[balistic]

or "how not to paint a pin-up"



To-do list:

- fix her legs so that she stops looking like midget Vampirella
- give her another arm
- and some sunglasses on top of her head
- work some more form into the hair
- lavish attention on boobs
- tighten up the background
- throw a little more sunlight on her face

Any other suggestions (aside from making her skinnier and blonde)?

edit: do you think her jawline is too pronounced? I'm having second thoughts about it.
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brian.prince|light.comp.paint

[balistic]

did a bit more work on it tonight. I think her jaw works better now.


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brian.prince|light.comp.paint

[IDrawGirls]

Pretty cool. Love the contrasts ( the black hair is cool ).

Something about the lighting looks incoherent IMO. Guess it looks as if there are 2 very strong light sources.
One with white light (bothers me a little in the neck/ear area) and the more yellowish sunlight.
I think the yellowish light would create a different lightest area on the face.
It doesn't look as if the hair casts a shadow ... though that is probably what you were going for!?
It seems to be coming more from the right on other bodyparts.
I'd take away from the effect of the white light on the face.

The proportions of the face look great.
Just the nose looks as if it is not following the center line of the face properly.
The legs don't quite work for me. Probably that's just me.
Did you work from reference?

Did you run out of space when you were painting this btw?
I think a little more room (especially over her head) would be good for the readability.

[allpetter]

This looks really nice!

I think I would play just a tad more with hue colors if I were you.

The anatomy is pretty good to, though abit stiff atm!
edit: I think the anatomy will work much better when you have given everything its given shape!

ramble
For me... when personally painting human anatomy, male or female,
I always get a better result when beeing loose and abit unplanned.

We all understand good anatomy unconsiously!
But we tend to forgett it when putting it down on paper!
It might be so that when we paint loose we paint abit unconsios?
And when repeating this a few thousand times we start to understand what we paint!

I dont think one learns how to paint anatomy better by methodically break down every part of the body like your progress on this piece indicates on!

I know for a fact that I personally are getting down anatomy better by analyze movement and how the different shapes relate to that.
end of ramble

This little ramle might have come of abit anal!
Hope it'll be taken as a inspiring ramble though!

cheers balistic, you own!
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Fru Tina K�ttet

[the_insider]

oooh a tutorial?...good right arm...i like the rendering on the other arm...dont neglect the background!...keep postin
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---Would you believe me if i told you i was a liar?...

[balistic]

Thanks for the feedback guys, I really appreciate it.

IDrawGirls: yes, I still need to adjust the intensities of the various light sources a bit . . . the cooler sky light is too intense compared to the warm diffuse sunlight. In terms of reference, my initial sketch was based on this (censored nudity):

http://www.bprince.com/LegitimateReferenceMaterial.jpg

but obviously, I deviated quite a bit. That photo has a bit too much perspective, making the legs too small in frame, so I tried to adjust the proportions on the painting a bit, but I still need to address that far shoulder. I'm not dead-set on the composition either . . . it's all in layers, so I can play with it and find something that works.

allpetter: believe me, I know this isn't the best way to work. I had a Hungarian figure drawing teacher in college named Zoltan who would stab me for failing to plan a piece properly, but I just didn't spend enough time sketching this one initially. Hopefully I can dig myself out of the hole.
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brian.prince|light.comp.paint

[Bishop_Six]

First off, I have to say that I think this is one of the best pin-ups I've ever seen. I really like how you've chosen to illustrate a woman who isn't the stereotypical pin-up model. She has a kind of down-to-earth beauty that makes her feel like someone you know.

I've been staring at this trying to find something constructive to say because I hate posting without saying something of substance. All I could think to say is that the angle at which her right shoulder meets her neck(the trapezius, I suppose) looks to me like it is a little high. In your reference the line of girl's left shouler kind of slopes down toward her neck rather than up. Not sure if I'm being very clear here.

Anyway, great job so far. I love the color choice. Very soft and warm. Can't wait to see it finished.

[Mikko K]

Good work as usual!

You mentioned that the photo has too much perspective. I think that maybe you've flattened it a bit too much.

I just wanted to share one interesting thing I just found out from a book about cinematography. Maybe you know this all, but it was new to me. It's about a thing called size constancy, or how our perceptual system compensates for the changes in distance.

Okay I'm breaching the copyright, a direct quote from the book Picture Composition for Film and Tv by Peter Ward:

"Look at your two hands, one placed at arm's length the other at half the distance - they will look almost exactly the same size, and yet the image of the further hand will be only half the (linear) size of the nearer. If the nearer hand is brought to overlap the further, then they will look quite different in size".

So actually the problem might be that the camera records the reality closer as-is, because it doesn't compensate the distance. Then again, depending on the lens it might create very distorted images.

Dunno if this helps at all, I'm kinda tired now it's 3am anyway Keep up, your stuff is always inspirational.

[balistic]

Bishop: thanks for the feedback. I'm going to try to finish the piece tomorrow, so I can move onto some paying things. Will post a thread over in the gallery when she's done.

Mikko: Ah, yes, that's very true with the eye because it has a fixed focal length, but lenses can have zoom optics. Imagine that you are maybe 10 meters from a subject and slightly above them, looking though a zoom lens. The size difference between the head and feet will be much less than if you are looking through a wide angle lens at a distance of 2 meters.

I'm definitely going to work on that far shoulder more . . . I think if I adjust it properly the rest will fall into place more soundly.
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brian.prince|light.comp.paint

[DeadbeaT]

You should make her skinnier and blonde.

Just kidding, nice going here, looking forward for a update.
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