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exactly, when several layers are concerned, that allows you to choose which one you want to pick,
in that case, thumbnails are helpful, (though thumbnails a bit larger would have been better imo.)

oooooo...it does.....thanks. Cooooooool!!!!!

Bruna Tenorio. Reference from http://www.style.com.

After doing all this painting with big fat brushes, I wondered how well I'd be able to draw people using pencil and pen-like thin brushes. That was several days ago, and I tell ya, the most frustrating times I have as a craftsman are when my skills don't meet up with my standards. Anyways, this one turned out OK - I finally learned that a likeness is as much about the action in a person's face (what they're doing with their face) as the structure of the face itself. In many ways, drawing a person's portrait is like a comedian doing a celebrity impersonation. You can only pull it off when you know the subtleties of a person's character. The same thing goes with the portrait. You've got to make that face do the same things that the actual person would do with that face.

nice rendering Mark, although both her nose and mouth should move to the left (quite a bit...check the vertical line from the corner of her eye to her nostrel)

I'd say that painting taught me a lot about rendering. However, it really doesn't matter how nice you render something if you render it in the wrong place.

Starting a drawing is really hard because carefully measured guidelines often don't give you a good idea if your measurements are right in the first place until you're partway through your rendering, ESPECIALLY if your measurements aren't compared against the right parts of the picture. Sometimes I'd set out to draw something, try to measure against something else, but not really get the feeling that it's the right place to put the line, but not really get the feeling that it's the wrong place to draw it, so impatience wins out and I wind up drawing the line anyways (and it turns out it was WRONG).

Lesson learned: If it doesn't feel 100% right on, it's wrong. It's too early to draw that part because there isn't anything that that part is subordinate to to compare against. Find what that part is subordinate to and draw that instead, then come back later.

Another lesson learned: Don't just measure against the nearest neighbour. Measure against the furthest extent of the total subordinate object and alignments against other neighbouring objects.

I'll be the first to admit that it's frustrating (and completely enraging) to try to be really careful and to try to do a good job only to be told by someone else with fresh eyesight that you screwed up royally. It's character building. Okay, you failed that attempt. Get over it. Accept your failure. Blame your way of doing things, not yourself. Change, get out of your comfort zone and get back in the saddle with a different grip on the reins. Thanks to everyone for your feedback!

I'll say one thing for certain... After doing these detailed studies, regular sketching seems dirt easy.

yup... This may be the last drawing for a while. My 5 year old Wacom Cintiq SX died so I'll have to get a replacement.

The next day after my tablet died I went out and got this amazing Wacom Cintiq 12WX. It's a LOT smaller than my 18SX and it's tilt sensitive. Oh, man, I can't believe how long I lived without tilt sensitivity on that 18SX, but I sure can't live without it now. I can finally make a pencil that behaves like a pencil.

Anyways, a bit of musing over some of my recent drawings helped me break through and understand the pecking order of perspective and structure and I feel I have a lot more control, the odd byproduct of that being that drawings appear to be looser.

I just bought a Wacom 6D Art pen to use with my Cintiq 12WX and wanted to give it a test drive.

I'm also experimenting with some of TVPaint's paper textures and brush settings.

3 hours.

I missed out on the slight tilt to the model's head and neck. Eyes seem a bit too widely spaced. Oh well. Something to pay attention to during the start of the next drawing.

indeed... you still have some minor problems with the proportions, but i really like how you did this one.
Beautifull, keep it up!

Tantalus wrote:indeed... you still have some minor problems with the proportions, but i really like how you did this one.
Beautifull, keep it up!

I blame all of my proportional problems on my slipshod rough sketches. Soon, I realized that "rough sketch" is a terrible and misleading name for the beginning stage of a drawing. I misinterpreted the meaning of "rough sketch", feeling that the words "rough" and "sketch" carry connotations of careless and hastily-drawn stuff that you get done as soon as possible so that you can get on to the real work of rendering and nice line work.

To me, a rough drawing should consist of an accurate diagram or layout of the elements of your drawing. It's only rough in the sense that no effort or attention is paid towards making sure the lines are clean and nice and that there are no attempts to render the drawing beyond simple shadows. It is every bit as difficult to produce a rough sketch that gives off the sense that everything is in the right place as it is difficult to bring that rough sketch to a finished image where it actually seems as if light is reflecting and casting shadows and interacting with the damn thing!

The gruntwork of rendering mostly lies in making sure you create the right transitions of the right shape in the right place. The rough sketch should indicate the correct shape and place of the transitions or your transitions, no matter how nicely shaded, will be in the wrong place and it'll all go to hell in a dainty wicker handbasket filled with steel wool and rotten eggs and a pretty pink ribbon tied around the handle.

The burnt hand teaches best!

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Messing about with airbrush settings. Managed to work out a "graphite" brush that gives me exceptional value control.

Would you mind to share the settings for this "graphite" brush?

(edit: youtube thingy fixed, thanks Tantalus!)