My Journey as A portrait artist
Lately, I have felt that I have progressed as an artist. I know my art powers have leveled up. I could compare my old portraits to the ones I have now and are working on now, I believe that I have truly gone up a notch - but that isn't the only thing that has levelled up. The longer I work on the portraits, the more I feel calm - in short, art is doing amazing things for my impatience and temper.
Portraiture is a hobby I started primarily because I want to draw something from life. I want to capture people in their finest hours and make them into art, but it's not something I can just pick up a pencil and do. Unlike Manga and Anime art, which I still yet have to improve, portraiture requires patience. It requires practice and a lot of it to get to draw real people. I started last year, but I didn't have the guts to continue it til now.
This is a former art of mine. This was my style before. But, I felt that it was still way too cartoonish I felt like I am staring at a manga right now, altough, admittedly, she was cosplaying, that wasn't my aim. The colors are too solid and it feels really funny to me. The picture of Ryo was drawn for several hours and is a bit better, but the lips and a lot of the features lack realism. Though it is a good render and I am proud of this, I wanted to do better.
Midway, I started to find myself in between anime and realism.
Neeko's eyes are amazing (pink hair) but yes, she does look likea n anime character and I don't know if it is just my coloring or it's my scanner but she looks fake. While this failed picture of the prince Fukki ( Left redhead portrait) totally makes me annoyed. I hate the way it looks. I actually think he looks likea cartoon.
This one of Ichinose Hiedekazu (on bristol) looks amazing except for the toning of the face and the badly rendered hair. I should go back to this and fix this.
Then I came up with this, which is 1000x better than the first Fujiwara Yuuki portrait. I believe that I finally made it, except for the lack of toning and the darkened lips (which made him look like his character in the play maria na magdala).
If you click the photo above of Kuroki Meisa, you will find that I finally almost got it. :D It is the first portrait I worked on for two days (maybe I will upload a collage of the making of Kuroki, pictures) but she was amazing 2 days of work and still , I know I have a lot more to work on (i.e. Toning,Shadowing)... but this only goes to show that practice DOES make perfect. And someday, I know, I'll make a picture so lifelike that you'll think its a picture!