Well, here is a small sketch to start my thread with.
[img]http://members.optusnet.com.au/~rowanfamily/elf1.jpg[/img]
Basicly going with this kinda design, boring I know!
oh she is supposed to be a female elf, incase you didnt know :)
Probably wont get this finish for awhile.
Well, started the linework for my final version tonight-
[img]http://members.optusnet.com.au/~rowanfamily/elfsketch1.jpg[/img]
I decided I would go on further-
[img]http://members.optusnet.com.au/~rowanfamily/elfsketch2.jpg[/img]
Very happy that I did, but I had to do the hair even though I knew I would stuff it up-
[img]http://members.optusnet.com.au/~rowanfamily/elfsketch3.jpg[/img]
Hair is something that I usally dont draw, and it shows. The scanner has amplified the surface texture that the paper has so it does like quite grainy. Regardless, does anyone have any advice for drawing hair?
Anyway, this may or may not be the finished product. Depending on "stuff" I may/may not take it into the digital realm.
I honestly think that you had the hair spot on at the second step.. Remember, sometimes it's what you don't draw that really counts.
I hope you don't mind(if you do, I'll take it down no probs, and with an apology), but I decided to have a bit of a paint over, try play with some hair techniques.. Er, but got kinda side tracked.
http://www.boomspeed.com/sorcerorbob/elfsketch3.jpg
Anyhow, hair can be done many ways, the ones that spring to mind are the following.
1. Shape - The easiest way, is to simply make an outline of the shape of the hair, like your second pic. I like your second picture alot, as it puts all the focus on the face - yet my brain is telling me that there is hair there - letting my imagination do the rest.
2. Texture - this is the way you have done it, lotsa little lines to represent hair. It's a road I have been down many a time, sometimes it can look right, but alot of the time it can look very noisy. Your newest version of the picture is much better than the first :) But I can see where it looks like you started to get bored with it.
3. Tonally - Just use blocks of tone to define the shape of the hair.. You've put it abit in there, just imagine it without the texture.
What I did.. Hmm, well I know i made alot of mess.. But I basically tried to let cut down on unneccesary noise by simplifying some of the texture - you'll note that the areas where I kept it are the parts that frame the face, this, I hope, lures the viewers eye into the center.
You'll also note I changed a few phsyical aspects of the face. I just grabbed the liquify tool to move parts of the picture around.. Mostly it was done to change some 3/4 view issues (lips, nose and the cheek/jaw on the right). I think it made her face look a little weak though :/
Lastly, I went and darkened some of the areas, just to add an extra layer of tonal depth, and to help push the face forward.
Anyways, I really like how you've taken this one forward - I hope I have given you some ideas - and that you are ok with the butchering i did :/
She looks better.
I have to admit that my 3D work helped put my drawing a bit. Especially with hair. Make your hair like you would do it in 3D. Make guide hairs first, and then interpolate them. If you can get the guide hairs flowing right, you can achieve a good hairstyle with only a few hairs. At the moment, you just started off by defining the mass of the hair. Get the flow right and it should slowly fall into place :) The other thing is the length of your lines. You are trying to draw long hair by using short line lengths. It will always look sketchy. Turn your page sideways, relax your wrist, and draw from your elbow. Get some nice flowing lines happening :)
I have always had the same troubles with smooth tonal pencil work. The scans come up showing more paper grain than pencil tone. That is why I don't scan them :/ The only way I have had any sort of luck, was with a digital camera. The only thing is, you have to make sure that the image is either brightly enough lit from all angles so that you don't need a sharp light source picking up the countours of the paper (ie: flash). Should you not have strong enough even light, use weaker light, use a tripod and keep the shutter open for longer to get mroe light into it. It works a lot better.
