Thursday, June 21, 2012

Now our time is all our own

I've been trying really hard to diversify my faces and draw better men.  I've been looking at a lot of resources, ranging from painters like J.C. Leyendecker to modern artists like Phobs and Kreugan, and dozens of other awesome people that Tumblr has pointed me to
I've found animation character sheets in particular to be helpful.  They contain lots of different face shapes from every angle, making every expression, in simple line art! 
I've gone to cafes and tried cartooning a few people around me while I drink my coffee.  First I draw them fairly realistically, then I work off of my own drawing to push their features further and further and imagine how they would look making different expressions and from different angles.
I was in a slump on Monday, so I tried that Kreugan tutorial linked above and traced photos of male faces in Photoshop (pulled from Facebook to get some real faces and diversity, haha....not sharing!).  Then I made the background layer invisible and studied my own  line art, looking for the distinguishing features and proportions between different people's faces.  From there I tried cartooning them by hand in a sketchbook to see if I could retain what made them look like them.  It really helped me to pick up little details I can employ, like that 'v' or 'u' shape some people have in the center of their upper lip.
I put my sketchbook and my favorite tools next to my bed and I've filled a page every night before bed for a couple of weeks.  Here are some colored pieces:
 







I'll keep working on it.

3 comments:

Everett Patterson said...

These are terrific! I might try some of your practice techniques. I can see the animation influence clearly. And yeah, nobody drew better-looking men than Leyendecker.

Christina said...

Gorgeous! I smile every time I see your work. And you keep getting better. Love!

Christian LeBlanc said...

1) Big ups for continuously pushing your skills!
2) I want to read stories about the brunettes in the 2nd image there. Awesome!