Female Portrait

Got bored of doing work, so I painted this. Not sure whether to call this one finished or not, as I'm not entirely satisfied with it, but then again I never am.

It's not GW-related or anything, just thought you guys might like it.

I like it. a lot. Everything looks natural and well thought out. My only complaints would be the Lighting on the eyes, seems to be a little bit distracting, and on the left eye, I undestand that it is tilted away from you, but not so much that ti's 2/3 the size of the right eye, I don't think. The same goes for the nose, which looks a mite bent there. The lips, for some reason, look a little bit disembodied to me. The light source isn't too prominent, so the very light shadows there seem to be very appropriate, as do the very dark greys, which are not so bold as to make it contrast so much, but bold enough to make the cloth look real, look very nice. Kudos! Those are cool paintings. What program do you use?


Is this just an inspired picture, or did you have a reference? That sure is a pretty woman.

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I like it. The things that jump out at me are, as Sidra's pointed out the nose and her left eye, but also, maybe it's just me, but the neck seems a little too long.

As a whole, I think something I've noticed on both this and your other painting is how blurred everything is on the face, there's no sharp shadows at all. Things like her nostrils should probably be sharper/more outlined so you can see more of their shape as opposed to just kinda blurs with holes (which doesn't look terrible, but still not as defined as a nose should be, IMO), and just...as a whole, I think it's too blurry. It looks as if once you layed out your colors then went on vacation with your smudge/blur brushes. The lips are probably the best part of the entire thing, because they have texture, contrast, they're defined and look pretty damn good. The rest of it though, it's just so blurry. I mean I guess blurry's ok if you're going for ultra-airbrushed playboy sort of thing (not nudity I realize...just a reference to people who airbrush the crap out of people, making them look unreal). Hopefully you know what I mean. On the last image you posted (bowhead mesmer), it was the same thing---and it's always the face. The clothes/jacket and such never look blurry, the details and shading on them looks nice and sharply contrasted in just the right spots, but as soon as we move to skin it seems you lose that wonderful sharpness and strength in your shadows and move to a much more "airbrushy" sort of shading. While this might be personal preference, I still think it could look much more real if more sharp shadows/details were added, subtle and not. (I'm not sure how this comes off online, if it seems rude or harsh, PieXags is sorry. Just trying to give strong crits to make for wicked good improvement, which is what we're all trying to achieve. )

yes yes it is nice indeed but...................the eyes make her look awfully doll like and creepy........

+1 on Pie here, which is why I thought the lips looked a bit disembodied. Didn't really catch the neck part until looking further, because I was taken with the hair and the face. I have no problem with the nostrils though. 0_o.

i love the neck (well shaded although a but long) and the top, i think it looks very very realistic. you have done a great job with the shodow on that! and i like the oil pastil feel the the top aswell. could you put the detail used on the lining of the neck of the top on the hail? to break it up a little more? i think the lips are spectacular, and youve dont the teeth way better than i could. the face looks a bit thinner on the right than the laft, and it could ton down on the ambionce a bit? so it would match the neck?...

wait...

i just put my hand over the left cheek and thats all im uncomfortable with. spectacular, big thumbs up!

Very, very beautiful.
It seems like everything except the lips and eyes have been blurred a little too much, though. The hair also looks a little chunky, but that's the most complicated part
My only critiques. It's a beautiful picture.

Holy Hell! It looks like one of my dad's ex-girlfriends...

Glad to see another talented artist around LuxA! I meant to comment on your previous B&W mesmer portrait, but I've been occupied this past week with only a minute or two at a time to sit at the computer -not nearly enough time to write up the kind of critique your work deserves.

One thing that jumped out at me on both paintings is the hair. Overall it's very well done. The wisps, however, are blocky due to the fact that we can clearly see the brush you were using there. Just a tiny use of the smudge tool at the very end (the only time I'd suggest using that thing) to pull the strands to a finer, softer point would make a world of difference.

I'm sorry. I don't usually say anything negative right off the bat, but that's such a minor point which I think would really improve the final feel of the painting.

Now let me say some nice things. The soft blue background really works as a nice contrast to her skin and lips and helps to set the mood of the painting. You also do a wonderful job of the hair. You're able to highlight and shadow the hair to bring out not only the individual strands, but also the body and shape of the hair as a whole. In addition, you do it without causing the two to fight.

The subtle detail of the zipper, her lips, and her eyelashes are very nice. They show that even if some aspects of the portrait are lacking in detail, you definitely have the eye for such things and the talent to put details in.

Of course, there's always room for improvement. Two main problems stand out to me. The first is that the shading is done with white and black. Shadows are black; highlights are white. I feel like this is something I complain about nearly every single time I look at someone's paintings (my own included at times... ), but it really makes a world of difference. There is very rarely any time in real life when a shadow is black or when a highlight (barring the extreme tiny point highlight) is white. I never really understood how important the avoidance of black and white in shadowing was until I read this. I know it's a lot of reading, but it's extremely helpful.

