@jaffacakes
@jaffacakes
Earth
@jaffacakes
I have a few notes for things that you could work on but first I'll say that you chose a pretty difficult reference picture and that could be the cause of some of the issues I'm about to mention. I'd usually recommend choosing a subject that isn't wearing make up because make up is designed to trick the eye and alter how the face is perceived so it can become difficult to tell what the actual form of the face is and what's just make up. Also the resolution of the image is kind of low so that might make life hard when you're trying to render little details like in the hair. Also I'd try to find something with more dynamic lighting for the next one, this ones lighting is a little flat so it doesn't show a whole lot of form. As for the actual drawing I think you could maybe bring up the high tones and highlights a touch more to give more of a separation between the lights and darks and build more contrast and depth in the image. Secondly I think there's some proportions going a little off on her right eye (our left), that eye doesn't seem to be quite the same shape as in the reference. I think it might be a little too low and small. Sometimes getting a ruler and lining up the features can help, it also helps with just figuring out the general perspective of the face too, seeing as most of the features are going to align parallel to one another (eye to eye, nostril to nostril etc) if the face is in a symmetrical expression Final Thing is the hair. Overall I feel like its far too busy and could be simplified down a lot more. As I mentioned earlier the resolution of the reference doesn't help, I can barely make out the strands myself. But just for future reference its best to try and simplify the hair down into 'ribbons' rather than trying to depict every individual hair and don't be afraid of allowing some parts to get lost in shadow like on the right side of the her face in the reference, that way there isn't so much detail detracting from your main focal point (the face) Been studying Hair allot recently and I found this video that really helped me a ton https://youtu.be/w0Qh4Cu5ecM Hope that helps in some way
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Tim Dosé
Generally what you're looking for in skin color is a low-chroma orange. Depending on the person, it will swing a little towards red or yellow and up or down slightly in chroma, but will generally be low-chroma orange. This is true even for darker skin colors. One of the first things to watch for is distinguishing highlights from form lights. Things can be really confusing when you can't tell if a light area is a highlight or a form light. This is one of the main challenges when working from photos—it can be hard to tell what's a highlight. From life it's easy—you just move a bit, and if the light moves with you, it's a highlight. In highlights, the chroma will drop even lower (assuming a white or whiteish light). Highlights usually have a core area that's lighter than the other parts and closer to the color of the light, and a darker transition area that's closer to the value and hue of the object. The chroma of this transition highlight will be higher than the core highlight, but lower than the chroma of the object. The next thing to look for is higher chroma in the lights—but *only with form lights*. Highlights lose chroma as they get lighter. For form lights, more light = more chroma. So, as the form turns away from the light, it will lose chroma slightly as it also loses value. The shadow areas will be even lower chroma. So, the light-most-facing plane (LMFP) will be the highest chroma, and the form shadow will be the lowest chroma (starting at the terminator). Capturing the diminishing of chroma along with the diminishing of light can make things look real and full of light. A good trick is that the area of the form light that is most facing to the light (the light-most-facing plane or LMFP) will usually be right near the highlight. It'll be on the side furthest from the viewer. This will be the highest chroma, but darker in value than the highlight. You ultimately end up with a hierarchy that looks like this: - Light-most-facing plane = highest chroma, third-highest value - Core highlight = lowest chroma, highest value - Transition highlight = second-lowest chroma, second highest value - Form shadow = third-lowest chroma, lowest value I attached some diagrams and a paintover to hopefully help illustrate
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@jaffacakes
I was under the impression that colours were most saturated/ Highest chroma in the mid-tones? because the light washes out the color?
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@jaffacakes
When it comes to colour I would worry less about trying to copy the exact colours you see in your reference and instead focus on the colours in the context of your canvas. Let me explain: Colours are relative, meaning they will always look different depending on what other colours surround them, for example just plain grey, sat next to blue will appear red/orange-ish, because blue is a 'cool' colour so it makes the grey look 'warm' by comparison. This can make it extremely hard to guess the actual colours that are in you're reference because your eyes will always perceive a different colour to the one that's actually there (unless you managed to isolate that colour and view it somewhere away from all the others). A good solution to this I found was to use 'Gamut Masking' or a 'Limited Pallet', this is a technique in which you select only a handful of colours and use only those colours throughout your whole painting, at first this sounds counter intuitive, but it actually makes the whole process allot easier, because now you've narrowed down your options as to what the colour could be and rather than having to choose from the entire hue chart you only have to pick from a select few... So the question you should be asking yourself when picking a colour shouldn't be 'What is this EXACT colour' and then pain-stakingly trying to get it as accurate as the eyedropper/ Colour picker tool. Instead you should be asking yourself 'how this colour related to the rest of the image'? Is this Warmer or Cooler, Less or more saturated, Darker/Brighter than the colours that are around it. Like I mentioned before, only the colours on your canvas are the ones that matter, if an area in your reference is 50% warmer, more saturated, cooler etc than the area around it, then your painting should show that too, it doesn't matter if its the exact same colour or not, what matters is that its 50% warmer, more saturated, cooler etc in relation to the rest. If there's a spot on your reference that is the warmest part of the whole image then in your painting that should be the warmest part too, the colour can be red, green, blue... it doesn't matter, as long as its the warmest part, it will look correct in the context of the whole painting. Hope that Helps :) I struggled with picking colours for a long time so I've done a ton of research into the subject, here's a couple of the videos that helped me the most, the James gurney video shows an example of the colour relativity thing too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfE4E5goEIc James Gurney - Gamut Masking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LhcNbFMkTw Marco Bucci - Colour Harmony
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