For both of my paintings I attempted to paint Utada Hikaru a Japanese pop idol that is very inspirational to me. For my first one I started out with sketches and and went in with an pastel brush and started painting in flats and once I was happy with that I ended up blending everything together.
As for my wet media one I wasn't able to finish it and make it to my liking. I struggled a lot with this one as I'm not too familiar with wet media and still feel like I'm having trouble with the layering affect. I ended up starting over multiple times with this one and was somewhat happy with the progress on this one.
The pastel palette is lovely, I just wish there was more experimentation going on in these! You should try to move from of your comfort zone a bit, maybe try to break from using lines as a definitive guidelines. Give yourself more freedom and splash colors on the canvas and see where it goes. I would love to see more color and contrast in these!
ReplyDeleteI really like the color palettes you chose for both. I think simply adding a subtle background and continuing the figure to the bottom of the page would have improved this a lot. I can see your hesitation in the painting process, which is totally understandable knowing that you are out of your comfort zone here, but even if digital painting isnt your forte, it would have been interesting to see maybe an experimentation with more color hues, or maybe relying less on your linework. I think your first one actually works really well with the linework, but maybe trying something different for the second one would have been interesting, there seems to be a lack of color there.
ReplyDeletei like the simplicity that you were going for with these but i think it would have been nice to see the line work get a little more refined and maybe a background put in
ReplyDeleteI really like the simplicity of your work. The first portrait is a good example. You seem to have a good grasp on line work and initial colors, but I think your portraits can be improved be adding more variety to your color palette.
ReplyDeleteI think that you have a nice style that's coherent through both of these pieces, which is very succesful! I'm not sure whether you wanted to go for a more pastel and flat look, or a more defined and toned look, but I feel like you could take these pieces further into either direction and have a very nice illustration! I think just throwing in some very dark colors to make some shadows for contrast would really help bring out the forms. At the same time though, your current color palettes totally work, and there is a beauty in the simplicity of the pieces.
ReplyDeletegod bless Utada. I think what these need is just more tones on either side, both highlights and shadows, in order to give them more form and keep them from being so flat. I think your drawings themselves are nice, and could be accentuated by some thicker, more defined linework (if you want to keep the linework showing). It would also be nice to have the bottoms of each kind of fade into the background, just so there's not as much of an abrupt cut.
ReplyDeleteGood first Corel attempts dude especially when I know you aren't a traditional drawing guy. I like that you really took this challenge head on. If you were to push these pieces forward I'd start blocking out some large shapes of value where light falls on these faces in subtle shifts, then gradually smooth out those shapes.
ReplyDeleteThese are really great palettes to start with. I think that you get some really nice minimal expressions in both - very subdued. I think to make them stand out more, I'd really push the value, maybe bringing out some of the different planes in the face a bit more - maybe even including some really textural mark-making if you wanted to continue the way that you're using the hatching for the outlines. I think that in order for them to feel a bit more finished, bringing that hatching around the pieces as a way to "paint" would be really effective. You could bring out some lighting that way and also use it as a really nice dusting of color. One thing I'd consider as well is to try to subtlely add some underlying color in the faces -- sometimes bringing a bit of warmth into the cheek area of the skin will help make it look like blood is flowing close to hte surface -- same thing with the shadows -- maybe slightly more green in the shadows might help turn the form. Since the transitions are so minimal, they look more sketch-like than finals, but I think that if you continued to work with the textures youre creating it might bring out some of the features you had in your sketch a bit more, and turn the form a bit more.
ReplyDeleteAlex I know you've never really done portraits like these before but you gotta keep going! You're heading into a great direction. Don't be afraid to break up flats with more blocks of color and experiment more with style - it would definitely push these to the next level.
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