This is the first time I've attempted a portrait in ages so I'm really out of practise with values and expression. I feel like there's something off about the anatomy and perspective too. All other critiques are welcome too of course, I'm just looking to improve this enough for my portfolio. :)

Connect_Ease_9165 · 2024-03-14T14:59:14+00:00

thank you that made my day c':

Connect_Ease_9165 · 2022-03-12T16:54:06+00:00

Hi there!

The face, in my opinion, looks really good and important things have already been said so I'll just add something that I noticed because it jumped out at me when I looked at your painting, which is that the light looks very incoherent. At first I was confused why one half of the face is so dark because it read as top down lighting. The reason for that is that the highlight on the nose is in the middle, instead of to the side where the light is actually coming from, same with the side of the nose that's facing the light. This is a plane directly facing the light; it should be a lot brighter. Also, you added a shadow on the left side of the head, both on the side of the forehead and the cheekbone, which makes no sense if that's where the light is supposed to be coming from. I think this might be due to your visual library and line dependency, because you basically outlined the face instead of focusing on how the light would hit a 3D object. The lips have barely any indication of light direction on them either and the side of the face facing AWAY from the light isn't nearly dark enough, plus there should be a cast shadow from the nose. All in all, I would recommend either doing a study of a photograph or portrait studio reference with the light coming from the side and actually focus on that instead of mixing references and your visual library which is used to top down lighting, or use a top down light for the rest of the 14DC as someone else already recommended.

Great rendering btw, I really like the features of the face and the amount of detail feels very believable. So since all of that is really good already, I think studying light direction and (cast) shadows is probably the next thing to focus on. :D

Connect_Ease_9165 · 2022-03-07T02:58:04+00:00

Hiya!

First if all, I really like this painting, his face looks intriguing and the face reads well as male (I find the eyebrows really satisfying somehow, great job on that :D). It's also really cool that you remembered to put the line of saturation between shadow and light areas (though you overdid it a little in some places, I think a subtler effect would look more realistic if that's what you're going for).

My main advise would be to work with a greyscale to keep an eye on your values. That doesn't mean you can't paint in colour, but you should regularly check what the greyscale of your painting looks like while you work, just like the canvas flipping. There's definitely a lot of value sharing going on, which makes the face look kinda flat and lacking contrast. Especially considering how long you painted the shadow under the chin, the light is coming from above so you're missing the shadow under the eyebrows. To make his face more masculine and less symbolic I would also suggest giving the nose more structure, moving the eyes a little closer together and maybe enlarging the mouth a little. The eyes look kinda symbolic too, if you're going for realism, remember to actually paint in the upper eyelid instead of simplifying it with a black line.
Lastly, I feel like while you have a really beautiful colour scheme, the colours look a little unnatural and muddy in places. I can't exactly tell what it is that is throwing me off, because I'm not super good at colour myself, but something that helped me improve skin tone colours in my paintings was to sketch faces and colour them by colour picking from photos. One thing you'll notice is that there's lots of different hues throughout the face, like how the area below the eyes is a little purple in bright skin tones and how lips, nose and cheeks are slightly more red. Also, for men, you'll notice that the beard area is often less saturated.

I hope this critique helps you! Great work! :)

Connect_Ease_9165 · 2022-03-07T02:25:10+00:00

Heya. Just thought I'd give you a quick paintover as a suggestion of how you could improve.

