General Scribbles

Today's effort...

ammonite!

Charlotte notices the most important things!

Yes, I do! Ammonite very important!

No ammonites here. Sorry, Charlotte.





No, I didn't do two in a day this time. The first one was started late last night and finished today before moving on to the second.
And that first one was a bit tricky, not just because it's two heads instead of one, but also because the ref had one of those smartblur filters that smooth the skin. It makes it hard to find the planes of the face and I had to "guess" at a few things.

I seem to be doing a lot of glasses at the moment. I suppose it makes a change from nose-rings.

You could always combine the two.
Anyway glasses can be difficult, so any practice is good practice. And boy that guy looks happy. Like scooby-doo happy.

Charlotte wrote: Like scooby-doo happy.

I like that phrase and will now steal it.

I enjoy painting the "glass" part of glasses. All that reflection, refraction and distortion is fun to do and you can make some realistic effects without much effort. But it's the frames I struggle with, mainly because they involve smooth lines and sharp edges, both of which are always a recurring problem with me.
For these recent ones I've been drawing them in with my usual jittery hand and then stroking quickly along them with the palette knife to "smoosh" out all the wobbly edges.

Well that's why I use the smoothing effect of the ink pen
Also, there's the often adviced (in IFX magazine at least) use of selection tools to get nicely clean edges

Sadly when I use guides/selections/smoothing those lovely straight edges never fit in with the "style" of the rest of my smeary messy pictures. It looks like something from a different image has been pasted in.

Anyway, an afternoon doodle...



Edit: And I forgot to mention... MORE GLASSES!!!!