Looking good man, you definitely have an affinity for enviros and should keep pushing those out like crazy. I have noticed that a lot of your human figures while holding together well in regards to tone and value, they tend to look a little soft and mushy. Even squishy things like faces have angles and edges to them and an underlaying structure. So maybe some studies involving skeletal structure, and musculature? I know that when you really nail the construction of a face everything else seems to fall into place nicely...
this here isnt a bad example of what I mean, for the first thing that google popped up.... http://www.stanprokopenko.com/blog/2009/05/draw-head-any-angle/
anywhoose, its great to see you posting so regularly, thats a great habit to form as early as possible and will pay off in the future, keep it up!
I think that mushy problem you're talking about is because you're not addressing form in your sketchbook when you're using lines. It's all edges but how much does that give you a sense of the dimension of the object?
My advice to you would be to set up a mirror next to your laptop and do a self portrait and: 1. Make sure you have a strong primary light source that is not centered on your face, in fact paint yourself in a 3/4 just to make it more complicated. 2.Do not paint your nostrils, lips, eyes, ears and hair.
3. Spend at least one hour on that painting. If not 2-3. If you spend this much time developing the form of your face you'll learn a lot!
There are some really important moments that happen as light falls across a face that make it look like a face, when you remove all of those features that make a face look like a face, how do you make that form look like a human head? You build up the structure. If you focus on those transitions and get a sense for the DEPTH of the face THEN you will make a really believable head, not because you paint eyes with photo-realistic shiny spots, but because everything will have realistic depth! (example:how for back does your tearduct recede away from the peak of your eyeball or the bridge of your nose? Is that the same distance from the base of your nostril to the tip of your nose?) By working on just the broad form you'll have no choice but to reign things in and sharpen them up--getting distracted by the little details is what makes things mushy.
Looking good man, you definitely have an affinity for enviros and should keep pushing those out like crazy. I have noticed that a lot of your human figures while holding together well in regards to tone and value, they tend to look a little soft and mushy. Even squishy things like faces have angles and edges to them and an underlaying structure. So maybe some studies involving skeletal structure, and musculature? I know that when you really nail the construction of a face everything else seems to fall into place nicely...
ReplyDeletethis here isnt a bad example of what I mean, for the first thing that google popped up....
http://www.stanprokopenko.com/blog/2009/05/draw-head-any-angle/
anywhoose, its great to see you posting so regularly, thats a great habit to form as early as possible and will pay off in the future, keep it up!
I think that mushy problem you're talking about is because you're not addressing form in your sketchbook when you're using lines. It's all edges but how much does that give you a sense of the dimension of the object?
ReplyDeleteMy advice to you would be to set up a mirror next to your laptop and do a self portrait and:
1. Make sure you have a strong primary light source that is not centered on your face, in fact paint yourself in a 3/4 just to make it more complicated.
2.Do not paint your nostrils, lips, eyes, ears and hair.
3. Spend at least one hour on that painting. If not 2-3. If you spend this much time developing the form of your face you'll learn a lot!
There are some really important moments that happen as light falls across a face that make it look like a face, when you remove all of those features that make a face look like a face, how do you make that form look like a human head? You build up the structure. If you focus on those transitions and get a sense for the DEPTH of the face THEN you will make a really believable head, not because you paint eyes with photo-realistic shiny spots, but because everything will have realistic depth!
(example:how for back does your tearduct recede away from the peak of your eyeball or the bridge of your nose? Is that the same distance from the base of your nostril to the tip of your nose?)
By working on just the broad form you'll have no choice but to reign things in and sharpen them up--getting distracted by the little details is what makes things mushy.