The only advice I can give to your smooth shaded style is really bump up your contrast. Smooth pencil work looks really sweet when you have a great deal of contrast. Extend your highlights into your midtones, and make your shadows really concentrated and dark. The best example I can give is off a comic artist called Keu Cha. He did an amasing pinup in the Fathom Swimsuit Special. Her it is:
[img]http://home.netspeed.com.au/mlanham/swims017.jpg[/img]
If you can find a copy of it, pick it up. It looks even more gorgeous in real life (well, reprinted at least :p). The pic was just taken from some random web site ages ago. excuse the quality of it.
A VERY nice pin up but not sure if it is a good hair expamle for this case - it uses essentially a flat Silhouette with highlights to suggest form and volume... (actually the monitor I'm using is a bit shit so I might ge missing alot of detail). You could give this approach a try or you could look at defining the hair as volumes(ie forget that it is made of individual hairs and look at the overall mass), add tone accordingly then add final 'hairs' details with liney highlights and shadows. I agree with Aven about the pencil work. try longer smoother strokes to define the tone too.
Hazard: Thanks, I have done a rough start. Hopefully it turns out well
Bob: Wow, thanks heaps man :) I dont mind the paintover at all, really helped me out. You did a better job on the hair the me. I really wanted to leave it as is on the second step, but I wanted to push myself to practising doing the hair. Haha! I id get bored doing the hair! Lots of helpful advice there, thanks :)
Aven: Good points there. I did try to do too much with the hair. I will aim to get the hair to flow with only a few hairs. Something that I will practice. Thats a nice drawing there, although its abit too smooth for my taste. I used to just take photos with a digital camera, but they would turn out worse! haha
John: I was looking at the hair as lots of individual strands, instead of focusing on volumes. Good suggestion.
Wow, you guys really helped out on this. Big thankyou
JohnN - That pic was never intended to show how to do the hair. Just an example of the increased contrast :) The scan is pretty bad. In the full thing, you can actually see the hair folicles go from the highlights into silhouette and then into the respected strands. Looks very impressive.
Makk - Good luck with however you choose to carry it out. Keep us updated :)
Well, Im done. More tweaking could be done but I must move onto another project-
[img]http://members.optusnet.com.au/~rowanfamily/elfcolour.jpg[/img]
Not that happy with how it turned out. I lost the look that her eyes had in the sketches, hell, the whole expression has changed :(
Anyway, there were some parts that pleased me. In particular the cheekbone area on her right side.
Here is a detial of it-
[img]http://members.optusnet.com.au/~rowanfamily/elfdetial.jpg[/img]
All in all, abit under 6hrs or so. Not bad...I guess :/
That ended up quite good for a quick go :)
I can only see two things that could do with some fixing up. The whole right hand side of her head could be pushed out just a little. Her eye is in just a bit too close to her nose (try to match up the inner most part of her eyes, with the outer most pasrt of the nostril). The other thing is her face looks a little crooked. That may just be from her right hand side though.
The skin tones are fantastic :)
hey Makk, I really like the skin tones on this lady. they give her a very warm feeling. Something I might point out is that you seem to have drawn the hair without acknologing the scalp inderneath it. (something i used to do ALOT) this can be fixed easily by painting more hair on the right side of her head (some poeple have mentioned something of sorts about this)
edit:: i just noticed the very first sketch you drew of her and you drew the face on a slight angle with the scalp in mind, but in the latter drawings you kept the head at that angle but straightened out the facial features somewhat which leads to its skewardiness. :) funny how when you look at something three times it finaly clicks! :)
also watch out for forehead shrinking (another thing i did alot) it doesnt look bad but keep in mind for future drawings a nice given space between then eyebrowns and the hairline.
but makk i must say im likeing the paint work on her and i hope you continue to refine her :) the cheek area you pointed out is really well done :)
wheres the intricate, almost fragile jewellery - the obligatory forest background!!
But hey :) It's looking pretty cool, I think the main criticism that can be levelled is one you yourself mentioned - it's a little boring.
The picture is nicely drawn, though, have you thought about doing the hair as a large mass/shape rather than by texture? As it is, it comes off a bit noisy.. Hair is always a bastard no matter which way you look at it.
Anyhow, wheres the colour :)