[Talk] Portraiture

[Fairy]

Sucks, am I right?

What do you guys think about portraits? Do you find drawing anatomically correct faces perplexing or does it come kinda naturally to you?

 

[Blah]

As someone who doesn't do any of this, I think it's quite nice to look at portrait artwork. I have tried back in my childhood to draw faces, and if I recall correctly, the hardest parts would be getting the eyes to look just right. You could, for non-serious projects, get away with drawing a 2D nose, but weird and misaligned eyes seem to always ruin the drawings.

I'm not sure if this falls into the same category of drawing you're referring to, but I also think using a cartoonist's art style makes the portraits more easier to draw. They tend to exaggerate certain facial features a person has, and it's oddly easy to see the resemblance between drawing and reality. For more "quick sketches" applying this kind of formula may be wise.

Something like the Mona Lisa's style can be tricky I'd think. It'd definitely take a lot of practice to get into!

 

[Nina]

I used to draw like 90% floating heads, but they are also anime floating heads so in terms of maybe specifically capturing the details or complex expressions may be more difficult for me. But in general, I like faces!
Actually, the only reason everything is fullbody recently is because I've forced myself to move away from portraits so I can get better with the body.

It probably helps that one of my favorite drawings as a kid was the portraits for Final Fantasy X and I really wanted to do those!

 

[Pebbles]

Spoiler:

i made this :pink_giggle:

PURE LIES

no seriously though, i love it when people got such skills and can make awesome portraits
so jealous ;-;​

 

[Arylett Charnoa]

Every time I try to make a portrait, it ends up with me drawing the entire body. I just can't leave it incomplete. Makes me feel unsatisfied, particularly if I really like the portrait and think it looks awesome, and want a full body so I can use it in banners and other such things. I mean, if I have a full body, I can just crop off the head anyway. It's more convenient for me. Doesn't help that I'm not really all that great with facial expressions and human faces in particular.

Later though, I'll have to do portraits for my big creative story project I've been working on for years. And I'll try really damn hard to give them good facial expressions. I'll probably end up drawing the entire body like I always do, but dammit, the faces will look good!

 

[JJ Styles]

I remember this was an assignment in art class during my 7th grade and I failed miserably so i had to ask for my sister for some help. What she taught me was to use a grid, so i slapped on a grid to the face I was drawing and just did my best to draw what i see, not what i think i can see.

Years later, I realized why i fail at drawing facial portraits = I get so bored easily of it, and when I'm bored at something, I suck so hard at it D:

 

[Juno]

I'm absolutely awful with human anatomy (body and face), and I am really jealous of people who can draw people that look like real people. :P I know it takes a lot of practice and study to do it right but I just haven't had the patience to really sit down and learn more than a bit of the basics. One of these days I will, it's something I've wanted to do for a while.

 

[RegalSin]

Drawing = taking a photograph with tools not including a camera. In terms of doing photogenic work it is probably far easier to accomplish then doing representative works of illustration. The problem with imagery is to one kind of person it is pointless and sad while to another kind of person it is magnificent.

Personally I enjoy the representative works over the photogenic.

Somebody pointed out Final Fantasy. Look FFVIII started using more detailed character imagery but it is not photogenic. The artist is usually using reference materials in order to accomplish there goal. There could be any number of shapes used. Personally I prefer the original FFVI artwork and backwards to what was done afterwards.

Same issue with Zelda series. They took away Links original nose, hair color, and turned him into a generic photogenic person. Thanks to bs like that we have had arguments over little things like how "There are only cactus in Western Deserts and not African Deserts" relating Link to the real world when he and his world is fictional.

I really do not have a problem with photogenic artwork or vice verse with representative or even stylized imagery. However in terms of details or becoming obsessive of details I might go a little insane.

 

[Gigadweeb]

The problem I have is hair usually tends to blend into shading with lead, even more noticeable if I'm lightly shading with lead to give the illusion of lighter hair. I really can't wait until I get some decent colour pencils, or a set of watercolour paints.