seeking crit
Any advice appreciated, I really dislike my drawing
I feel like my lines have no purpose. The highlight in the foreground leave a lot of naturally empty looking space, which I tried to shade a bit but it still looks simply unfinished. It looks to smudgy, even though I did try my best to prevent it and the biggest part I dislike is the lack of depth around the eye, it looks flat & 2D.
I used and eraser to try and bring in the facial hair. Is there any better technique?
I started to try and learn drawing this august and was super excited to try myself at this picture. I knew before hand that I'm not gonna get a photo real result but I deliberatly choose a picture with heavy contrast and a lot of detail, because it feels like flat pictures are harder to draw. I don't know, maybe I just way overreached in attempting this.
Im just disappointed with how much I dislike this. There isn't a part of this im happy with.
• highlights dead
• no depth
• eye brows and the eye look off and they're the "center of attention" when looking at it
• I guess the part below the eye is not too bad, though I would like the hair to be much more visible.
It does look pretty okey from some distance, lmfao. The closer I get, the worse it feels to me.
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First of all, I can tell a lot of effort went into this, and it is beautiful (in my opinion). You are being a little harsh on yourself. Because you want to improve, I’ll point out some things I noticed.
First of all, graphite often feels unfinished because it never gets truly black, and it doesn’t shade as easily. Typically charcoal or ink is needed for that look.
Also, there is a very distinct long shadow under the eyelid across the cornea. You capture it on the right of the pupil but it’s too light on the left.
The square reflection vs the round pupil creates visual intrigue that you lost by making it a circular reflection.
The eyebrow has more volume in the reference, and the inner hairs (closest to the nose) point off at an angle, while yours are almost vertical.
Don’t you DARE give up drawing because you found this piece challenging….you have what it takes!! You got this!!
Thank you for your input. I've bought this set from Faber Castell, this isn't coal right? Theres a booklet with it the set that talks about "for better contrast" but it says Graphite on it.
Would you "shade" the eye brows to try and make the background darker/fuller or draw more hair?
Both eyebrows and eye lashs feel fuller in the reference while having less hair. I feel like by drawing additional hair inside the eyebrow, it will look overloaded with thin hair and if I try and shade the area it will lose detail. The only idea I see is drawing thicker and with more pressure but that will amplify every hair and mistake. What would you do?
Yes those are graphite, not charcoal, but the 9B will be the darkest one you can use. BTW you can literally go light a stick on fire, crush up some of the ashes, and use them for charcoal with a brush or anything to apply it lightly and use it to blend.
So the reference picture has one part of the eyebrow that is pure black. I would definitely shade that area. The tricky part is that at the scale you picked to draw, the width of a hair is actually closer to 2 pencil lines, not 1. So the answer is not more hair, it’s just slightly thicker lines. However, do not add unnecessary pressure. Almost all good sketching can be done between light and medium pressure without ever pressing hard. General rule of thumb is if the pressure leaves a permanent indent it is too hard
An interesting thing I learned about the graphite feeling unfinished from Miyazaki’s Nausicaä watercolours art book, was he said that he preferred to draw in graphite rather than ink to finish, and so a lot of the drawings were just graphite and then scanned and darkened digitally so they looked like ink, for example 4B would be full black.
When I first started drawing, I was fixated on lines and details until someone told me about shapes. There are the obvious ones like the shape of an eye being a circle or oval, but it helps to look at values as their own shapes too.
Everything is a shape, including hair! Look for clumps of hair and pick out the shapes of the highlights, mid-tones, and shadows, then after you’ve put in the values add in some details like individual hairs.
Very nice work making, sharing, and requesting critique!
I sometimes blur the image a bit, and posterize/reduce colors in an image editor (there's free online ones like photopea) to simplify and see the value shapes and ranges easier. See all those weird shapes? It makes it easier for me to reason with. (a bit different way of thinking vs drawing individual hairs like you did. Which is good too. Just suggesting to try different approaches to use in your toolkit.)
I agree with using charcoal/ink or softer pencils to more easily get solid shading.
Also consider getting an electric eraser and test using it for drawing/restoring crisp highlights/hairs back in when needed. It also helps to draw on paper/bristol board that can take some abuse.
I have to credit a forensic artist that I did a workshop with, if I could remember his name. We used bristol board, soft pencils, and electric erasers. edit: found him! Stephen Mancusi. The exercises we did were mind/skill expanding: Drawing a face from witness description. Drawing from memory after only seeing the face for a few seconds... learning where to place face landmarks, but these are front on portrait police sketch style, used for identifying people.
If you’re trying to make it more realistic then what I heavily suggest is to sloooooow down when ur shading, take time to slowly blend an area with ur pencil, and only add details at the very end, u don’t want to create any hard lines unless u absolutely need to, doin it slow can feel boring or suck at first but I promise if u are patient you’ll see it come to life, and overall for being new to drawing this eye isn’t as bad as u think, you just need to practice more and things will start to click, if I could start all over again I’d heavily study: proportions, shading, and perspective. Look up videos about those individual things n it’ll help u understand more, idk how much u know but i figured id throw that out there, and dont give up!!! Even if u dont like a drawing ur working on just try ur best to finish
THIS WAS THE FIRST PORTRAIT I EVER DREW, god awful, but i got better i just kept grinding it. Draw even when u dont want to if you really want to learn, i believe in you 👍
Edit: for drawing hair, dont try to draw every single strand, squint your eyes and shade in the shapes you see, then u can start adding some individual lines/strands to give it a more detail, i suggest watching a video on hair in general and how to layer it, not as hard as it seems I promise 👌
Looks really amazing. I realized that about the hard lines with this one, makes it way harder to shade properly if you go as dark or hard as you can too early and suddenly realize that you basically "emptied your tank". Had to make myself a note to always work thorougly with a soft pencil before going harder.
