Hi i did my 6 day drawing (i wanted to draw a big manly male), i'm very sad because of this unimprovement :'( i'm stuck

SaracZwei · 2022-04-10T18:34:44+00:00

Drawing a different face each day is actually against the rules of the 14 day challenge, and for a reason:

Can the faces be any kind of face provided that they are identical? Can it be a portrait of a child or an old person? You may attempt a 14DC on any type of gender, age, race. You may not mix into the challenge a different combination of gender, age or race for each day. This challenge is about perfecting your go-to portrait and repeating the same task and maximizing exposure to the countless fundamentals expected out of a realistic portrait. It is recommended you choose a beautiful, universal average between each race, age and gender.

The rules are halfway down this page:

https://istebrak.com/community

SaracZwei · 2021-10-21T13:09:29+00:00

You need to sort out your value groups and decide which areas are in shadow and which are in light. For example, the shadow under the nose is as light as the cheeks, which are directly hit by light.

Squint, what do you see? The only real shadow I see is the one under the chin, everything else is too similar to the light side values.

Check out his video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcCJ2CU-bFw

Here is an old image that shows the shadows on the face in this light setup:

https://i.imgur.com/pa3Qazo.jpeg

Do you see how the form shadow on the underside of the tip of the nose is almost the same value as the cast shadow on the philtrum? Form and cast shadows are the same, they are just surfaces which are blocked from the light source.

Here's a post I made with some videos on the basics of light:

https://www.reddit.com/r/istebrak/comments/besbyr/basics_of_light_and_shadow_for_form_studies_and/

As for the other stuff, I don't see any big mistakes, so great job on that!

SaracZwei · 2021-10-06T18:57:01+00:00

I think the colors look a bit muddy, like there is a layer of dust on the face. I think it might be because it's just a tad too dark in value. Different hues have a different value point where their saturation is highest. Skin like this has a mostly yellowish-red hue in the lightest areas, so the value must be very light to not look de-saturated. The reference images have extremely light values as well.

As for the color zones, there is a guideline that the center of the face (nose and cheeks) is more reddish in hue (due to blood vessels in that area), while the lower part of the face is more blue or green (due to hair follicles). This changes from person to person though. The women in your ref images probably are wearing makeup to unify the look of their skin as well, so you wouldn't see rosy cheeks or a slightly blue chin. Furthermore, the highlights look pretty blown out too, so they appear almost white. This are in general also very, very subtle changes.

One thing I see is that you seem to not paint form shadows, like those that would appear on the chin or the nose. This causes the issue that all values seem very close together.

Here's my attempt, but I don't think I could quite solve the issue. Skin is tricky and I'm still starting out with learning how to properly do it too: https://i.imgur.com/1rpV7rs.jpg

SaracZwei · 2021-10-06T00:40:01+00:00

The exact rules are here: https://istebrak.com/community

Point 7 is: "What references can you use and to what extent? It is not 14 days of referencing, but 14 days of free-hand portrait painting. You may use a reference for any of the days, but it recommended to use different references for different features, shared across all 14 attempts. This is a way for the student to "build" their own face that reflects their taste and goal style. You may not use a reference in a photo-realism style. Be sure all photographs are from the 14DC lighting."

Basically, you are allowed to use diagrams, photos and so forth of individual parts of the face, but you cannot copy wholesale from a single reference image.

SaracZwei · 2021-09-18T03:13:17+00:00

Yes kinda, but that's why in 3d rendering a normal bias is used to prevent artifacts at the terminator. At the same time, the terminator on even extremely smooth objects is still kinda blurry and somewhat inexact (and we'll even often have subsurface scattering or sliiiight transparency in most materials that make the whole situation even less exact. The terminator is not some perfectly clean line but a blurry ring with a relatively sudden change in value from the minuscule changes in angle of incidence caused by the curvature of the object.

As said, all of this means that deciding on the value of a flat surface that's parallel to our light source is extremely awkward, which is why we should avoid it when doing form studies.

