Marauder Shieldmaiden portrait

[turin]

So, basically - I posted a thread with the lineart for this portrait last Wednesday or Thursday, but then the forum crashed and the thread was apparently erased. Over the weekend I went ahead and finished up the portrait without getting any feedback on the lineart first. Pretty stupid, right? But hopefully the final product isn't completely worthless. I think I at least learned something about how to color and shade portraits.

[Jetrel]

Continuing to do things like this would probably be one of the most constructive things, period, that you could possibly do for your skill in art.

After you figure out the few tricks of how to approximate tiny features, and how to anti-alias by hand, your skill at sprite art is basically defined by your skill in larger drawings.

It's no coincidence that neorice is good at larger-scale drawings.



Specific C&C about this drawing, later.

[turin]

Aye, I agree with that; I was thinking more along the lines of "it might have been better to wait to get C&C on the lineart before trying to color it".

[Sgt. Groovy]

Shading isn't all that bad, but the face is just naivistic, the features are represented by symbols of them. You seem to follow a bottom-up approach, just making few lines to make out the shape of the face. The problem is, this is the more difficult approach, and you don't have the skill for it. It would be better top-down, to first outline the shape of the face in more detail, and more realistically, and then toonify it by leaving only the most important lines.

The left sleeve is longer than the right. It's very common mistake to make half-length sleeves different length when the arms are are in different position.

ETA: the hair is way too yellow. It also looks at least as much a raggedy scarf as it look like hair. Study reference, both drawn and photographic.

[Jetrel]

Groovy is basically correct all-around.

the face is just naivistic, the features are represented by symbols of them.

Drawing is a act of approximation, and your approximation is too simple. An example of something similar would be approximating the orbits of the planets (+other solar-system bodies) as being circles. This is dead wrong, they're a more complex shape called an ellipse, and some very valuable information (like comets) breaks when the approximation is too simple. It's kindof like a low poly count on a 3D model, or a super-low resolution on an image - if either of these gets too low, the image fails at what it was meant to do - the image is no longer discernable as what it was intended to be.

When it comes to bodies, there is a certain threshold of approximation that is optimal, that is "the sweet spot". What you are approximating is individual/granular features of the body - as you get more complex, you add in more specific details. For example:

•If a person was trying to draw an arm, they might start off with a cylinder. That's not sufficient for a "good drawing" in any way, but it at least gets across the idea that it's a human form (really, it's practically what a stick figure is).
• Next, they add some basic enhancements - they know that the top of the forearm is much wider than the wrist, so they make it so; they also add in some bulging for the bicep/tricep, and shoulder. (That gets them more-or-less to where fred gallagher lingers at, even now).
• The next step is to add in additional groups of muscles; to realize that there are not 3 muscles worth articulating in the upper arm, but more like 10. The results speak for themselves:
http://hyung-taekim.org/albums/userpics ... estell.jpg
http://hyung-taekim.org/albums/userpics ... arcway.jpg
http://hyung-taekim.org/albums/userpics/10001/orha.jpg


So, let's take the same process, and apply that to the face.
Right now, your eye is merely an oval with a dot inside it. That's not gonna fly; it's too simple (most eyes are not quite ovals, and from other angles, such as from the side, all eyes transform into a different shape - a wedge). We're gonna start by having you dive into the deep end, per se - Draw me an EYE, preferably an eye suitable for this female character, since that's where what you learn will be put to use. You will need a reference image for this - a photo of a woman's eye. You can probably find something great on http://www.istockphoto.com/ , searching for woman eye as keywords. This drawing will be a closeup of an eye, this eye should be about an inch or more wide on the drawing paper.

Post both the reference image, and the drawing. You may want a non-#2 pencil, and a kneaded eraser, but those are about all you need for serious pencil drawing (until you get to ultra-high-end work, but you won't be doing that anytime soon).

ETA: the hair is way too yellow. It also looks at least as much a raggedy scarf as it look like hair. Study reference, both drawn and photographic.

I was at my college's website today, and saw a picture that had ~four blonde heads in it. http://www.stolaf.edu/alumni/images/rot ... tator4.jpg

It's amazing how low the saturation is in those. Even in our front-page image of Li'sar, which contains a lot of amateur crap on my part, the saturation is much lower than in yours (this is partly because that was a pet peeve I tried not to repeat in my own work). Only in bright sun, under a blue sky, does blond generally get somewhat "yellow".

[Jetrel]

On more of a general note.

Drawing just isn't something you can just sit down and do a decent job at, simply because you're a smart guy. I learned this the hard way. So did Cedric, so did FMuñoz, so did Pickslide. Some of us, like pickslide, did some long-term practice, and actually got good at it. It takes practice; not just repeating the same thing over and over again, but practice designed to build skill.

In that way, it's kinda like learning to play an instrument, or learning to ride a bike/skateboard. Your intelligence can help you to learn faster than the next bloke (IF and only if you bring it to bear on the task at hand; use it to figure out why things aren't going right), but it will not give you a baseline boost to your experience. Your "first drawings" won't come out any better than the next guys (barely so, if at all). If you sit down to play the piano, without really knowing how; well, it ain't gonna be pretty.


These are not your first drawings, but, for better or worse, you're still in that stage. You don't really know how to draw yet, and none of your work for the next several months is going to be gameworthy (That's assuming you practice hard. If you continue at the rate you're going now, it may be years or decades).


I can help you get decent, but you're going to have to do some (often boring) exercises. You have to learn to walk before you can run. That's just how it is. I just want you to understand this - drawing is a very rewarding long-term hobby, and I think it would be especially so, considering your interests. But you're gonna have to make a long-term, and strong commitment to even be decent at it (and that's true for anyone).

[turin]

Yeah, I realize it's a lot of work. I've been working at it on and off for the past few years (as you've seen), but I haven't made a whole lot of progress mainly because I haven't had a whole lot of time. But I'm going to have a lot more free time now, so I'm going to start working on it more seriously.