Thank you! yes it's all procreate default brushes.

Its all digital? Flawless!

wow!! Stunning!!

Hi @Nicole Lee, I think these are really nice! I really like the textures in the forehead on the first one and the line quality in the second one is very elegant. I'll do my best to help you further: You've have been working a lot on shading, and I can tell that you're improving. I think it's about time you take a shading course. Your drawings are very good, and you understand much about shading. However I feel like there are som holes in your foundation, that need to be filled in order to push you to the next level. The area I see need most improvement is value control. Stan talks some about values, but it wasn't thorough enough for me. Also Stan's shading is quite stylized, with a strong core shadow and strong reflected light. His main intention doesn't seem to be copying what you see exactly. For me learning to capture the value relationships I see was a great way to develop my value control. And now that I have that I can start to stylize them and do that with confidence. I think the control has to come first The course I took on shading was Dorian Iten's Shading Course https://www.theshadingcourse.com Great explanations, great assignments and affordable. I'm sure that there're plenty of good resources online about shading, but Dorian's course is the one I would recommend I hope this was helpful :) Keep up the good work!

Hi @Jule Hollstein , great drawing! Your work has a great likeness to Nicolai and good shading that separates light from shadow areas. Below are a few suggestions of where the drawing can further be improved: - proportion: the eye on the left hand side should be smaller as it's away from us at three-quarter view. - shading: the shading transition can be softer on the eye bags, lips, and the cheek core shadows. - areas of hair in the shadow should be darker as it's in the same plane as the cheek that's in the shadow (refer to Proko's drawing) - area of the neck right below the head should be much darker as it's facing away from light and the head casts a shadow on it Hope that helps!

A wonderful piece. Well done! Keep going.

What I immediately notice from your portrait attempt is how your features do not align correctly in perspective. I would recommend you to continue drawing Loomis Heads and keep in mind the 3D forms of the face. Pay close attention to how the contours and measurements are parallel in relation to space and form. Use the 3D model as a reference. Before jumping into shading and details, the construction and foundations that make up the face are the most important to get right first. If the measurements and perspective are wrong, everything else after will also look incorrect. As for shading and getting smooth transitions in gradations I would recommend Smooth Newsprint and Charcoal, however, what matters at the end of the day is how you use the materials given to you and making the most out of what you have. Your shading is quite good! Don't give up and continue to reduce the number of mistakes you make each time. Take the time to measure everything diligently, once you think it matches, you can start to jump into finer details and shading. Good luck.

Hey, Nicole. You did a good job in most of this assignment. However, there's a few proportional mistakes: the eyes are too big, nose and ear are to small and the mouth is the wrong shape. You also drew a more idealized version of him. Notice that in the reference the bottom thirds of his face are bigger than his forehead. If you did that on purpose, that's ok, if not just be aware of it. Since we're looking at a profile, so the features gonna be smaller than in front view. Also the shape will change. Compare how much white of the eye you're seeing in the reference and how much you drew, compare how much you're seeing of the outer side of his mouth and how much you drew. There's a phenomenon that you should be aware. We have a tendency to draw everything straighter than we see. That means drawing longer axis on foreshortened limbs or force full shapes even when only see part of the feature. We do that because we're trying to match our symbolic representations of stuff. But, as we practice it's important to consciously doing an effort to draw what we really see and get away of what we think we see. The value arrangement lacks contrast. Looking at the forehead, I see that you understand the forms and you're doing a good job representing the lighter values. The problem is you're not going dark enough in the shadows, and the transition from light to dark should be softer. Practice the 2-value phase of the drawing and make sure that your ligher shadow halftone is darker than your lighter light half-tone. Finally you exaggerated the double curve on the hair in the front of the face.. It exists, but it's not that much. Try drawing the rhythm the hair makes from the top of the forehead to behind the ear. It serves as a natural cross contour. Then you design the second curve but accordingly. I would like to give you a few tips on how to study and practice when you have limited time. But problem is there's a lot different practices that may be really effective or useless to you depending on where do you want to take your art. So, Would you mind to tell me more about what do you want to achieve in art? Are you studying just portraits right now or figure drawing, anatomy...and if you're just doing one sketch for each one subject or one for all? Is there any difficulty you constantly experience while practicing? Best Regards

