Portrait Critique Please
5yr
Tom Donovan
Hey there, thanks for having a look, critiques would be most welcome. So my likenesses are poor, I'm trying to pay attention to distances and take my time but I m not sure, I get maybe 1/10 portraits likeness maybe less. I feel "stronger" with say 6B pencil over watercolours. Maybe I need to go slower or am I squinting my eyeballs to much or something like that? Throw it at me. Ive got a couple paintings/drawings with reference images and a couple without (so I dont feel too bad ahah)
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hula hoop
4yr
As an exercise you can learn a lot from masters like Holbein that added an amazing sense of perspective to their portraits. Find some of their masterpieces and try to trace them applying the loomis or reilly method of construction, simplifying the features. I know it won't be as dynamic, but later you can deal with other views of the human head. Steve Huston has a course on constructing the human head, and Ramon Hurtado has a great gumroad on it as well https://gumroad.com/ramonhurtado?sort=newest#TPlxp. You can give a look at Stephen Bauman's channel, he is always doing livestreams so you can see how he does it https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqEWLv392F0J9rN7jE1-f3w .Keep in mind, you are building a head, not outlining an image. Good luck!
Peter Cohen
Hi Thomas, thanks for sharing! One thing I like to do to get better at drawing anything is once I draw from observation or memory using my reference I trace the image on tracing paper or photoshop and overlay the tracing on my drawing. I did this with your drawings and attached it here. If you take a look you can probably see specific areas that can improve. I notice generally head size and nose placement related to the mouth. I think you captured the head angle pretty well across all drawings. Using this method really helps me get better faster because I can see clearly what I need to work on. Hope this helps keep it up! Drawing from memory is tough!
Stan Prokopenko
I did this all the time when I was trying to improve my proportions! This is a great way to get quick feedback without having to go to an instructor.
Tom Donovan
Thankyou! Great Idea! I will be doing this ahaha
Philipp Luethi
Hey Thomas, i think you should not yet focus to much on likeness. I think it would be good for you to focus on structure first. Maybee try the Loomis-method, it provides you a basis to build your features on and if you then take the right mesurments the likeness will improve to. Also your references seem to be very expressive, maybe try less expressive faces first.
Liandro
5yr
I agree! I'd say don't worry too much about likeness for now, focus on getting a strong sense of structure first, especially if your goal is realism. Likeness should improve naturally as a result of strengthening your drawing and observation skills. Keep it up! :)
Tom Donovan
Thanks Philipp, I'll lean towards structure some more. I have loomis and have gone through a painting the head course by Marco Bucci, I think I will make time to go through it again. :) Thanks
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