I drew this in about 4 hours, problem is I have never tried to draw realistic people before a couple of weeks ago.

I have allways sticked with caricatures and cartoonish drawings, so for me drawing realism is a big challenge.

Hoping for some feedback so i can improve my drawings further, even if its all negative, I appreciate all feedback possible.

Click to view attachment



Thanks in advance

Tommy

HI Tommy,

Looks pretty good from what we can see; the only things that stick out at me as being problem areas are the bridge of the nose, which looks too thick, and the visible outlines, which you can't use in realistic drawing. But it's very hard to see your photo; it's quite blurry. If you can post a better scan or photo (use bright sunlight if you're taking a photo, it will work much better!) and also post the reference you drew this from, we could give you a much better critique.

Hey Tommy can't really comment on the drawing do to the poor photo, but I will say one thing, 4 hours is just getting started if you want a photo realistic drawing. Don't time yourself or put a limit on the time spent to achieve your goal. I think you will find most realistic drawing take many hours of work to achieve the subtle gradients and minute detail. Exact placement and size of features are a must. Your initial light sketch reference lines must be correct or your final product will be off.

I didn`t time myself when I drew this, but from what I could see on my watch when I was finished was that approximately 4 hours had passed.

Big thanks for the input though, appreciate all of it.

The reason why its so blurry is because I only have a semi ok digital camera, and no scanner, Ill try to find a more suitable lightning when taking my next photo.
The reference of the picture I drew came from a 3 year old FHM magazine, and I couldnt find the same picture online.

Im pretty much a newbie when it comes to drawing, but im trying to educate myself to become better, and input from seasoned artist are have more value to me than anything else.

Tommy

I found her photo in a Kelly Brooks fan site, hope you don't mind that I posted it Tommy.

I do not mind at all Mindy, thanks for posting the reference photo.

I wouldn`t concider myself a Kelly Brooks fan, but I am a big fan of Females in general
And that is what I like to draw.

Tommy, if you've made the leap from cartoons to realistic people, then you've done very well with this piece.

As airscapes has said, to achieve realism and likeness in portraits you have to be careful and measure, check your proportions and recheck again to ensure main features line up and distances are correct.

Looking quickly at this and not seeing a reference (I have no idea who Kelly Brooks is by the way ) I would say that the eyes may be too far apart and you need to look at the angle of the viewer's right eye as I don't think its at that steep angle. Also I think the distance between the nose and mouth is too small, which alters her facial expression.

The other thing that jumps out at me in the drawing is the lack of contrast in values. You have some shading, but it looks like blending and most of the shading is all the same value. You need to get some stronger darks to make the portrait stand out. Convert your reference photo to greyscale and compare your drawing to it. You can then see how dark you can go with your values in your drawing.

I advise against blending for those just beginning portraits as its easy to become too reliant on it and use it constantly. You never get to fully understand the potential of shading with your pencil alone if you always blend to a smooth tone. You also fill the surface of the paper more quickly if you blend a lot too.

Common mistakes in fan art such as this is that people concentrate on features that appeal to them and gloss over the areas they are not so interested in or lose interest once they've drawn what attracted them in the first place.

Hi Tommy, I'm not qualified to crit like the people above, but I'd just like to say that I think your sketch is great for your first, coming from cartoonish stuff. Great place to start and improve from.

Thanks Doncam