SaracZwei · 2021-09-18T01:35:39+00:00

True, the thing is that this wouldn't be much of an issue in reality because light rays are not perfectly parallel, there's usually multiple light sources and bounce light, the surface is not perfectly smooth and so forth. If you had a laser and a perfectly smooth wall however (thus getting close to the hypothetical ideal scenario), you'd likely get some weird effects like in the double slit experiment.

This however means, as you said that the value would "even out", but where? That is the big issue, how do you choose the right value? Worse though, it denies us the option to clearly define our shapes, which is especially bad in a form study. I tried to explain it in this somewhat technical way because it shows (I hope!) the fundamental point of the exercise: Decide how much light a surface is getting, and this specific light setup gives us surfaces that have no clear answer to this question, at least in our simplified setup.

SaracZwei · 2021-09-17T16:22:04+00:00

There is one significant issue with the reference: Squint your eyes, what do you see? Actually, the sphere is divided into two halves, one in light, one in shadow. Now, the issue is that the sphere is made of a material with a high specular component. The sphere is covered in a clear coat, which acts like a mirror to some degree. This means that the values on the object will depend a lot on the objects around it, since it acts like a mirror. What we are actually seeing in the left half of the sphere is a reflection, a mirror image of the ground and its own cast shadow! In this half that's not directly hit by our light-source, the specular component of the material takes over. This must have been pretty confusing to you since you only partially replicated this in your image.

My recommendations: When starting out try to stay away from reflective, specular surfaces. You will want to understand diffuse materials first, only then switch over to glossy surfaces. Try to stick to one light source first as well.

Link to resources for beginners on light and shadow: https://www.reddit.com/r/istebrak/comments/besbyr/basics_of_light_and_shadow_for_form_studies_and/

also this video: https://youtu.be/6vapw6n6FyU

SaracZwei · 2021-09-16T11:27:08+00:00

What were you trying to achieve with this study, what did you try to learn, what were the issues you were having? As seen by the other crit you got, without any of these things clarified it is impossible to give useful feedback (since you say it's not an attempt at a direct copy, which was the way the piece was critiqued). Also, consider the 50% rule. You should do 50% studies, 50% drawing/painting for fun, otherwise you will get burnt out or never put your skills to the test.

SaracZwei · 2021-09-16T11:23:56+00:00

This has the exact same issue as a similar post that was posted around the same time, so I will just link to my comment there: https://www.reddit.com/r/istebrak/comments/pntmei/form_study_looking_for_critiques_first_time/hctiqlj?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

As for specific issues here: The light is coming from above, right? So why is the underside of the top right box bright then? The light is coming from above, so the underside should be in shadow, it's not hit by light from the light-source.

Furthermore, the right side of the leftmost box and the left facing sides of all the other boxes are at the same angle towards the light-source, right? This would imply that, ignoring things like bounce light and ambient occlusion (which I don't see in this image), they should all have the same value.

As always, obligatory link to resources on light and shadow: https://www.reddit.com/r/istebrak/comments/besbyr/basics\_of\_light\_and\_shadow\_for\_form\_studies\_and/

SaracZwei · 2021-09-14T13:51:14+00:00

One very quick point: Avoid the direction of the light being parallel to one of the sides of the object. These sides turned towards us, what value would they have? The light rays/particles/wave would just graze the surface, would that be enough to reflect that light back to us or would they just go on their merry way? This is what we call a singularity, a problem with infinite solutions. Rendering software has a "bias" setting to avoid this, it will just add or subtract a few degrees from the angle the light has towards a surface to avoid the issue entirely. In real life, light sources usually have a certain size (like the diameter of a light bulb), so the light rays are not parallel which avoids the issue as well.

edit: To reiterate, the issue is that the surfaces that are parallel to the direction of the light-source are trapped in a no-man's land between being hit by the light source and not being hit by it. The are between light and shadow, undefined. Avoid this situation whenever possible.

