Level 2 - portrait 1st attempt
11mo
Momino
I tried this without watching Stan’s demo.
Then watched the demo but didn’t copy. I tried to do it from what I learned. I tried to keep two shadow values and three lights. I found it very difficult to create the two light Half-tones. It’s hard to create simplified shapes without drawing darker outlines. I’ll keep practicing.
I see significant progress, keep it up!
Try practicing shading on a simplified head model for a few days. On ArtStation, you'll find a cool light reference tool. Look for "William Nguyen head". Set up different lighting, try to draw 100-200 of those heads, then come back to this model and attempt to draw it for the third time. I guarantee you'll see a difference!
I probably can't help a lot, just tell you, that I am feeling some very similar struggles at the moment. Including, that when I focus on proportions, my portraits tend to look nice-ish but boring, as I lose those interesting shadow shapes, but when I focus on shadow shapes, my portraits turn into very expressive caricatures, as I am at risk of losing sight of proportions.
One interesting tidbit I noticed: for me, there seems to be a somewhat easier and more successful approach than drawing from photographic reference, and that is drawing from videos. When I watch a talking head on youtube for a while, until I start to see which shapes define the face, and then stop the video at the right moment and draw from there, my results are usually objectively way better, then when I start drawing from a still image. Don't know if that helps, I just found it an interesting observation. Even better results are sometimes from crime series and other movies with a "noir" touch and extreme lightning.
