This is one of the pieces that I finished last night. I looked at the cover of her Breath CD and thought, "Gee, I wonder if I could draw that?" I as I was drawing I noticed that I needed some help with the eyes and the lips. Anybody have any pointers for me? Well, here it is, Faith Hill in Charcoal.
Preview photo © to their Respective owners.
Comments
Riot13O Says:
First of all, on the lips. Their shape is nice, and I love the inner portion of their mouth, but I would say that gradient is too, well, standard. It's making the lips look a little flat. I would say move the highlights up and gradiate down from there--that way it looks like the lips are more defined and volumetric. I would say do the same for the upper lip, although you might want to make it a little darker.
On the eyes--the left one is working out for you really well. :) I would say the right one could be a little bit longer or larger. It looks roughly the same size as the other eye, which is tilted and in perspective. I notice there's some smudging going on in there, which might be why I'm not seeing the eyelashes... From the preview pic, she seems to have pretty big eyelashes, so it'd be cool if you could get those in. :) Also, as an overall thing, I would invest in a smudger or something of the like. Some of your values are getting a bit too rough, and I think with a bit more smudging they could be a lot smoother.
Anyway, cool stuff! Charcoal is always fun. :) Really like how her hair turned out too, btw.
Luminance Says:
:/ Try to draw from life instead of copying pictures. It'll help you a lot more.
vegetachik Says:
one thing that always helped me with charcoal was to take a softer vine charcoal and cover the whole page, using a shammy or something to smear it.. giving it a medium tone.. or at least something darker than the white paper.. that way you can do subtractive work as well as shading. i find it helps to give a more realistic skin tone and makes the highlights pop. then compressed charcoal should be used for the darkest parts since vine doesn't go as dark. takes a while to get used to, but it works really well. i have started doing the same with graphite, only focusing on smaller sections at a time.