Seeking portrait drawing critiques
3yr
Nicole Lee
Hello everyone,
I received many great critiques in the past about my head drawing proportion and shading issues, so I decided to spend more effort in correcting them. Below are a few practices I did recently and it would be great to get someone's opinion again on where to improve.
Just a note that for the second drawing, I purposely made the shadow below the eye on the left hand side a bit lighter, as the drawing didn't look as good when I colored it darker. Please let me know your opinion on that.
Also I got too tired working on the face so please ignore the incomplete shading/value on the hair lol.
Thank you for your time in advance :)
The main thing that stands out to me is the outlines. This is something I really struggle with too. I tend to make my initial outline too dark and the images gets confused due to tension between my tendency to outline versus building up the volumes with light and shadow. The image on the left does a great job of this but the one on the right seems unsure whether to define the shapes with outlines or with areas of dark and light. For instance his left ear. You can push the value of the hair behind the ear, in fact the whole lef side of his hair, much darker and get rid of the lines. A light outline on the highlight side of the features makes sense if you are keeping the background white instead of filling it in. I think you can darken the value on his neck, under his chin (image on the left again) but be sure to keep the reflective highlight along the jawline even in the shadow area. This will really make the image convincing and increase the feel of volume. If you wanted, I think you could also fade the outer edge of his hair towards the back of his head so there is no crisp edge. This would add a nice depth.
I should also add that what you've done with the edge of his left cheek and the left side of his nose are really nice. The core shadow looks great. I think the only areas that really need to be pushed further are the darkest shadows. I think we have a tendency to be afraid to go too dark but your reference is pretty dark in the shadows which has an almost Baroque feel to the juxtaposition of light and shadow. He has a great face for drawing.
ma'am this is amazing , just a few pointers .
I think think the separations of the light and the shadow area should be more recognisable (the core shadow )
and lastly the local value of the hair and the lips are always darker than the skin tone . rest it looks great :).
Thank you so much @shanmen riddi for those pointers and showing me how it will look much better with proper values :)
These are really awesome! Not sure how true to the reference you were intending to go, but if you were then the bridge of the nose shapes need to be straightened out a bit. I think in the second one, the additional shape adds, but in the first drawing, the lack of structure makes the nose a bit wavey
Hi @Smithies thank you for pointing that out. I was trying to stay true to the reference for the face shape. Will definitely pay more attention to the angularity next time!
Hi! They are both great studies! About the first one. I think you can push more the shadow mass on the right. The eye socket should be darker than the cheek. Also, I think you accentuated too much the angles of the face on the right (see attached) and on the nose.
Thank you @Giulio D'Amico for those pointers. Definitely agree with your suggestions and will pay more attention on those areas next time!
