General Scribbles

I was hoping that the poorly rendered nudity would distract viewers away from the horrific hands.
Just pretend they're not there.

Beards!

Huh? She's got hands? Errrr.... ok sure.

Both of these are awesome Val! That beard is something to behold, my attempts are either too fluffy or too straggley but youve got a great mix of the two here which create a really authentic look. Great eyes too!

My sister in law came over the other day and caught me working on my monthly entry - her reaction while i was working on the basic sketch was priceless - "Oh! You actually DRAW these?!"

So, yeah, I put together some process shots and a finished sktchy ref that i could post on a FB group where I'm touting for work as I was concerned other people thought I used some kind of photo manipulation or filters to do this stuff.

I know you guys see this kind of stuff all the time but as I recently posted a pricing structure on there for commissions (starting at what I thought was a reasonable £70 for a single A4 portrait) I thought it might help people understand how much we put into these kind of images.

Here's what Im thinking of posting. Whaddya think of the clarity as regards process?

Reference Photo:


Sketch (90 mins in)


Basic Colours (2 hrs 15 mins in)


Defining Details (4 hrs 15 mins in)


Refining Details (6+ hrs in dependant on finished print size)

Atto wrote:

My sister in law came over the other day and caught me working on my monthly entry - her reaction while i was working on the basic sketch was priceless - "Oh! You actually DRAW these?!"

No, we don't do any work at all. We just look at the screen and wish very hard.

Great pic and interesting process shots.
You should take a few more snapshots along the way and combine them into a gif. The animated/video stuff always gets more attention.

Had another go with that impressionist/foliage brush again...

Nice color and lighting...

Yup very effective.

I really need to do something other than portraits but got sucked into another one this evening.
Got fed up of all that hair though!

I always feel that way about hair too.
When I start out I have these wonderful ideas about how I'll be able to do it quickly and realistically with a few strokes of a custom brush or something with bristles, and before you know it I'm having to spend hours painting hundreds of individual strands with a 1 pixel brush.

This looks fine though, especially with the glare on the right. It gives the hair a sense of depth and volume.

And a very quick 45 minute thing before I disappear to bed too late. *yawn*