very nice. looks just like it. so yeah great job & love. 🤗

Hey Atharva, this is a really nice drawing. You did a really solid job on this. You definitely got a likeness, and it's reading in 3d space really well. What I would say is a bit of a nit pick. The first thing is the mouth looks like it's slightly off center from the nose, which has the effect of making it look a bit flat. The biggest thing though are the values and edges. It feels like the mid tone you've put across the right side of his face (his right) is too dark. This makes your drawing look messy, and it takes my attention away from the focal points. Some of your edges, specifically on the bottom lip and nose are a bit messy. I think if you spent some time cleaning up those shadow shapes and edges, it would do a lot to fix the drawing. I'd recommend looking at @Stephen Bauman's stuff. He does a really fantastic job organizing the shapes/ values in a drawing. To me it feels like you're at the stage where your drawings are really accurate, and have some style, but your dexterity isn't quite caught up with your hand. I think he'd be able to help a bit with that. Anyways, hope this helps. Great job, and keep up the good work.

I'm just a beginner, so you are much more advanced than me. I think this looks great. You are very good at eyes. (I also like the drawings of Morgan and Yoni that you posted.) The main criticism that jumps out at me is with the shading of the background. To me, the background is too choppy and stringy. It has too much of its own texture and is competing with the rest of the drawing. Sometimes, at a quick glance the background even looks like long stringy hair. I think it would look better if it were a smooth, blended gradient that doesn't call attention to itself.

Very good job, yurishka Proportions are a little exaggerated, but they are working so well. overall is a very good job. What I think you can improve is contrast. Right now, the design is working but the value arrangement could use a boost so the drawing pop more. If you darken the shadows and work on the edge between light and dark I think the drawing would read better. Keep drawing and best regards

Hi @namdao, great job! "And my english is not very good" I'll try to express myself simply. Feel free to ask if there is anything you don't understand :) PROPORTION -The eye's are too big, compared to the photo SEPARATE LIGHTS AND DARKS The whole side of the head should be in shadow. If you squint at the photo, can you see how all the dark parts, become darker and blend together? Squinting is a good way to figure out whether something belongs to light or shadow. I hope this was helpful :)

Looks so good!!!

Great Job!

Very Nice, Chris. The value arrangement improved a lot. And the forms of the face are well modeled. There's still room for improvement. The transition hair to face is a bit unnatural. Take a look on Stan's drawing and observe how he simplifies that part. If possible re-watch the demo where's he's doing that but have the reference on your side to compare. Thin balding hair has is intricacies to draw and watching more experienced artists simplifying it helps a lot. But again, excellent work. Keep drawing and best regards

I first want to highlight what I like about this drawing, which is that it feels alive. When I look at his eyes, it feels like an actual person looking at me. So I would say the eye area is is the best part of the drawing :) As for critique: I agree with @squeen about the proportions, and that finding the underlying structure of the head and the perspective before starting to define and shade it is a good approach. Having an understanding of the 3D forms will help you in every step of the drawing and also makes it easier to create simplified shadow shapes for shading. Also practice making the linework smoother and more coherent. Right now the pen pressure seems a bit jumpy in the shadow/tonal areas.

I think the proportions are off for the mouth and neck. Try focusing on the underlying 3D forms as Stan suggests---it helped me a lot.

