One of the things I've been working on from time to time for about a year was drawing digital portraits. I'm nowhere near perfecting this art, but it does give me something to work on besides my comic. ;) Lemme know what you think!
(These are in order from oldest to most recent.)


(John Lennon)


(James Marsden)


(Photo ref from http://nikxstock.deviantart.com/ .)


(Lee Pace)


Larger versions of these can be found on my dA .

the thing I notice the most from looking at the references is that you make the faces too thick in comparison.Otherwise these are quite impressive nice shading and likeness and such.

Eddie Jensen
the thing I notice the most from looking at the references is that you make the faces too thick in comparison.

"Too thick"? What do you mean? (Also, thanks!)

I mean it in the most literal way I can, their faces all seem a tidbit too wide I did some quickie edits to show you

http://s357.photobucket.com/albums/oo12/Talking_Ketchup/OtherpeoplesDrawings/?action=view¤t=thickheaded2.jpg

http://s357.photobucket.com/albums/oo12/Talking_Ketchup/OtherpeoplesDrawings/?action=view¤t=thickheaded1.jpg

http://s357.photobucket.com/albums/oo12/Talking_Ketchup/OtherpeoplesDrawings/?action=view¤t=thickheaded3.jpg


The girl didn't really have this problem though.

The John Lennon portrait is great, and they're all pretty good. A few issues with the form like on her breast it becomes a bit flat, but otherwise solid drawings.

How much have you gotten into using colour for showing light and depth? It looks like you're using mostly values for your shading, right?

lba
How much have you gotten into using colour for showing light and depth? It looks like you're using mostly values for your shading, right?

Do you mean using other colors besides, say, skin tone colors? Again, I don't think I quite understand the questions. DX But I think the answer to your second question is 'yes'. (I'm becoming retarded, I think.)

Yeah, values would refer to variations of the skin tone colour just adding black and white. It's an easy way of creating form and shadow, but it often leaves the image looking slightly less life-like because we know, even subconsciously, that the body reflects other colours around it. So doing stuff like adding a complimentary dark red to green tones can make for deeper, more appealing shadows, and adding analogous colours ( like an orange or yellow on a red.) can help brighten and make highlights seem more natural.

It all depends on what you're going for, but I found a while back that playing around with the colour stuff really advanced my pretty pitiful understanding of how to draw anatomy, so I thought I might suggest trying it. You're definitely ahead of me when it comes to figure drawing, so it might not help much but who knows.

Oh okay, I see what you're talking about now. I've seen some people use only black or gray tones set to 'Multiply' to create values, but I use actual colors. When coloring, I do include splotches of red and yellow where necessary, but I haven't experimented with using other hues like green or blue. (Again, I've seen others who do it this way, though.)