Self-portrait 2.0

Year ago I did  portrait studies. Everything was off. 

Now it's off, but slightly better.

I started by blocking out basic shapes like beard, eye sockets, beard, hair and beard.

Then on top of that I sketched indication of facial features, and then I looked into the mirror...

When you draw with pencil you don't have that luxury of moving and twisting, erasing and redrawing all these mistakes...

In digital drawing in the other hand it's not a problem, tho you may not have all the control over the line quality and precision that you have got with pencil.

Trade-offs...

Any way I figured out that I've fucked up the placement of facial features, so I just cut them of, moved where I needed them and then I started painting with colours.

The rest of the process is just softening edges that need to be soft, placing hard edges where you need them sharp, and continuous battle with dull, muddy colours.

During that process I was constantly checking my values in B&W mode. I know that at this point my values may be off but I don't want to push myself too hard. 

Just hard enough to progress. 

I don't want to put more effort into that than I've put a year ago either. 

I'm just using that entire self-portrait thing to evaluate my current level of painting skill. 

I'll try to make that an annual thing.

That's self-portrait potato from last year for a comparison

And here you can find entire process... If you want.

So long

Some value studies

Remember when I said I've made some "value studies"? Well I refined them. One of them to be exact.

That isn't supposed to be pretty and all, so it is not. It's just me trying to nail the values, where the "trying" is the key word. Meh...

Lets begin!

1. Rough sketch, simple indication of facial features, size and shape of face.

2. Some flat values, just to avoid that shiny 100% white.

3. Sculpting nose and face, toning down that moustache.

4. First of all, I liked third phase far more than this one, but I had to bring some value to his face. It's kinda shame I did that the worst way possible.

5. Some darks to make him pop out bit more.

6. Further sculpting, some hard edges to make him look less feminine and blurry. I messed up eyes pretty badly. Again.

7. Eye speculars, some details. At the moment I don't give a crap about hair - too time consuming, and that's just some value studies.

I know the self-portrait November was, as the name says, in November, but I'm always late.

Is that just me, or I look like psycho-junkie? Duh...

So long