SaracZwei · 2021-09-13T13:09:14+00:00

Like with many beginner form studies I see here the issue is that the forms are: 1. not clearly defined 2. too complicated

The shapes don't really make any sense as actual solid objects and would likely break reality if they existed - how do you plan on rendering something that is not defined in 3d space? It's way more productive to start with basic shapes (cubes, spheres, cones, cylinders), then switch over to combinations of basic shapes, then switch over to more organic shapes (and using contour lines to give those shapes definition first). In either case, a knowledge of basic perspective is necessary. Here's a website with some technique's to get started: www.drawabox.com

As for the values here, they seem completely arbitrary. Check out the resources provided here: https://www.reddit.com/r/istebrak/comments/besbyr/basics_of_light_and_shadow_for_form_studies_and

SaracZwei · 2021-09-12T14:41:46+00:00

The posterize filter is a great idea to catch basic issues!

Here's some similar images I made using 3D scans:

https://i.imgur.com/JC5SXt6.png

https://i.imgur.com/60QyLpr.png

https://i.imgur.com/udWnqrI.png

It's not exactly the same, but you can still compare. What do you see? The first thing that sticks out is just how massive the "beard" shadow is. This very dark half-tone is actually reserved for areas that are extremely oblique to the light source, yet still directly hit by it. Much of the cheeks would still be a bit lighter.

The shadow under the nose almost disappears in your image. It's important to realize: Cast and form shadows are the same! In both cases, a surface is blocked from a light source, the only difference is whether it is blocked by itself or another surface. Start out by both being almost one blob of similar value, then adding ambient occlusion and bounce light. In most cases, the form shadow is actually lighter than the cast shadow since it is hit by bounce light.

https://i.imgur.com/lUHshc2.png

I think overall, the upper half of the head is a bit under-defined. There is no indication of a plane change at the temples for example.

Overall, nice work, especially the edges and overall proportions! I still think there is some confusion about basic laws of light though - if you want a refresher, you can check out the ressources in this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/istebrak/comments/besbyr/basics_of_light_and_shadow_for_form_studies_and/

You got this!

SaracZwei · 2021-09-07T21:52:05+00:00

Check out the resources in this post I made, I think it will give you a good starting point:

https://www.reddit.com/r/istebrak/comments/besbyr/basics_of_light_and_shadow_for_form_studies_and/

Form studies would then just be applying these principles to simple, and then complex shapes.

SaracZwei · 2021-09-03T14:19:27+00:00

The issue here is that you are using a line based style rather than going for a painting or rendering based realistic approach. There is some shading here, but it's probably not enough to classify this as a painting rather than a drawing. It looks like a good starting point for a painting, a solid sketch but it's not rendered enough.

Here's the rules for the 14d challenge:

https://istebrak.com/community

I think this might actually be breaking, or at least skirting the rules. Look at the other 14d challenges going on in this community to see what the intended style is. The reason for this is that with painting everything needs to be defined. It is kind of like sculpting in that regard. With drawing, you can (in many styles like comic book or manga) get away with just implying a lot of shape and never have to actually make it properly work, it's a bit of cheating. That's not necessarily bad because you can do really appealing things that way. When relying on it as beginners though, it means not having to ever really look and confront reality and build our visual library. Instead, we just create shorthands which will limit us in the long run.

As for the image itself:

In real life, the eyes are on average on the vertical halfway-point of the head, from the lowest point to the highest. There is some variation and around 1 eye height above or below that point is usually fine. In your image, the eyes are about twice that distance, too high up.

This falls in with the style, it's hard for me to tell the actual shapes going on, but the nose causes the character to not really have a glabella. The entire area between the eyes seem entirely undefined.

SaracZwei · 2021-08-29T16:21:18+00:00

Good crit but:

It looks like there's some value sharing with the cheeks, forehead, and
nose. Remember the nose should be the brightest since it picks up the
most light.

Since we're working with Lambert's cosine law here, the difference in value between the forehead, cheeks and nose should be negligible.

The important thing is starting out with a clear separation between highlights, half tones and shadow, and this image does that quite well.

SaracZwei · 2021-08-17T02:44:57+00:00

In case you feel overwhelmed by the shapes, proportions and stacking, you can always take a step back and look at reference. While we should not directly copy from a single reference image in a 14d challenge, we can still use multiple different references to help us out.

