Between painting these two, I found not long into the process that I definitely prefer dry medium. As you can see from the first half of the progress on the woman with the green background, I began it with Conte brushes, so it’s more of a mix between the two than purely wet materials. These two are based on a mix of fashion photography and to an extent, game characters. Props to anyone who knows who they are based on.
For the first one, I painted directly on top of the sketch with a big blob of color, but for the second one, I tried blending the sketch into the painting as I went.
I find dry medium a lot easier to blend with and achieve the color variations I like. I’m not painterly enough to make impasto look decent.
I think your rendering technique is absolutely awesome. You've certainly got a mastery over visually appealing and realistic skin tones and rendering. I really like the hair on the first picture and the lips and subtle lighting on the second one. The only thing I could suggest would be some background elements. Overall, they're both just really great!
ReplyDeleteI want to start off by pointing out that your skintones are fantastic. The brush strokes have a very clean and smooth appearance that from a distance look very natural. You've got a good understanding of the dry medium so you have nothing to worry about there- maybe push out of your comfort zone and try a bit more with the wet materials? Also structure of the faces are really well handled and are very convincing.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I find something somewhat uncanny in the busts themselves- their necks and shoulders feel unnatural the way they're placed and how they move. While everything else looks so natural, these bits throw that off. Nothing terrible, but something to consider in the future if it wasn't intended.
These two works look great, I like the little details on them like the subtle green/pink lighting and highlights on their features. They don't feel rigid and stiff like a lot of portraits, but I would look into working on anatomy and just sketching out different poses and body parts.
ReplyDeleteThe values and textures in these two are AMAZING. and you said you didn't use a reference photo either I think?? wow. these are seriously great. Like I have nothing to critique here, you owned this final!
ReplyDeleteI'm really enjoying the amount of blending that was done with these pieces, and the highlighting on the first piece is fantastic! The two pieces feel very unified and successful, despite being different mediums. I definitely think that if you wanted to do anything else to these, you could always add a background, or some sort of light/halo effect to activate the space more.
ReplyDeletei love these. i think they both look amazing together. they are both so smooth and elegant. but i can tell that you liked dry media better. i like the first one more than the second. although you did a great job on both
ReplyDeleteYour process gif shows how much work you put into these, especially the first one, with how complex her hair is. You really have a good understanding of skin tones, and interesting poses. It would be interesting to see what you could do for a background to these.
ReplyDeleteYour use of skin tones in this are really amazing, and i love how the way you blend colors is so smoothly rendered, it looks very clean and concise. The anatomy in the second portrait is a little confusing, it's a very similar pose to the first, and i think just some subtle changes in shading could fix it, or maybe a reference. You did a really great job with these though!
ReplyDeleteI love the purple undertones in the second portrait. Definitely loving your colors. Great use of neutrals. I want background though! Even if it's just a couple swatches of color to create space or send the figure forward.
ReplyDeleteI know a couple people said that the anatomy is confusing, and I aggree I guess, but I actually really like it! It reminds me of Egon Shiele! I would LOVE to see you play that up even more actually. Elongating limbs, and contorting the figure. It would be a good suggestion to make sure you study figure drawing if you haven't yet, just so that you can think about the form underneath the skin, in order to make the emphasized anatomy more believable.
I really like this. Hope you keep working with painter and make some weird human shapes. Haha.
I love how stylistically rendered these ended up being! You really made these portraits yours - they don't give off a heavily referenced quality at all, yet are still fairly reminiscent of your models (which is a great balance). I do agree that the busts look a bit unnatural, but in the first one I think its a matter of her shoulders being too small and in the second one the left shoulder vanishes in those vague dark strokes (and I know its the left, because in your progress shot the lines make more sense!). Otherwise, great work!
ReplyDeleteThe tones you used for the skin in both of these are really cool, and your choice of background colors really compliment these. The shading you've done in the hair of the blue one is gorgeous, and I actually like how there's some leftover lines outside of the form itself. I'm a little confused by the proportions/perspective of the second one's body, because the placement of the collarbone seems to contradict the placement of the shoulders. But overall, good work
ReplyDeleteThe way you're using the mediums here are really nice. You have a great handle on getting a really nice smooth lighting / skin texture within the figures - particularly on the one with the blonde woman. I think that with that one you are able to see some of the nuances in her facial structure really well. I imagine it is a bit harder with a darker skin-tone, but maybe there is something you can do with a color overlay to help bring a subtle additional color to the woman with the darker skin tone. I love the way that the cheekbone is defined, I think the next step would be to bring some warmth into her cheeks or maybe even add a secondary / tertiary color into some of the areas that reflect that blue of the background. You know sometimes when you're near an area of large color it will reflect onto your skin / or you shirt - I think that's something you could do here to enhance the contours of her body even more. Really nice rendering techniques!
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