Dark elf type portrait

[Zimzibar]

Hiya everyone, i've done another portrait as i'm trying to get better at them. This guy is a made up character obviously ;p but i had a photographic reference on hand to check where the shadows and details should go. There was no tracing or anything like that, and the end result looks vastly different from the original photo, even ignoring the blue skin and big ears :)

I tried to take your advice with this one and paint a bit looser, rather than concentrating on 1 part of the pic, then moving on to another so that all the elements looked separate. I especially focused on detailing his eyes, and using brighter colours there so that you'd be drawn to them. The shirt and hair are deliberately sketchy so they don't compete for attention. Is the hair maybe a little too sketchy do you think? C&C's please! :)

[Lelle]

Heya!

A very nice picture I think, and the "drawn to the eyes" does work! =]

However, the spacing between the eyes is too small. And if you flip it horizontally you could see that his right(our left) side is too narrow. I tried making a pic to show what I meant.
How often do you flip the picture you are working with by the way?

It´s looking very nice, keep it up!

Cheers,

Lelle

[Sepulverture]

Hey man. The portrait is turning out great so far, but as the other fella pointed out the features aren't quite lining up properly. You could probably block in the hair with more values, and work out some of the details that you have going on like individual clumps of hair, and rather than detailing them like that you could imply them with uneven highlights if that makes sense. Playing on the idea of reflected lights more will help define form, although you've done pretty well there already, amping the contrast a bit in some areas will help it pop, and soften up those brushes on the darker areas, especially areas with shadow. Always remember the rule crisp edges in lighted areas, the bighter the highlighted edge the crisper the light typically, and then the darker the area the softer the edges will usually be. I see that you tried using something red as your reflected light, but it's really underwhelming as is, and the saturation doesn't seem right somehow. Also the lighting seems random. Pick one solid light source for your main light, and one solid (probably opposing) lightsource for your reflected light, and keep that in mind when placing highlights.

good work, now lets push it to the next level.

[Zimzibar]

Hey thanks guys, you're great :) Lelle, that pic you've done really does help me to see how wonky he is! I didn't flip this guy till after i'd started colouring unfortunately, so i guess he was lopsided right from the sketch. I'm not gonna do anymore to this one, i'm planning on starting a new portrait tonight (practice practice!) so i'll make sure to try and get it all lined up correctly right from the start.

Sepulverture - once again thanks for the detailed insight and encouragement. The red is pretty random, you're right - i wanted to put something other than blue into the skin and didn't really know what i was doing. So, consistent reflected lighting is something i'll work on in my next pic. Does it help to use a complimentary colour for this? I chose the red in this pic as his hair is red and i thought it might unify the piece.

I'm having a lot of fun with these portraits, so i'm definitely gonna try and take them to the next level :D thanks for helping me :)