[A]

Something I did on the weekend.

Hope you like it. C & C welcome - especially on the coloring aspect.

Cheers, A.

[TheNeverman]

Overall the coloring is nice - but the jacket texture seems way off. Her hands are also a bit small and buttocks a bit flat... at least for my tastes...

I enjoy the composition though, very easy to look at.

n8
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[the_insider]

i love the face...thats awesome coloring---i agree with neverman on everything except for the jacket part...i kinda like the texture....but the face..whew...thats exactly what i was trying to go for in mine in the WORK IN PROGRESS....you should take a look if you have some time
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[A]

Neverman - I agree with your anatomical comments. It's pretty easy to get sucked in by the heavily stylized (to say the least!) art of others - I recently picked up the first to serials in Masmune Shirow's (legend!) "Ghost in the Shell Two - Man Machine Interface", and hence the flat butt! Hands, yes they're below par. As for the jacket, one thing I wanted to do was distort the texture to make it look like it wraps onto the jacket better (ie, grain gets finer as it slopes away from viewer) - do you know any photoshop plugins that might allow me to do that? Like to actually bend parts of the texture around the figure?

Insider - Thanks for the comments too. I took a look at your WIP, and I see what you're getting at. Keep at it. I dunno if this helps but here's a few things that I did for my face:
1) Got reference? I got an interesting photo I chose for the lighting on the face, and dropped that layer into my photoshop file to have as reference right alongside my own image. It really helps when you go to either choose the right colors for the different shadow/light areas, or plot shadows across the face from nose/eyebrows/eyes/lips. Remember: reference is NOT cheating. How do you think the great masters painted their works? - in the studio looking at a model for REFERENCE of course. Now, don't get me wrong here: a PHOTOMANIPULATION _is_ cheating!!
2) Decided on light sources. I put in three. One is deeper into the picture and lights up the face on the left side of the image (as per my reference photo), one light is at the viewer (kind of like a flash on a camera would do) and the other is a subtl, cold-colored reflected light from down low. Knowing exactly where the light comes from allows consistent placement of highlights and shadows.
3) Considered CONCAVE _ and_ CONVEX shapes for highlights. Something of an epiphany for me was, a few years back, realising that I for some reason (in spite of reference!) tended to ignore the concave parts of the face for highlights. I would put higlights on the obvious convexshapes (nose, forehead, chin, cheek, lips), but miss the concave shapes (edges of nostrils, corner of eye against nose, around the eye, corner of mouth, lines to mouth, etc).

I hope that helps!

Cheers, A.

[the_insider]

number3---thats exactly what i do NOW...old habits die hard....your help is greatly appreciated...im gonna give it another go and try a new one with the same girl as the subject...thanx lots
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[Ritaku]

nice shading on the head and jacket. and in my opinion the texture works pretty well. only thing is, if you add texture in one place you need to get the other shading parts right to go with it. i think if you erased some of those fold lines and added a bit more detail to the shading there it would complete the image a bit more. overall a nice design and aesthetically pleasing.
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