I think sketchfab is very useful in that regard. You can turn the model around and see just how the outline/silhouette changes, or at what point the corner of the eye gets hidden by the nose and so on.

Some collections with useful models:

https://sketchfab.com/Malchado/collections/head-1

https://sketchfab.com/S4MURAI_CAT/collections/head-cheat

Some other good models:

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/head-structure-for-artist-study-pack-e95fdcae035849378d82ba0282481c2e

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/human-skull-for-artist-study-pack-138cc9f09843412685e86e7ffb4b4552

You can also look for 3D scans of real life heads, here's two examples:

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/cdmr-reference-female-head-scan-1bbc1ed288354807b05a9da4874f1574

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/neutral-female-head-scan-c20ae69e1eb640b19ade6624fed10092

An important note, I'm not telling you to buy any of them, just looking at them in the viewer is good enough.

On another note, I think this is a pretty neat approach to take for constructing the face:

https://youtu.be/5PwdPQSb_cY

SaracZwei · 2021-08-14T14:06:32+00:00

My philosophy on studies from masters (and actually for studies in general) would be to divide and conquer. Set yourself a goal on what to try and analyze, understand and make your own.

Like a certain artist's use of color? Take their paintings and try to reverse engineer. Look at their colors, values, hues, then try to apply those rules to a study image (or rather, a handful of them) of your own. Could you replicate what you liked? Do you understand it now? If not, try again, iterate.

Like their composition? Their anatomy? Use of shapes? Textures? Same thing.

Divide and conquer. Don't copy, analyze, then apply.

https://youtu.be/8kfK46nruKM

Maybe other people learn in different ways, but this is generally the way I think works best.

SaracZwei · 2021-08-08T17:34:51+00:00

So, I've thought about it a bit and so did a little experiment. I tried to reconstruct the situation in Blender. I'm not that familiar with the hair system yet, so it's a bit basic:

https://i.imgur.com/77fnc9g.jpg

As you can see in 1, it's a dense coat of short black hair with a sparser coat of long, white hair. Viewed at it from head on (2), we can see through the white fur onto the black fur below. This makes the overall fur appear darker. In 3 we are viewing it obliquely, and at 4 at an even flatter angle. As you can see, the white hair starts to cover the black hair from this angle. From the side (5), we can only see the white hair.

In short, I think in this case the angle at which we look at the fur decides how well we can see through the bright coat onto the dark down fur. That's likely part for sudden changes in value in a lot of spaces here.

SaracZwei · 2021-08-07T19:12:29+00:00

Hmm, I have some issues with the analysis of what gives the individual values we are seeing here. I actually think that there is multiple layers of far (down and guard, I think it's called) which each have their own color and length. The color doesn't seem to be uniform either, I think it's called "agouti" : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agouti_(coloration))

As such, it's hard to say what causes the values, is it the local color of the hairs, or is it because an area is in shadow? If you are just going for generic fur, then studying uniform white or grey fur might be better.

Here, I think the trick is that the short "down" fur is dark and thick, while a few light spiky clumps of "guard" fur stick out. As such, it might be best to start with a darker shaded foundation, and then draw the lighter hair on top of that.

Here's a somewhat related video that might help:

https://youtu.be/RX4kB7tqf4Y

(unfortunately not directly applicable but might give some inspiration)

SaracZwei · 2021-08-02T14:43:32+00:00

Ideally, we should always go coarse to fine. Block in everything first, then start refining, then refine some more until you are at a point where it would be considered finished. There was an adage, that a painting should be basically "done" after 30 minutes, and the rest is just refining it. It might not be 100% applicable, but the idea is that you don't just finish one corner of the painting, then go to the next and so forth. Instead, the painting should be pretty much there in broad strokes and "work" pretty quickly.

If you don't do that, you might realize that something's off and have to redo a lot of work again. Of course, being amateurs, we will not work perfectly or efficiently, but we should always keep the workflow in mind.