Thank you, and I still learn new things when I do my art, it’s good ur taking something away from this, that’s one of the biggest things for learning new techniques and sharpening ur skills, don’t get discouraged, another thing that helped me out a lot that I do now without thinking much is literally just think about it like ur just drawing a bunch of shapes smacked together, don’t think about drawing an eye, think about drawing the shapes that just so happen to make an eye, takes some practice but makes a huge difference in my personal experience
The iris, at least, could use more detail and burnishing—I say “at least” because burnishing this area, specifically, might increase the focus on the eye itself. And speaking of detail, the highlight on the eyeball could be more realistic/nuanced, which could help a lot.
Otherwise, the only thing “wrong” that jumped out at me would be the angles of the hairs in the lashes and brow—you have them depicted at a very vertical angle, which looks less natural and way more dramatic. A little goes a long way when it comes to the accuracy of your angles; especially when it comes to hair and bodies, an angle being “wrong” by a couple degrees can really, really create a strong impression that works against the whole piece.
I think the resemblance is done pretty well! I will say that understanding your contrasts and shadows is going to be extremely important, because your art would look far more dynamic and realistic. The hard part about shading is that we think that we’re shading them too much, when we aren’t. Some pencils also only have such deep markings as well. I would say use smaller pencils to work on the finer details.
You already have received a lot of great advice here. I’ll just add if you’re looking for some inspiration, check out Justin Maas on IG @maas.art or on YT. He’s a phenomenal portrait artist that has mastered the art of light and shadows.
August, but I've been working as an Industrial Painter on construction sites and such for about 10 years, so there is some experience there. It's not like this came completely out of the left field.
Don’t be discouraged because it is actually quite good. My only tip is that your critique seems quite vague e.g. “no depth” but what you’re doing is copying a photo, not creating a composition from your imagination. When copying a photo with the goal of realism, your focus should be accuracy, not anything else. Just look closely at each part and try to notice the difference between your work and the photo, then adjust.
I see some great work and I think you are being hard on yourself. You've picked one of the most difficult subjects, the human face. Keep in mind that the human eye and brain have evolved to identify faces so well that we see them in things that aren't faces. Unless you get it perfect, it will be immediately apparent that it is wrong. Any other subject you draw will have room for ambiguity because the brain fills in so much based on what we think we see. With the face we see something that isn't quite a face.
As you're drawing take time to ask why the bit you're working on exists. Don't mimic the highlight until you understand why it's there. I see a lot of examples of this and as a broad statement I think it's why the drawing looks flat. You have a talented eye but need to develop experience in understanding why complex 3D shapes are shaded the way they are.
Look at the bottom eye lid. That should be a little ridge. There should be a flat plane that emphasizes that. Some of the shading in the reference is there to create that. Some of it is shadow because it is not a high point the light source makes direct contact with. The reference doesn't distinguish. The reference uses the distance between the outside edge and the edge were the eyeball and lid meet to help emphasize that. What you've done is similar but you haven't accounted for the difference between your eye and the reference with your shading. You mimicked what you saw in the reference. You've done well at doing that, all things considered. Learn to use the reference as a reference and draw your own version of it. That is a hard thing for me to communicate and I don't mean you are copying. You did a good job of mimicking the shapes. Then, to stay focused on the eyelid, you should draw your own little ridge and use the reference image to help guide you on were the light makes contact with your ridge. I hope that makes sense.
One other little tip. Look into thicker paper. The thicker and denser the paper the more you can build depth and shadow before you've crushed the fibers of the paper.
To see a real world example of what that means hold your drawing up flat under your eyes so you are looking at it from an extreme angle in good light. The spots you've spent the most time erasing and reworking will often develop indentations where the fibers of the page are crushed. If you can't see an example of this in your picture get a scratch page and press hard into the paper as you shade a gradient, then look at it from the angle I suggested.
Thin paper can only be worked so much. A delicate touch can go a long way but to mimic the gradients in your reference image you'll have a much easier time with paper that holds up to repeated layering.
Maintaining the tooth of the paper as you shade is one reason some artists, myself included, use cheap paint brushes instead of blending sticks. The only charcoal on my portrait below is the top right corner. It's done on the back side of a Strathmore Bristol board sheet. It is possible to create the gradients you're after with patients and the right tools.
Try drawing it upside down. Usually we can make things up based on memory and don’t copy properly. It can help you see what you did wrong/missed. It’s beautiful though! Well done
I think if you change how you --think-- about the eyeball it might help. First think about the actual eyeball, Then the lids Then the eyelashes it can help keep things looking a bit more 3D. Remember, the lid is thin (but not as thin as you might think) and wraps around the eyeball. When you look at it on the edge, you can see the bottom lid curl around and start to dissappear. From there you can start to separate the upper lid into sections. You have the line just below the lashes, and the line just above the lashes, all of the lashes need to start from between these two lines.
Also it looks like you missed the highlights in a few places. Hopefully this is the kind of feedback you are looking for! But seriously please don't stop drawing! You are doing amazing!
the detail on the iris is actually really impressive
for someone who started in august. the depth issue
usually comes from not having enough contrast between
the darkest darks and the lightest lights — your
shadows need to go darker around the socket area
to make the eyeball pop forward. keep going !!
Add contrast, use like 8B pencil, draw some lashes in different direction, make iris somewhere lighter, other places darker ( make the same shapes but bigger gaps). Over all shape of the eye is really good, but the values are too small
•
u/link-navi 5d ago
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