General Scribbles

maybe snek wanted hands?

If snek wants hands he can go and evolve somewhere else!

says emoji with hands

Hey all,
I’m doing this portraitsfornhsheroes on IG where NHS workers can ask for a portrait as a little thank you for all their hard work they’ve been doing during the pandemic. I was hoping for a little feedback on my WIP. It’s still early days but any advice you could give would be huuuuuugely appreciated. I’m feeling the pressure a little on this one as I want to give them the best piece I can.
I’m splicing two photos together as the person I have matched with only has one photo of her family all together that she likes. I’m particularly concerned with the way the first head I’ve painted looks at a distance. Up close I’m pretty happy with it so far.
I’m working toward it being 300dpi at A3 size (including a black border so it looks like a movie still). Thanks in advance and sorry for the long post.

For the woman's face I'd select/copy the mouth and nudge it down and right a little. At the moment it's a bit skewed towards the naso-labial fold on the left side and the dominance (and straightness) of that line is affecting the expression.
Also I'd make the kid's head a touch smaller.

Everything else is looking pretty good!

Spot on! Thanks Val. I altered the top edge of the kids head late last night and neglected to edit it.
I’m also a little concerned that the guy is going to look a little like the add on he actually is. I’m hoping that the rendering will sort that out with some reflected light between him and the girls top but I’m notoriously poor at convincingly adding such large elements to a piece from a different source. Any tips?

As long as they all have harmonious skin tones with coherent light/shadow it shouldn't be a problem. You could add the suggestion of water behind him in the bottom corners to sell the inclusion of the snorkel.

But the one tip I've learned from my own slipshod Reddit attempts is that if you do the eyes right and put the detail where it matters then people will forgive, overlook and often not even notice any other issues that you are personally worrying about.

I really need to unpack my tablet. This makes my fingers itch! I want to paint too! Though I probably shouldn't attempt three people in one go

I agree with Val's comments. But... is this the best pic she could get of her guy??? He'd look a lot less "added in" if he wasn't wearing that snorkel As for making him look a bit more included, you could use the colour of the girls dress as the colour of highlight on his snorkel, I guess. I'd probably dab some reflected bluish on his chest too. And some pinkish reflection back on her dress... (I usually use a soft air brush or something for reflected colours, but something more marked would work well with your style, I think)

Edit/PS: no need to apologise for the length of your posts! There are plenty* of us here who post much more and longer than you

*two or three, anyway. That's plenty, right?

All good points, thanks.

I did get a few more photos of Tom but they weren’t great quality and the direction of light was off compared to the other refs. Apparently he’s a big kid too so I’m not worried that he’ll be upset and Karen thought it was a fun idea when I ran it past her. I wanted to do something a bit light hearted too considering most of the portraits I’ve seen are pretty serious and normally if full PPE. I try to include some reflected light like you guys suggest and stick to Vals plan and hope they don’t notice too much - it’s what I normally do when I have an issue with a picture anyhow. Bet you guys didn’t even notice the cow in the back of my Alone entry huh? Thanks for your input peeps I knew I could count on you!

(No, don’t go check for the cow I was just kidding)

Not only did I not notice the cow, now that I'm back from the Alone thread it seems I didn't even notice the final line about not going to the Alone thread to check for the cow!