Awesome work

Good Job, Sylvianna The big statement of light and shadow is working and the proportions are mostly accurate (the pupils are different sizes and the chin is pointing the wrong way). What I think you can improve is value design. In my opinion, I feel the values and shapes you're putting in the light don't describe the form well enough. And sometimes you put dark lines in the lighter family that break the ilusion. of form. Even if we perceive wrinkles as lines they're not always the same value. If they are in the light, they gonna be lighter. There's a few ways you can study this. One that you can do it right away is take the original photo and Stan's version of it. Zoom in the forehead in both. And render just that area. Focus on how he is arranging his values and how he is depicting wrinkles. Still, work in the same value range. Observe the image and Stan version and try to comprehend what he's doing and how he makes his decisions based on what he's seeing. Eventually remove Stan's drawing and try with just the reference. And if you want a challenge remove the reference and try from imagination. Do the same thing for the cheeks, the corner of the eyes, the chin... Full Portraits can be daunting at the start, so breaking them up and studying the pieces makes the information more manageable and easy to absorb. Keep Drawing and Best Regards

Great character. If anything, his law looks a bit small.

Wow it looks amazing. Keep up the good work. I still got a long way to go. But you are really inspiring. I've got to try harder now

Really good work! Take a look at the head tilt. The center line of the face is off tilt from the reference photo. This is placing the far side corner of the mouth too far under the nose vs in reference pic. You can use vertical plumb lines to check your work throughout the initial lay-in phase. I like your edge work in the cast shadow from the nose. You can also apply the same Hard to Soft edges in the eye brows as well. Also watch the edge of the cast shadow on his neck. Though it is pretty strong in the pic I would soften it and darken the light area of the neck a bit more to keep this area from taking the attention away from his eyes and face. Sometimes we make decisions to change an edge or value from the reference photo for sake of the drawing. I like what you have so far. Good work!

It's a lovely portrait drawing so far. I love drawing under this kind of lighting on the subject due to the contrast from light and dark. The drawing needs a better value organization I think. I like to squint down at an image to see less information and then can concentrate on the values, edges and shadow shapes. Try squinting down and see if you can see the dark side of the face and the pattern it has. Try to render that shadow edge in and darken up the shadow side of the face. Here attached is an example of what it looks like if I squinted down at the image trying to find the shapes, values and edges. Hope that helps!

I think your drawing looks good. I'm looking at the original image from google search and I can see that the image is high key and so large amount of ambient light in the scene has decreased the contrast on his face. This makes shading a bit more challenging. I think the mid-tones like on his forehead for example are a bit out of rhythm from what I see from original. There is dirt smudges and such but try to look for the underlying rhythms and structure of the forehead. You can relay on construction more when contrast is taken away due to ambient lighting being so dominant. Try pushing the rhythms and bone structure mid-tones more. I don't know if I explained it well enough. Hope that helps.

Hi Jean, I would suggest you use a different brush: I think that's a round airbrush, right? Apparently it looks like the one that gives you the most freedom (we've all fallen for it, believe me) but the final effect, instead of looking realistic, looks plastic (I guess that's one of the problems you see yourself) If you were doing a portrait on paper, with traditional media, what would you use? My answer, for example, would be: I would lay down a base and define the main shapes with watercolours or gauche and then move on to using pencils and pastels. For years I struggled with digital drawing, really, until I asked myself that question and answered myself. I tried a few brushes until I found two that allowed me to have a base to work with (a semi-transparent oval brush, a marker) and one to define shapes and details (photoshop's default star brush with pressure control turned on. I had never considered it, thinking it had no use, but now it's the one I use the most). Experiment a bit and find brushes that give you an effect you like, a personal one. Also, don't think in an order of curved surfaces, as my sculpture teacher used to say "the human body is not made of curves but of planes!": look at your references: you'll see that most of the shadows have more or less sharp contours, especially in male faces. Also, a problem I see here n this portrait of Ragnar, is that you haven't diversified the textures from the shadows: the blood has the same gradation as the shadows. Avoid using black or use it as little as possible: since you're working digitally, try colour picking on the parts that seem black to you: you'll see that very often they are lighter than you thought, thus leaving you a margin in which to intervene further. As a general rule, however, start with the simple and proceed in successive steps. Define the main planes in lighter shades than the final result and then gradually darken or lighten the parts that require it. Try to think as if you were modelling with clay: start with a rough shape and gradually define it.

