Portrait 3 & 4

[fugu-guy]

Here are two more portraits.

In the first drawing, I tried to have much more contrast than my previous drawings. The previous drawings were like one gray image. On this drawing, I noticed that I need to put a lot more work into shading. I didn't shade the forehead very evenly.

On the second portrait, I was trying to get a feel of hair that is not straight. I am comfortable with straight hair, but hair that is not straight I have all sorts of trouble with.

I tried to use a different approach to the curly hair and as you can see, I was mostly unsuccessful. The portrait looks like two different drawings because I used two different techniques for the hair and the rest of the drawing. After hours of struggling with the hair, I finally gave up when I couldn't get the hair to look right.

I can really use some tips on drawing curly hair.

-fugu

[screenpainter]

I think these look great. beautiful girls and beautiful portraits. As far as the curly hair, I just usually draw or paint what I see in the reference so I am not much help... sorry.

[coops]

These are two very fine portraits well done

[scribbledsoul]

The hair in the second portrait looks much better! I usually try to see the hair as sections with shapes, and then highlight individual hairs after the shape and its shadows has been established. I'm no expert, but Mike Sibley is (he's an amazing pencil artist, and my personal hero lol). His website has some useful tutorials that helped me learn some techniques. I highly recommend it; here is the link if you are interested:

http://www.sibleyfineart.com/

Hope that helps! And your portraits are lovely; the skin tones in the second one are especially well done, with wonderful shading.

~ Scribbles

[fugu-guy]

Thank you all for your kind words.

screenpainter:
I try to draw what I see in the references too, but I have to work on being more patient. I then to rush certain parts of the drawing and if I start to run into trouble with a part it, I may give up on it.

I took the advice you made on my last post and tried to make the shading smoother. I still have a long way to go, but I'm trying to blend the shading better.

coops:
Thank you for your comments. I'm glad you like the drawings.

scribbledsoul:
Thank you for pointing me to the work of Mike Sibley. He is an amazing pencil artist. I went through his web site and read almost everything there.

But speaking of amazing pencil artist, I saw your pencil drawing of Cat Watching a Bird. Now that is amazing. Your drawing of the dog is wonderful. Hard to believe that was your "rough sketch".

[scribbledsoul]

Thank you for the compliment! I am glad that information could help you. I always thought his site was really useful; I wouldn't mind having his book either.

[dcahall]

I would like to understand more how you accomplish the blending affects on the cheeks. I do not seem to be able to get the right settings to be able to pull off those types of shading.

As you saw from some of my other posts, I am a true beginner and have tried to achieve some shading so that I could attempt to draw some portraits. I have even more problems when trying to get the proper shadowing/blending if I attempt a portrait with any of the color tools (paint, felt pen and etc.).

[scribbledsoul]

Just curious, dcahall, are you using a tablet or a mouse to draw? If you have a pressure-sensitive graphics tablet (such as an Intuos, which is what I use), it can make shading much easier, with practice.

Edit: Never mind, I see that you bought a Wacom tablet, good for you! What kind, if I may ask? Some are pressure-sensitive, and some are not, so you might need to use different techniques to achieve shading effects.

[fugu-guy]

dcahall:
I'm not doing anything fancy. I am using a tablet PC with Wacom pressure sensitivity pen. I only use the pencil tool. I set the pressure to zero, the softness to something I like, and the tilt angle to 100. Then with a very light touch I shade the area I want. I then go over the same area again and again until I get the shading I want for that area. Any areas that is too dark or spotty, I use the eraser. Again, I set to zero pressure and 100 softness. I tend to blot with the eraser using a very light touch. I then shade that area until it is what I want.

I mentioned that I have to work on being more patient. My earlier drawings were more of a rush job on the shading. If you look at the two images in this post, you will see that there are parts of the shading that is not very smooth, that is because I am still not very patient with my work.

One tip I can offer is to go in one direction when shading. What I mean is don't cross hatch. When you cross hatch, where the line cross, it gets darker and then you get a checker pattern. If that is what you want, it is OK, but if not, it is not easy to fix.

Since I only work in pencil and black & white, I can make no comments on using color or any of the other tools. I want to work with black & white before I attempt to work my way to color. Since you are already working in color, you'll get there long before I will and I'll be asking you for color advice.

-fugu

[dcahall]

Thanks - I think you gave me a very valuable key of setting the pressure to 0. I have a Wacom Bamboo table which is touch sensitive. I played around with the settings like you suggested and could immediately see some results.

I have a long way to go to achieve results like yours but I certainly see the value of letting my hands control some this stuff versous letting the software do it for me.

I hope to see more drawings from you. I really enjoy the quality of work people like you and tips like yours can help me improve my own skills.