[dr . bang]

I've been werking real hard on this one, i have alot of trouble with this picture and the main one is the eye and the region around it. Please critique and tell me what ya think. thanks!

[baerb]

oh yeah - I can see that you've worked really hard to seize all features of the face. Did you use a reference (mirror?)
I like the warm colors an the soft contrasts between them.
The problem may be the light. It's hard to get the face three-dimensional, because there is no shading. For example: The eyeball seems to be quite flat, because you drew it like a plane. Think of the eyeball as a sphere - including shadows caused by the eyelids (same with all other features of the face: Don't draw a nose, draw an object, a form - it will turn out to be what you want it to be by itself).
Maybe changing the position of the lightsource can help you. It had been an enlightment for my own work.

[dr . bang]

Thanks so much for the very helpful reply!

sorry for being stupid butcan you explain me more about the "draw an object, a form "

i got what you mean but arent we all draw liek that?

[baerb]

It's hard for me to explain this in English *searches for her dictionary ... in vain*
...
Surely we all draw like that.
But I sometimes forget about this when struggeling with some details (I can only reflect my own experiences).
Do you have sketches/studies of single face parts? - it will help you to detect bugs you can't see in a finished pic because the other parts interfere with this region.
Maybe you could post some?

[dr . bang]

well, i've done alot of work but i have never ever done any single face part. ( question: do you think praticing a single part of the face would be good? )

Here's some of the work that i've done in the past.

this one is last year


these are a few weeks ago, i gave up on fixing them






And one more, these are the way i always do my pictureis to shades the bright spot and the dark spot according to the direction of the light. Are there any thing else i missed?

p.s: i saw one of your work and amazed at how good it is ! WOW

[ May 22, 2001: Message edited by: dr . bang ]

[baerb]

Thank you very much, but I'm still at the beginning of a very very very long journey ...

Studies of single face parts always help to understand anatomy and light. You told of gettin tired of working on the things you posted - maybe its because you always have to care about a whole picture (Do parts/lights fit together? What about the background? colors? a.s.o.). You are torturing yourself! You don't need to do this. Just pick single parts of your pic (or anatomy in general) that bother you and try to find out whats odd. It's impossible to build up pictures out of nothing. Almost all artists use sketches to get a clear notion of the piece they're working on.


Concering your sketches:
You did a good job with the light! So they don't look plane.
I like the colors of the first one very much. You should finish it, if you still feel inspired. But don't forget about the right perspective of your left eye when painting a 3/4 portrait & the distance between the eyes (sketch2) ... it's alright if you could place a third eye between them.
The second one is definitely my favorit: Very smooth, but well formed features.
Don't know much to say about the last one ... it could turn out to be very beautiful (but be careful with the contrasts...)

baerb

(please forgive me ... my English is sometimes horrible )

[BlackPool]

I would suggest a book: "How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way". You don't half to be interested in comics to make use of this since they go into detail about good drawing practice and do so in simple language and visual examples.

[Dan]

I'm not sure that this is what he's saying, but I think what he means is to not just say this is a nose, and then draw what you think a nose should look like. Rather just draw the shadows and stuff how they look to you and forget completely what it is labelled as. If that's not what he meant, its still good advice anyways so remember it

[ May 22, 2001: Message edited by: Dan ]