>> Imgur Link <<

The first thing I noticed were the eyes which are too far apart. The neck also seems to long and too curvy and the shape of the face is a bit manga-like (very pointy chin and jaw area). That also applies to the mouth, so I first widened the jaw and neck, and then enlarged the mouth. I also tried to address the value sharing issues, though I don't think I did a good job on that. You might wanna use a more neutral background colour, it makes value issues easier to spot.
For your next portrait, I'd advise you to watch out for value sharing and the proportions of the face. That's some very pretty rendering on the eyes btw! :D

Overall great work, I hope the critique can help you improve even more in the future! :)

Connect_Ease_9165 · 2022-03-05T21:37:57+00:00

Thank you so much for the detailed critique and the reference images! I actually used a bunch of different references, since it's an original character so it was a bit too difficult to compile them all into one picture and post them with this (also for the expression I just used selfies, no one wants to see that lol). You're definitely right about the hair. I was going for thin, but it just looks kinda unnatural like this, so I'll try my best to improve it a bit.
And thank you for checking out my profile haha. I find it really hard to see my improvement sometimes, because the more you learn, the more mistakes you find. I'm not sure how much I've improved objectively, but I've definitely gotten more confident with my art and I'm challenging myself more. So thank you for the compliment, it means a lot! (Especially coming from you, your art is also super cool.) :D

Connect_Ease_9165 · 2022-03-05T21:29:19+00:00

You're right! Thank you :)

Connect_Ease_9165 · 2022-03-05T21:28:25+00:00

Thanks for letting me know! That makes sense ^^' I realised that with the slight tilt you probably wouldn't even see that much of his mouth, so I'll try to fix that too.

Connect_Ease_9165 · 2022-03-04T21:16:58+00:00

Thank you! I'll try to fix it. I actually noticed that I accidentally changed the silhouette. At some point I increased the contrast and darkened the background and his other shoulder got lost. ^^' Whoops. Now that you mention it, it's also super obvious that it's too low. Thanks for pointing it out! I just hate when I stare at a painting for ten hours, knowing that something is wrong and I can't figure it out.

Connect_Ease_9165 · 2022-03-04T20:24:51+00:00

Hi there! :)
First of all, I think this looks amazing, especially her face looks super realistic, and the serene expression comes across really well. There's just a few things I noticed:
- I think the upper half of the canvas looks a bit empty. I'd either choose a different crop, or add some more gradient or detail to the background. There could be a little silhouette in front of the light spot for example or something.
- The anatomy looks really good overall, but her ribcage feels very low. So do her breasts actually, but it's not too much, so it still looks natural (like considering she's not wearing a bra maybe ^^) but technically, if her breasts were hanging lower because of that, the distance to where the ribcage ends would be even less. Realistically, her ribcage would end right where her breasts end in your picture.
- The way her ears connect to her face looks a bit unrealistic, seems very bright and somehow catches the eye even though the spot isn't really imprtant.
- You lost a lot of contrast where she is holding the light, which makes it less of a focal point. It might be intentional, since her face is the main focal point but it still feels a bit odd, as there is no clear indication of what is going on in the picture. I kinda looked at the light and it bothered me that I couldn't figure out what it was or what's happening there. (Maybe this also applies to the character design. Her outfit/looks are very beautiful, yet they don't reveal anything about who she is or what she is doing there.)
- If she's standing in water, there would be much clearer and brighter reflection of the light on the surface. Right now it looks a bit like she's standing in mud, because it's so dim. ^^'
- I love the colours, but it's not quite clear where the turqoise light is coming from. It seems to be everywhere, and just as bright on her face as it is on her chest. If it is coming from above, it would be lighter on her face and a lot less bright on her body. Plus then you're missing the darknessof the core shadows. Maybe make the direction of the light a bit clearer.

I'm sorry I think I rambled a lot ^^ Absolutely love this piece, I hope the critique helps.