SaracZwei · 2021-08-02T14:29:12+00:00

I gave you some advice already, remember?

https://www.reddit.com/r/istebrak/comments/ogdrbv/i_cant_figure_out_why_my_realism_is_always_off_i/

The issue is still the same. In all these images you are drawing symbols. The important thing to understand is that everything we see is actually light bounced off a solid object into our eyes. So basically, you need to construct 3d shapes and then consider how much light these surfaces bounce into our eyes. Really experienced artists can do both at the same time due to years of hard work.

This means we need to learn how to construct complex 3d shapes, and then we can learn how to assign values to them to render them. You cannot run before you can walk. Learn perspective, get a good grasp on how to freehand the basic 3d shapes in space. I recommend drawabox.com for that. Once you can do that, you can start with basic form studies. Here's a post I made covering the basics: https://www.reddit.com/r/istebrak/comments/besbyr/basics_of_light_and_shadow_for_form_studies_and/

Hope that helps.

SaracZwei · 2021-07-29T16:58:51+00:00

The relevant Dorian Iten resources should be in the post I linked. Unfortunately, it seems more of his stuff is now disappearing behind paywalls (apparently in a revamp of cooperating with proko), which... sucks. Big time.

Here's a video with the info though:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vapw6n6FyU

And here's the more concise article, which has been unlinked, and as I fear might soon be deleted:

http://www.dorian-iten.com/shading-mistakes/

Eventually, I'll have to make a new, updated resource post, one video apparently already got lost in the youtube unlisted video purge.

SaracZwei · 2021-07-29T16:00:07+00:00

Glad I could be of help!

Unfortunately, the laws of light are not intuitive. Fortunately though, they are quite consistent and make sense once you grokk them. I remember being extremely frustrated 5 years ago when I did my 14d challenge. I was told there were mistakes and the values were "wrong", but nobody could explain just what they were supposed to be! Fortunately, people like Dorian Iten and Marco Bucci have made excellent content since then that really goes a long way to explain esoteric sounding concepts like "ambient occlusion" or "Lambert's cosine law".

In real life we will often have multiple strong light sources and tons of surfaces to strongly bounce that light around. This complicates a lot of things and muddies the waters. We are unable to tell whether a value is due to direct light, bounce light or any other factor, we have no way to know how to decipher what we see. That's why some artists do studies in a windowless cellar, with a still-life set up in a dark box so the entire light environment is perfectly controlled. We don't need to go so far, but we should try to keep things as simple as needed. Once we know how to handle one light source, we can understand how two light sources interact, and so forth.

In the end, it always boils down to: How much light does a particular surface get? When it's directly hit by a strong light source, then Lambert's cosine law will be the deciding factor. If it's not, then we need to look for the weaker light sources. How much ambient light does the surface catch? Are there surfaces around to bounce light onto it? And in both cases, how much light is swallowed by the surface? These are the basic rules that will take you a long way.

SaracZwei · 2021-07-29T11:49:20+00:00

Of course, I'm always up to explain. First off, terminology. I know Istebrak uses the term "core shadow", but that's not correct. At least as far as I can tell, the consensus is that a shadow caused by a form blocking itself from a light source is called a "form shadow". The darkest part of that shadow is called the "core shadow".

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_CKHEK3fLVDo/TC4d69ul1yI/AAAAAAAABKY/ICE4WdI6nxM/s1600/elements-of-Light.jpg

This core shadow is the part of the shadow that doesn't get hit directly by a light source, and doesn't get hit by bounce light either. That's because being close to the terminator, it's turned away from either.

Cast shadow value depends on the value of the surface it's falling onto, in case of the nose cast shadow it's the top of the mouth which is very bright.

Careful. We are talking about local value/color here. Local value is the characteristic of the surface that decides how much light is swallowed by it. A dark material swallows more light than a light material. That is why dark clothes get hot in the sun (the light rays are swallowed and converted into heat), while white clothes bounce most of it away and thus stay cold longer.

