying to use others but i guess i need better version of painter to do that...

Behemot: i would like to learn how to suggest hair more than really painting every hair. I don't really like workjing (or rather trying to work) too realistic because i like to have something open to imagination. But thanx!

[Dementist]

Thanks, Erik. Painter just has so many brush options that it boggles my mind...

[Reilly]

I don't think your hair's all that bad, it's consistent with the way that you've drawn the rest of the picture in both cases and is finished to the same level. You have the shapes all there, and that's the hardest part, I think your only problem's that you only worked on each one for an hour.

The only thing that I'd really suggest is to make the highlights brighter and the shadows darker. Look at the photo; see how much contrast there is in her hair, especially where the light hits her? What I do sometimes if I'm haveing contrast problems with a piece is just drop some black into the part of the picture that's the darkest and white into the part of the picture that's lightest, just to show myself the full range of contrast that I could be working with, and how much farther I need to push it (although I'm terrible with colored work, so what do I know).
You could probably do the same thing with the fore-ground of the second piece to really pop those two figures out. Right now they're only as far along as the background anyway, so naturally the two will blend together.

Hope this is able to help you.

--Reilly