You did a good job with the features. they look like they're the correct size and in the correct place. I think the main problem is how you organize your values. From what I look your trying to render every single detail in detriment of the whole. Think abou a group conversation. If everyone talks at the same volume at the same time, in the end you won't understand a person. So, organizing your values. Think about the primary source of light and separate the light family from the shadow family. They work on your values Try to limit how many values you're gonna use. 2 for the shadow and 3 for the light would suffice, you can later add gradations between then if you feel like, but remember that your darkest light has to be brighter than your lightest dark. Also work from the whole to the specific. First your primary forms, then your secondary, then your tertiary. If you're in doubt you can watch (or re-watch) this 3 videos, They explain better than I do and I think they'll help you a lot: https://www.proko.com/lesson/fix-your-shading-mistakes-egg-challenge-critiques/discussions https://www.proko.com/course-lesson/shading-light-and-form-basics/assignments https://www.proko.com/lesson/top-5-shading-mistakes/discussions There's a few minor mistakes, but right now I think that organizing your values if what's gonna strenghten your work the most. Keep drawing, you're in the right path! Best Regards

Hi Marco! I love how passionate you are and how hard you are working each day. I really like how you've addressed the shading in this, and how it has almost an engraving kind of feel. Is it pencil? I'm seeing some structural things - and I don't know how much you can or want to do with this drawing (depends on the medium). If you have tracing paper, or you can do a transparent overlay on your computer, you will see where the placement isn't lining up. You can also check the perspective of the photo and compare with your drawing - thinking along the lines of where is that hidden ear that Marshall often refers to. If you decide to do it again, I would start by finding the hard structures of the anatomy, and then building the surface anatomy on top of that, thinking sculpturally in terms of the forms. Then I think you'll achieve more of a sense of the forms being within the forms, rather than kind of floating on top. You should be able to get a strong likeness just with the line drawing. If you don't have it there, the shading won't fix it. Good luck! Looking forward to seeing how this goes for you.

@Trancematica I like your drawing a lot! It has sort of a "Frank-Miller-y" vibe to me. There's good likeness, I think the features look nicely portrayed, and great work on those deep eye sockets! I think you ended up doing a good job with the brows! They look a little bit stylized, but so does the hair, and that's not a problem at all, especially if you like the idea of sticking with a comics-like look. But to address the difficulty you faced, I'd reinforce Stan's advice. This character's brows are kind of diffused and imprecise indeed, so it's really better to try to think of them not as brows, but simply as shadow/value shapes (with some gradation, areas of soft and lost edges and a little bit of hair texture on top). And if that feels too hard or abstract to do, you can always use this tip Stan mentioned: flipping the reference image upside down really helps us better notice the shapes and visual qualities of things (instead of getting caught up on the concept of "what" things are, which is often less important when we're drawing from observation. There's a whole study on this by Betty Edwards, in her book "Drawing on the right side of the brain", which, overlooking the science arguments criticized by some people, has proven to be a pretty effective method for early beginners in drawing. Which is not your case, of course, but anyway, just thought it would be good to contextualize!) And, with some practice, we quickly become able to make the shift and see the shapes more easily even with the reference right-side up as well. About moving slow, I'd say don't worry too much about it - this is probably because you're still learning and trying to figure out your own process. Good work takes time; good learning, even more time. But over practice, it's very likely you'll become faster in your process. To me, best resource on digital painting online today: http://www.ctrlpaint.com Hope this helps!

Try flipping it upside down and don't think of them as eyebrows. Analyze the shape, value and edge. Not the eyebrow and definitely not the individual hairs of the eyebrow.

To me it looks like you are focused on the outline of the face instead of using a 3D structure as the basis (e.g. a sphere/egg, Loomis Method, etc.). It helped me to switch to sketching the foundation first.

Is that Leonard Cohen? I like these strong graphic drawings. I would see if you can track your hand from one eye to the other while drawing, trying to lock the features down on the same planes. You don't necessarily need to make the mark but just kind of float you hand back and forth to lock the eyes down together on the same plane or rhythm. Reilly rhythms of the face help with that. Look for the rhythms of the face. This will also over time allow you to draw faster and faster.