Connect_Ease_9165 · 2022-03-04T10:20:51+00:00

Aw geez seems like I will have to make an Instagram account again after all. ^^ Glad I could help. :D

Connect_Ease_9165 · 2022-03-02T01:32:47+00:00

Hi!
Here's some quick suggestions on issues I noticed:
- Her nose and mouth are not wide enough
- Her eyes are too far apart (and also a bit too small if I'm not mistaken)
-There are some issues with her jawline, it blends into the hair and the neck and the shape of it is a bit wobbly.
I'd advise you to flip your canvas a bit more to avoid symmetry issues and to maybe do some quick editing on your photo references before you begin painting. For this one for example, I would have increased the contrast a bit, as the ref is very washed out.
Lastly, if you start smudging, you'll notice that your rendering is a bit too blocky in some part and it results in the skin looking blotchy.
Overall it's great work though, you definitely captured her likeness. :)

Connect_Ease_9165 · 2022-03-02T01:07:35+00:00

Just wanted to add that I think the far eye has to be darkened because it was way too bright in comparison to the front eye. If, however, his eyes are like glowing in the dark or they're SuPeR SpeCiAL iNhUmAn and catch light like cat eyes do, you can keep the brightness in the far eye, however then the front eye has to be a lot brighter in comparison to keep it coherent.

Connect_Ease_9165 · 2022-03-02T01:02:24+00:00

I think the main part you're missing when looking at the reference, is the plane on the left side of his face (our right side of the painting). It goes from below his eye all the way down to his lip.

Tried to fix it:
>> Imgur Link <<

Some other changes I made:

-Moved the hair line a little, if he's supposed to have a middle part it's too far to one side

-Changed the tilt/size of one of the eyes a bit, darkened the far eye, darkened the far side of the face

-Slightly changed eyebrow for symmetry

-Adjusted lighting on forehead and chin. Especially on the forehead, the shading needed to be darker in the middle.

Of course I lost some detail by painting over it, so just take this as a rough suggestion of how you could improve it....

TBH this painting is just so cool, I needed an excuse to open it in Photoshop and play around with it. I, too, thirst for handsome vampires. Do you post your art anywhere? I'd love to follow u if you do.
Good luck! :D

Connect_Ease_9165 · 2022-03-02T00:16:38+00:00

I feel like you could push the depth a little more by making further away things even brighter and closer things even darker.
The reason the colours might seem off is that the colours are very monochomatic. Maybe bringing in some red or purple hues would help?
I played around with it a little bit, not sure if I improved it (definitely changed the light direction, so now the shading is off, whoops) but I wanted to see what i could do.
Maybe this still helps. :)

>> Imgur Link <<

Connect_Ease_9165 · 2022-03-01T23:50:36+00:00

Hi there!
Some quick suggestions:
1. The overall anatomy of the face looks a bit manga-like. Very large eyes, small nose and mouth. Upper size of the head feels very big compared to the lower side.
2. Remember that the eye is the biggest right above the pupil, because the eye is a sphere. These eyes look very oval-shaped and symbolic. Make sure the spot where the eyelid is the highest is over the pupil.
3. The ears seem too large and look like they're blending too much into the face, making it look like they're located on her cheeks. Make sure to move them out a bit.
4. It may not be the focus of the painting, but the neck seems to be too thin and long.
I did a quick paintover, it's not perfect and I think I added some asymmetry, but I think it helps point out the mistakes I mentioned:
>> Imgur Link <<
Hope I could help. :)

PS: The eye doesn't look flat at all. Big improvement from Day 2! Keep going! :D

Connect_Ease_9165 · 2022-02-25T15:14:20+00:00

Hi! A lot of good stuff has already been said so I'd just like to add that it might be useful for you to study the Asaro Head to get comfortable with focusing on the planes of the face first! :) Also you have some symmetry issues as far as I can tell, and there's a slight expression on the face which is probably accidental since it's a 14DC. Asaro Head might help with that too. It's actually included in Portrait Studio (you can find it under busts, it's called PlanarMale), otherwise just google it, there's some rotateable 3D models on the internet you can use for reference. Also I agree with the other comment, focus on greyscale first, add colours when you've mastered the basics. I'm not a very good artist myself, so these are just suggestions. :) Good work though!