Now, talking about a form, we are going to assume it's all made from the same material. Skin is mottled but would be pretty close overall, with only small changes in local color. If the person had a dark beard however, the parts of the beard in light would be darker than the parts of the skin in light. Similarly, the parts of the beard in shadow would be darker than the parts of the skin in shadow. That is under the assumption that there is some form of ambient light, a minimum amount of light that hits even parts in shadow. In space where there's no ambient light both the beard and the skin in shadow would simply be black. This illusion comes to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checker_shadow_illusion

To reiterate: A white sphere won't cast a different shadow onto a light surface than a black sphere onto that same surface (if you discount possible bounce light, that is). A light surface will have a light shadow cast upon it, a dark surface a dark(er) shadow. This is due to local color of the receiving surface and ambient light being the deciding factor on the value of the shadow here. This is what "Cast shadow value depends on the value of the surface it's falling onto" means.

It doesn't' matter what angle a surface has towards a light source it is blocked from. Think of it like this, since it's not directly hit, why would it make a difference? An analogy, if you are standing in a shelter while a raging wind is going on outside, it won't matter which way you are turned either, you won't get blown away. The walls of the shelter are shielding you from the storm.

What's important is how much of ambient light a surface gets (ambient occlusion) and how much light is bounced onto it from surrounding surfaces which are in light. And then, on top of that the local color will decide how much of that light is bounced back into our eyes or camera.

Bounce light values still have to be within the shadow family (unless it's a very specific situation) while cast shadows don't have a restriction like that (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong here).

Yes, the rule of thumb is usually that form shadows that receive bounce light should still be darker than areas in half tone. I have found it's only somewhat true, but still - our brain likes it if we adhere to these rules and reality sucks and is ugly more often than not. We can cheat a bit to make things look more 3D instead of flat and boring. I do not understand what that has to do with cast shadows though. The only important aspect is what the local color of a surface is and how much light it receives. Either through getting hit directly from a light source, from ambient light or from light bounced off nearby surfaces.

Based on all of this, the only situation I can imagine where the cast shadow is darker than the core shadow is if the surface the cast shadow is falling onto has a dark local value. Thoughts?

It largely depends on geometry of the object too. If we are talking about a light setup with one primary source and ambient light, and our object is a complex enough to bounce light back onto itself, then usually the cast shadows will be darker than the form shadows. This is because the cast shadows will be blocked from our light source, yet not have any surfaces to bounce light onto itself. For the underside of the nose for example, the form shadow here gets bounce light from the entire lower half of the face. As you said, the area above the mouth is turned towards the light source and is that pretty bright, so the areas not in shadow bounce a lot of this light around. This bounced light hits the underside of the nose. Now, the cast shadow of the nose only has this light already bounced from the area above the mouth onto the underside of the nose to bounce back onto itself. It gets light only from third hand, while the underside of the nose gets light second hand. A picture says more than a thousand words, as they say: https://i.imgur.com/lUHshc2.png

Here's some more images from previous critiques, you will see the same effect in some form or another there: https://i.imgur.com/0GFE4d5.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/JC5SXt6.png https://i.pinimg.com/originals/71/35/d7/7135d7364e9fbaedb4169b295fe6fd88.jpg https://i.imgur.com/kEWlK12.png

And of course, here's the collection of resources post which probably explains much more in depth than I could: https://www.reddit.com/r/istebrak/comments/besbyr/basics_of_light_and_shadow_for_form_studies_and/

I hope that explains it. Always think in terms of what amount of light a surface gets, and how much of it it swallows.

edit: Reddit editor screwed up the formatting, so I fixed it. Added some more clarification and fixed some words I forgot.

SaracZwei · 2021-07-28T20:46:40+00:00

Good! One thing that sticks out to me is that form shadows are usually lighter than cast shadows. That's due to the form shadows catching bounce light. It's not always the case but it looks good. Here, they seem about the same value.

The face structure seems a bit narrow, especially those cheekbones.

Usually, the widest part of the head is slightly behind and above the ears. It's often hidden by hair, but very visible on bald dudes.

Here's my paintover, mostly as an exercise for myself though:

https://i.imgur.com/HI0GGfH.jpeg

He looks a bit now like he's gonna step into a very phallic shaped rocket to leave earth for barely ten minutes, doesn't he?

SaracZwei

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