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Bonus Content
Critique - Simplify Portrait from Observation
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It’s time for level 2 critiques…portraits!
I’ll be looking through your portrait submissions and giving advice and tips on how to improve on common mistakes.
Newest

bodhik
2d
Portrait after critiques! Any advice welcome!

so_
6d
my first attempt at the portrait, this was based off of the ones i've seen here. i do know i need to improve my proportions and the way i shade my art, but i would gladly appreciate any extra feedback!

Eugene Kim
26d
My final attempt on the portrait after watching the critique. I would appreciate any feedback!

Eugene Kim
29d
This is my attempt after watching the demo. I'll try another one after watching the critique video.

cujovic
3mo
I can see now how I totally missed those shadows next to the mouth on the brighter side

cujovic
2mo
Thank you. I do agree that the lighter half tone is hard to spot. I wonder if a smoother paper would make it easier to work with the lighter tones.

Audrey S
3mo
very nice job! I would probably work on the value selection, as I have a hard time differentiating some of your light values. Looks like you've almost used 4 tones instead of 5?

Mike Hicks
3mo
My portraits, before, and after watching the critique video. The first one here, that fits on the page, is the 2nd attempt.

jutin0921
3mo
I can definitely see my own mistakes here, disproportions with the eyebrow bridge being too far and my lines look a little messy
Ian
3mo
Second attempt

Sean H
3mo
Portrait simplification I did after watching this critique video. It's a well known portrait of Audrey Hepburn so there's a good chance you've seen it before. In the end, it maybe wasn't the best choice as the lighting on her face is very soft but I think there were still some interesting shapes in there.
I'm glad I watched the whole video before finishing this as the example on toned paper gave me the idea to use a white pencil for two of the values. Previously, I was using the colour of the toned paper for the lightest value which meant I had to squeeze four pencil values under the paper's value, thus it was much harder to control and get good contrast. I think using white pencil went a lot better but I definitely need some practice with it.
Proportion wise, I've noticed I have the tendency to make faces too long. I tried to compensate by making the head bigger in the hair area but think I just ended up throwing off the positions of some of my shapes (such as the highlight on the ponytail). Definitely looking forward to hopefully learning some measuring techniques later in the course lol

John Harper
3mo
Hey Sean, good try. Your proportions are off. You pinched Aubrey's mouth and stretched her nose. But all-in-all, this is a nice effort.
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Tim Millea
4mo
Day 6

Camilo Hurtado
4mo
Ok, so before I even saw the demo video I made my first attempt. I’ve started with a (admitetly not so quick) sketch in Procreate. I used it as a reference for the shading of the pencil drawing. Right at the middle of the process I’ve noticed my proportions were all wrong, and the second image is the result of that after shading.
The third drawing I made it after watching the demo video (which surprised me that Stan also did but much much faster and simpler), and took some of his solutions: I stoped looking at my sketch for reference and used more of the photo, I took much more time getting my proportions accurately, I corrected as I was drawing, and tried to make the difference of values much more noticeable.
After seeing the progress made between the two, the improvement feels so good 😌
The guy from BluishDot
4mo
I decided to give the level 2 exercises a try.
The first one is after watching the demo. The second one is after watching the level 2 critique video.
Both were very challenging but I also learned a lot.
Any feedback is welcome. Thank you!
Brian Slavin
4mo
A couple of value studies using OLO Markers which I just got in the mail today. I got the Proko gray scale set. Very nice indeed!

luciovm
4mo
Here's my attempt at the exercise after watching the critiques. I am truly happy with it.
Sarneth
4mo
Hi I would write more. Sorry I don’t know much how to write in English. I am from Cambodia. Thanks
Florian Haeckh
4mo
Hey man, really great idea to get your own image. BUT! It is quite overexposed on the light-side. The camera tried to get the information in the shadow and some information in the light-side was lost. So in order to make this at least a bit easier, I would suggest to use not 2 but 3 values for the shadow and only 2 for the lights. And to have a big gap on the value scale between the shadow-value-group and the light-value-group helps to keep them nicely seperated. Did a digital overpaint to illustrate my points. Hope it helps. :)
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Edo Moya
4mo
Last try after critiques, I felt more bold on value decisions, and I think I did got a better contrast, it feels stronger. I need to keep practicing 👊👊👊 Messed up left eye so bad that I just included it in the shadow :)

dreww
4mo
I love your second drawing. So clear because of those improved values 👍
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Sarneth
4mo
Hi please help. Thanks 🙂
Malakai King
4mo
I envisioned this coming out better. Building on my last attempt, I was just thinking about shape, tone, and plane. I didn't want to spend 3hrs shading all that dark tone with a pencil again, so I tried markers. They bled over a little and it was hard to control the streaking. It was my first-time using markers, so I won't beat myself up too much. Although my proportions are better, I blew the hair out too much on the subjects top right side. And that nose is still angled too much. Any and all critiques are most welcome. Thanks
Daniel Stevens
4mo
Before and after. Tried to simplify the details around the lips and create more uniform values. Thanks for the critique Stan!
Malakai King
4mo
Danial, your stuff is really good. It is great to be in this community with others that are more skilled. It inspires me to push myself and put in the work like you have.
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jasonj33
4mo
I'm going to give the level 2 assignment one more gone, I got the jist of simplifying the forms but didn't quite hit it spot on. This critique was very helpful.
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About instructor
Founder of Proko, artist and teacher of drawing, painting, and anatomy. I try to make my lessons fun and ultra packed with information.