Hey @greypace! Nice work! I think these look good. It looks like you have good gesture, and the poses are not stiff. The overall forms look good. I think you are ready to move into anatomy.

Hi Marcin, have you tried starting a portrait by using a structural lay-in process such as the "Reilly Rythms" method? Judging by your description and some of the proportion issues in your drawing, I think it might be helpful to you to spend more time there in a drawing before moving on to shading and details. There are some great resources out there, including a video done by Brian Knox at Watts Atellier that I've found super helpful. I'd recommend watching it and drawing along, if possible. (I bet Proko has videos on this topic, too, but I haven't gone through them myself.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vj5lf43zzFc Hope that helps, and keep up the good work!

3/4 rule - cut the part of the canvas that is "dedicated" to the background, it only distracts attantion from the portrait. make it so the portrait fills +- 3/4 of the whole canvas.

Hey there! Great work! It's only my opinion but I feel like you are taking a way too realistic approach, which leads to a lot of airbrushing and messy values. It's not necessarily a problem, but maybe you should take a little more abstract approach. Try to break down the reference into shapes, instead of airbrushing everything together. @Sinix has several videos tackling this kind of issue, I think you should check him out! :) I'd really like to see some original work from you :) I hope I could help! Keep up the great work! :)

Hey Nathan, like the others have said, this is fantastic work! You've definitely gotten the likeness. I believe that the fact that you've got things so close is what's making it so difficult to see what's off. On my initial review, it seemed that the eyes may be a little large and/or slightly out of position. Particularly her right eye (on the left side of the image) My second observation was that something may be off with the angle/position of the nose bridge where it meets the eyebrows. As I mentioned though, it's so close so I wanted to be sure. I quickly popped it into infinite painter on my phone to do some one to one comparisons. One of the things I love about digital is how easy it makes it to compare your pieces to the originals with layers. In the first image I did a rough trace of the original photograph and fit your painting inside the head. You pretty much nailed the proportions of the overall skull so well done! Some of the things that stand out are that there is indeed something off with the eyes (and the irises) and nose bridge. Additionally I realized that the tip of the nose was a little off as well. Other things that could possibly be the culprit for it looking off are that the shoulder is lower, and the space from the edge of the arm to the seem has been shrunk. That last possibly major contributor is that the hair doesn't quite go high enough. There are a few other minor areas such as her left brow, her neck and the shape of shirt above where the scarf overlaps. I made a quick, rather messy adjusted image with the liquify tool, and included some side by sides for comparison. I may have missed some things but hopefully this helps you to nail down what was "off" about it. I've recently been grinding out head studies and they can be a real pain to get "perfect." Probably because we see them so often that we're very attuned to noticing when something is not quite right. Once again though, awesome job I can't stress this enough. It may seem like I listed a lot, but for every one of those there were ten that you crushed! Keep up the great work!

It might be your own perception that you think something is off, but the likeness is spot on and the shadows of the face look well valued. The only thing I can think of is the coat is not as rendered as the photo, and also the photo has a dark gradient of the left edge.

I think you captured most of her features quite well! One observation is that in your portrait, it is a little difficult to tell the direction of her gaze, I think due to the placement of the specular highlights over her pupils, which are also a little smaller than in the reference. Some advice I've heard that I use in my own work is to wait to place any details like specular highlights until the rest of the portrait is fully rendered (if at all), to help ensure that elements like the gaze direction read properly.

They are all really good I think and I don't have much expertise with portraits, so here i just an idea. In the first three drawing the lines are obvious and if you use them very concious they can be a great style effect. But i think right now you do not control too much where which line shows how clearly. For example in the second drawing one ear is really clearly lined out the other has no lines at all. And it migth be interesting to try to form all the edges without actual lines as a practice. I think that would take more time though. But I really like the effect, how you use limited lines. The fourth one is different obviously, I am only referring to the frist three. But the style of this last one is also very appealing!

Here are some value studies of various skulls that I've drawn/rendered digitally. Feedback appreciated!