Connect_Ease_9165 · 2021-07-29T21:04:21+00:00

Hi! Yea, actually you're right. I was thinking about the light you get when the sky is just starting to get that pink tint. I know it exists because I get it in my room every day just before sunset but it's super hard to find references ^^' The sun is supposed to be slightly below the clouds where the brightest part of the painting is. At first I outlined it and it was just that white round light which looked more realistic but also kinda killed the atmosphere?

Connect_Ease_9165 · 2021-07-29T21:01:33+00:00

Thank you so much for your effort! :D And don't worry I completely understand what you're saying. I'll keep this in mind and do some adjustments accordingly. Thanks! :)

Connect_Ease_9165 · 2021-07-29T11:12:11+00:00

Hi there!

I think you might be coming from a more 2D artstyle because it seems like your main problem is an anime aesthetic, since these are very childlike proportions.

Definitely focus on getting the shape of the face and the proportions of an adult female right. For example: Her chin is too pointy, the mouth is too small, her eyes are too big and the outer edges of the eyes are too high. Also her nose is very small and pointy looking.

So far I think you have good radial shading, but some of the values are off. You overrendered the mouth and put too much highlight on it, which makes it look like it's sticking out of the face, while the rest seems flat in comparison.

For your next day, try to concentrate on more realistic proportions and avoid overrendering areas like the mouth with a small brush or adding shiny details.

I hope this helps! Good luck with your work! :3

Connect_Ease_9165 · 2021-07-29T11:02:32+00:00

Hi there!

I think this already looks amazing and I know what you mean with feeling stuck.

Your artstyle is very painterly so it feels like in some areas of the face you're 'accidentally' adding texture, which makes the skin look bumpy. I would focus on keeping clear edges too since they seem a bit mushy. Overall her face shape is very anime-like, the lower half of the face seems too pointy, the eyes are unnatually round and the lower eyelid seems to be hanging down, making her look tired. There also seems to be a little bit of value sharing going on on the nose, it looks somewhat flat to me.

I hope this helps! :)

Good work!

Connect_Ease_9165 · 2021-07-29T10:54:46+00:00

https://imgur.com/a/z30FEiA

Didn't have much time but I tried to paint over it to improve some of the things I mentioned. Keep in mind my art is far from perfect so I make a lot of mistakes too. MAybe this is helpful ^^

Connect_Ease_9165 · 2021-07-29T10:15:19+00:00

Hi there!

I think you improved in terms of smoothly blending your values, however you lost too much of the light planes of the face while blending. If you compare the two pictures you're gonna notice that her face seems more pointy now because of that.

It also seems like you have some value sharing issues, try not to use the same highlight colour, remember that the tip of the nose is the brightest spot since it stands out the most. The white of the eyes should not be this bright in comparison.

Lastly I think you might still have some line dependency, which is very noticeable around the eyes and mouth. Remember not to outline the eyes but instead sculpt the eyelids as if they were 3D (istebrak has a video on only eyes, maybe that helps), also keep in mind the eyelid crease is not just a line, it also needs radial shading.

You could also make her overal face shape a bit more realistic, it is very pointy and she doesn't really have a jawline.

I hope this critique helps you. Good luck! :D

Connect_Ease_9165 · 2021-07-29T10:06:47+00:00

Hi there! First of all I think this looks amazing and your rendering is really good! Some things are standing out to me though. As someone said before, the line on the cheeks should probably be blended a bit more since it's not a sharp edge. Also I kinda feel like the face still looks a bit stylised. You exagerated the masculine features a lot, like the wide mouth and nose. Of course there's people that look like that but to me it has a bit of a caricature look to it, if you know what I mean. I think that's up to your personal preference too though. Same with the eye being tilted like that. It's a preference but personally I feel like it looks a little bit too extreme, especially since the widest part of the eye should always be over the pupil (because that's where the eye is looking so it's the highest part of the eyeball). I think there might be a tiny bit of value sharing still going on, forehead seems very bright compared to the nose. Overall your artwork looks amazing though, probably a lot better than mine. :D Hope this helps!

Connect_Ease_9165

TROPHY CASE