In Service to the Great Old Ones - Move to Structured Critique

[Evelyn Snow]

MY IMAGE(S):




GENERAL INFORMATION:
Title: In Service to the Great Old Ones
Year Created:
Medium: Oil Pastel
Surface: Paper
Dimension: 8.5
Allow digital alterations?: Yes!

MY COMMENTS:
My second work in pastel, a picture of Neil Gaiman he posted on Twitter. I definitely messed up on portions of the piece, particularly with the face. I simultaneously love and hate how this one tu
ed out.

MY QUESTIONS FOR THE GROUP:
I'd appreciate any feedback but particularly I had a lot of trouble with the face, how can I improve on rendering lifelike faces in pastel?

[La_]

the best studies i think are done in black and white
helps to really see the variations in light and shape

also, measure, everything, repeatedly as you sketch
once your shapes are in the right places, work the shadows and highlights.
turn the reference and sketch 180 degrees and check shapes, measure again, adjust as necessary.

this guy's cool, but he's more an illustrated cartoon than a really recognizable individual because there's little depth, little organization of true to life light/shadow.

convert your reference to grey scale and do it again, i'll bet a nickel it'll be better

imho

la

[Evelyn Snow]

Thank you! I had never considered doing that.

[Black Spot]

Also use a mirror to check your work. You might have noticed that the eyes are not quite in line. More observation on hands would help, but it's a nice composition and I like the colours.

[Evelyn Snow]

Thank you, that's another really good idea. Yeah, I noticed how the eyes were unaligned after I had already started coloring. I just about pulled my hair out when I saw it! Haha! I won't get too upset about mistakes as long as I can learn from them.

[Yokovich]

If you are saying that you want to paint/draw more realistically, you might consider studying some books*, dvds and taking some life drawing classes.

This piece, though not classically realistic, has good qualities. The linked together darks are effective and the hair has a definite "cool" factor. It is ideal, however, to learn to draw human anatomy with dependable accurate results so that when you provide any stylization it will read in a totally solid strong way. It appears that you ran out of steam with the hands (or maybe your photo reference was not good enough). The hands need more values and definition, not to mention fingernails.

Still....you should be pleased with this one and do more....lots and lots more.
* books by Chris Saper are especially good for learning about skin tones.

[Terri5]

I agree with Celeste's comment about the books by Chris Saper: Saper boasts super (almost luscious) skin tones in her work. I see a lot of expressiveness in what you're doing; if you want to become more realistic in approach, drawing still lifes and just plain old shapes is something I found really helpful, as well as studying every drawing book out there! -Terri