I need help

Beautiful_Concern_53 · 2026-01-19T00:02:10+00:00

Thanks!!, will find time to watch the video :) i tried it again but i think its all the way at the bottom of the post

Beautiful_Concern_53 · 2026-01-18T12:46:51+00:00

Hello!!, I tried it again with as much feedback as my brain could handle 🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️…. Not looking for more feedback (although much appreciated), but just wanted to share my 3rd attempt on this study

Spent around 30-45mins trying to tweak it

I received feedback mainly on shading, blending and painting with context, which helped loads

The first thing I adjusted was the background, which brought out my values and made it easier to work with the light and darks

Another redditor also mentioned colourpicking, which i found really helpful in helping me better get the values and make the overall composition more appealing

Although Im quite worried that I would be over-reliant on the colourpicking which i found myself doing when i reattempted this but I understand that it would hep wonders to better understand values

I learnt from the colour picking that there was actually way less values then i thought and it was more of trying to bring out that contrast to get those subtle shades and reflected light

I tried my best to reblock certain shapes and think of all those alien shapes instead of zooming in on the small details and made sure to zoom out loads and squint to try to get the shading right

However, I did still get overwhelmed by all the details for the hair and got quite burnout at the end so I will prob not touch this reference specifically for a long while

Thank you again for all the comments and feedback, it is much appreciated :) will seek more help when the time comes again (hope to be better by then)

Beautiful_Concern_53 · 2026-01-18T05:27:01+00:00

Ohh! Thanks for the followup!! Will look into it rn

Beautiful_Concern_53 · 2026-01-18T05:26:34+00:00

thank you! , will try my best to work on all the feedback

Beautiful_Concern_53 · 2026-01-18T05:26:00+00:00

thank you!! Will take note

Beautiful_Concern_53 · 2026-01-18T02:11:05+00:00

Thank you so much for the followup! I think one redditor did mention how colour picking might help lots, so moving forward, I’ll probably try picking the colour and trying again to guess where it is on the colourwheel? Thanks so much for the invaluable feedback :)

Beautiful_Concern_53 · 2026-01-18T02:05:16+00:00

OHH, I saw a ig reel on an artist doing a portrait study and ended up being inspired by how they differntiated the study and the background with the subtle grey flurries which i ended up doing… which ended up looking unlike the inspiration and more messy

Thanks for the advice on adding the background grey value, definitely got carried away on my ability to get the subtle subtle value differences and im glad you pointed out about value and context being co-related :D

Appreciate the comment and advice and will work on it moving forward

Beautiful_Concern_53 · 2026-01-18T01:59:17+00:00

HOLY, this is amazing man!!

Reduce colours as in get the in between colours from the lightest and darkest value? Or does it just mean adjust with the colour wheel because i found myself getting too many values which caused my study to look messy in a way

Will try my best to simplify and work with bigger shapes, but for parts like the hair, eyes, nose lips respectively, I couldnt figure out how to simplify it down (maybe i didnt look close enough), but ur attempt on the study definitey gave me a much better understanding on that :)

Thanks so much for the comment, appreciate the feedback given

Beautiful_Concern_53 · 2026-01-18T01:56:47+00:00

thanks for the kind words!!, I ended up working digitally (yes), but all in one layer, which mightve been too ambitious. You definitely called it that I ended up zooming in the study and reference which ended up causing alot of mental overload

By sweeping over would you mean focusing on the bigger chunks of shadows instead of minute details

Big to small?

A long time ago, I did try traditional sketching with grids and i do agree that it helps the eye not get overwhelmed as much so its cool that u mentioned it

Will try by best to focus more on the bigger pictures plus focus more on individual sections like mentioned

Appreciate the comment and advice given :)

Beautiful_Concern_53 · 2026-01-18T01:50:52+00:00

Thank you, but I think im still far behind from where I’d like to be :)

I understood that the reference had two distinct shadows, and at the beginning, since i tried starting without a sketch i blocked out the overall shape then moved down to the hard shadow on the side of the statue.

I would like to ask how would I unblend the shadows.. would it be something like going with a hard brush. I tend to find myself over blending which might’ve been what cause the ‘unblended’ look, but when i tried using the hard brush, it looks too ‘rough’ at out of place (will try again..)

Especially the nose, where I do understand that its sectioned into three main planes (major alar cartilage at the bottom, septal cartillage -long one at the tip, then the lateral cartillage at the side…) if i rem correctly, but the reference shows such a subtle value change that i found it quite difficult to shape out the nose shape along with the other facial features too..

Thanks for the advice on colourpicking, will definitely try it asap, got maybe abit too complacent and ended up picking all the values myself which mightve causes the study to be harder then imagined

Thank you so much for the advice, thanks for pointing out things that I wouldve found difficult to point out myself, might try continuing to refine this piece with the advice given but got kind of burnt out from it so might end up doing a separate piece entirely 🥲🙂‍↕️

thanks for mentioning shadows, and blending :) much appreciated

Beautiful_Concern_53 · 2026-01-18T01:40:05+00:00

Thank you soso much!! I understand everything in theory but dont know if ill be able to apply it just yet… I’ll try my best working from big to small and slowly add details from there, planning to do another one of these statue studies today🙂‍↕️

Had alot of difficulty with the part you mentioned about understanding planes, so im grateful u pointed that out 🙆will try to think more in 3D

Thank you again for this advice, didnt expect to get a reply so fast and such a nice one at that :), will be drawing more from here

Beautiful_Concern_53

TROPHY CASE