Following from the use of black and white as your means of shading comes the fact that color-wise, I think her face is very flat. The biggest point where this stands out is in her nose. Out of the entire face, the nose should be one of the most red areas. Even if it's not red, it should be more red than anything else (except for maybe the cheeks). In this painting, however, the nose is almost grey. A nose is defined by highlight and shadow more than any other part of the face, and thus using black and white as shading implements will end up greying it out.

Skin is really hard to get right though, and I'm still far from it myself. I've found these two links to be quite helpful though:
http://forums.sijun.com/viewtopic.php?p=304171
http://forums.sijun.com/viewtopic.php?p=304170

The other problem that jumps out at me is that while her face is obviously supposed to be angled to the side a bit, it still feels like it's flat facing us (the nose wouldn't be bent or anything if the face were tilted, but if it were flat on it would certainly be crooked to the side). I think there are a couple of reasons for this.

For one, although the eyes vary in size to show depth they are on a flat line. You can draw one straight line and it will hit through each corner of both eyes. While it seems like our eyes are on a flat surface on the front of our heads, they're actually not. Our eyes are actually sitting on a plane that is slightly angled backwards, as the inner corner of our eyes is farther forward than the outer corner of our eyes. The result is that when our heads turn, you'll need a curved line rather than a straight one to line up the eyes. If the eyes fall on a straight line, our minds will read that as facing directly towards us regardless of any size difference between the two eyes.

The other reason I believe the face feels strait on rather than turned slightly as it's supposed to be, is the way the light falls on her cheek. While the shadowed cheek would suggest that her head is turned (how else would that whole side of her face fall into shadow?), the lighted cheek has its brightest point very far on the side. The closer a highlight is to the edge of an object, the more it will look like it's something flat facing us. By bringing in that brightest part of the cheek more towards the center, even slightly, you'd give the feel that her face is rounder or turned.

I do agree with Sidra and PieXags that there's a soft bluriness to a lot of the skin. However, it doesn't bother me nearly as much as these other things. I'd be willing to forgive the softness of the skin as a stylistic effect, where I have a very hard time overlooking the rest.

Edit: "Shadows are white; highlights are black." ...what am I, dislexic? >.<

The angle of direction of the eyes, lip, nose are very different... need fixing there. The chin is following the nose, but the lip isn't.

The distance between the lip and nose are rather far for a normal person.

It felt as if the picture was drawn with the artist sitting in 3 different places while the model remain unmoved.

The neck appear to be fine, however the shoulder does not. (should have some muscle around there showing the shoulder seem to be closer to the head, the left shoulder have it, yet the right shoulder doesnt) While the neck is on another different angle from the whole thing.

The best part I liked about the picture is her cloth near the neck. A very natural look of the clothing.

you are very very good at this, keep it up^^
maybe fix the edges of the hair, make them smaller or something, but that is nothing big and large shoulders as vermilion said, shoulder is supposed to have the the length of three heads if you understand, but very good =)
much better than i can do anyway...

The neck is beautiful

I wonder, would you happen to have her phone number? LOL

I'd just like to comment on some of the comments. lol More than one person has said that her shoulders are too narrow. I disagree completely. While a person's shoulder width is indeed three heads, if the shoulders are angled then forshortening will reduce that width tremendously. Being that her clothing is so dark, the only details that need to be correct in the forshortened aspect are the outline and the bright tidbits (like the zipper). Both look correct to my eye.

Argh, too much real-life work damages the brain. I'll try my best to fix the flaws you guys mentioned when I recover from assignment overload...soonish I hope...

BTW, thanks for all the detailed comments. I always seem to lose perspective after working on something for ages (*cough* pun intended).

Hmm, I guess I wasn't clear enough.

I was talking about the height of the shoulder muscle, not the bone or the width.

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Update - tweaked lots of bits, too many to mention. Something still looks off, hopefully you guys can help me spot it because I'm tired and I need sleep.

I love the left eye... and the hair... and the lips look much more like they belong... but there is a weird spot on the lips, and the nose looks a bit... Michael Jackson-esqe now. I liked the previous eyes though, all that needed to be fixed was that light patch there >.> and the size of the left one. The clothing looks better now with that little detail you've added there... but the face doesn't seem to... work. The nose's perspective looks a little skewed. Try tweaking that around more, and maybe it'll look better I still think that it's a great piece. I also love the face contrast now *kudos* keep it up!

the hair is spectacular now. i prefer the forst neck and hody. i also prefer the lips on the first one. the shading in the wall looked more natural in the first to. but the eyes and eyebrows are much nicer. the skin tone is nicer to, mabey a little shading near the right of the nose? to show her cheek curving in. brillinat work!

Yea, Jeno, we have our left-right reversed.

I am talking about her left and right, instead of our left and right.

So the right you said is the left of my post, vise-versa.

Hmm... I wonder which direction should we use now? our left-right or the art's left-right?

Anyway, the picture is updated... past is in the past.

The 2nd one defintely is better. Although I can still say more... but I think I will give LuxA a break Or rather... I am giving myself a break @_@

I..love her hair!