Michaela - Art School Journey (Archived)

milkcee12 2022-01-06 23:57:41 UTC #41

(01/04/22) Some lighting warmups with an oc.

(01/06/22) Eyeball sheet finished. Just got the lips left, then portrait photo studies

Page 3 Reflection

I thought eyes were a super detailed/complex part of the body, but
they aren't. It's a part of the face that's mostly soft edges; the
highlights make a HUGE difference in the perception of detail.
The shape of the highlight was the most impactful in describing the
form of the pupils. Make them follow a general curve and your pupil
will seem round and full of form.
Resist the urge to draw every eyelashand eyebrow hair.

hikarisunlight 2022-01-08 05:04:32 UTC #42

ahhh your studies and art look absolutely mesmerising. i love your style.

milkcee12 2022-01-11 20:51:09 UTC #43

This is the final page of facial features! Going to move on to photo studies now hehe

Page 4 Reflection

Use the underpainting to separate light and shadow. You can add color variation after, but focus on the light patterns first.
Don't use all the same size brush strokes. Shape variety, like how you rendered the eyes!
Lipstick != lip forms. Lipstick is simply color on top of the forms of the lips, they can be applied smaller or larger than the actual shape of the lips.

In general, I've been really happy with how these studies turned out. Before starting ART School I was already somewhat familiar with the anatomy of facial features, but I had never taken the time to study them individually. It was a good mini-project to get back into studying again, so now I'm excited to try some more ambitious studies

--
Finally, for personal reference, here's how I plan to do the portrait studies (and finish off Anatomy 1!)

12 photo studies (6 male, 6 female, 2 extreme angles, 1 senior, 1 child)
Original character (10 angles, goal is to preserve likeness)

gellenvera 2022-01-12 01:48:07 UTC #44

Your studies look amazing! And I know it was an older project but your room assignment turned out really really cool!

milkcee12 2022-01-12 02:59:04 UTC #45

Aw thank you so much!! Gosh that piece was done a while ago, it brings back memories.

milkcee12 2022-01-20 17:41:52 UTC #46

First two portrait studies.

I went for some self-indulgent studies at the beginning to get started, really enjoy how the first one came out. I want to focus more on brushwork in future studies, and I don't think I'm capturing likeness well so I want to work on that as well.

leeireo 2022-01-21 01:32:32 UTC #47

These look very good!

For me I don't really focus too much on getting the likeness. I just focus more on lighting and color which to me is more important. I like to draw the face well enough so that it doesn't look off. So from my perspective, these are amazing studies!

However if your goal is to get the likeness of the face as well ( second study), then it will become much more difficult as you may have experienced. The three main problems I can see are the ears, eyes, and mouth.

Ears: I think you got the length of his face pretty well. But his ear ( to our right ) is a lot smaller than in the reference, which consequently gives your study the appearance that his face is longer than it is.
Eyes: I have troubles with realistic looking eyes a lot cause I always seem to draw them bigger than they really are. It's even harder when they're wearing make up like in the reference here. You may be able to focus on the shape of the white parts of their eyes to get a more accurate size.
Mouth: If you look at his mouth on the reference, you'll be able to notice that more of his teeth show on his right. That most likely suggests that he is smirking there so the right side of his face will lift up more along with his mouth. Notice how in the reference his mouth is a bit tilted, but in your study it looks to be fairly straight.

Again, these are only problems when trying to capture the likeness. Anatomically I don't think there are issues with your study. I hope these pointers can help!
And as always, please take everything I say with a grain of salt. I may be correct on some things, but wrong on others.

Lockenheim 2022-01-21 02:45:38 UTC #48

Hello, I am new here and to art in general. But I looked over your entire post and I think the amount of progress you have made since you started is amazing! I havn't gotten into portraits or faces but personally I like the choices you made on your study of the photo. I find your study more pleasing to look at than the photo. Keep it up.

milkcee12 2022-01-21 03:55:31 UTC #49

@leeireo Wow, thank you for the detailed feedback! I'll keep this in mind next time. I also don't enjoy capturing likeness, but one of my future goals is to create a comic so I feel like it's a skill I should improve at, haha.

@Lockenheim Thank you for scrolling through all of those drawings, I'm flattered you think so! I wish you best of luck on your own art journey too

leeireo 2022-01-21 07:51:10 UTC #50

Oh, I see! Well, good luck with your future studies! You're already doing a fantastic job. I'm certain that you'll be able to capture the likeness as well very soon

milkcee12 2022-05-17 21:33:51 UTC #51

Hi guys, long time no see! I finished up classes and I'm on summer break now, so it is time to art study again Here's some of the artworks I made in my free time these last few months!

February
Series of 3 illustrations I did of my original character, Rain. This month was just for self indulgent simp artwork I was in a month-long art block at the time, so I let go of any expectations I had and just drew. Should do that more often, lol.

March
Entered a webtoon art contest for Purple Hycainth! To my delight and surprise, I won!!! I pushed myself a lot in this piece and I'm really proud of the result even now.

I'm starting to think about how I only draw upper body pieces usually and feeling discontent about it. But I really started pushing myself in color this year so I'm LOVING the vibrancy of the pieces I've been creating.

Quick fanart of an anime show I've been watching, 86. Highly recommended if you liked Attack on Titan or military/mech stories. I started watching because the main character was pretty, and left with a brain expansion lool.

April
Got a new drawing tablet as a result of winning the webtoon contest! So I drew Rain again

Discovered the beauty of cat girls. Rain once again. I want to write a story for her and I've tried a few times, but I haven't found something that really resonates personally.

May
Lucio, another original character. The god of hunger. I drew him during finals so he was 100% a destressing piece. The lineart for him turned out wonderful though, the whole piece felt very fluid to work on.

Drew another cat girl, another original character named Irene I've been doing a lot of lineart so I felt like I should do some painting again.

I've made some good progress these last few months! The colors are getting really interesting for me, and I think the stuff I'm drawing aligns with my personal tastes a lot.

But recently the artists I've been getting into have some GODLY compositions and dynamic poses, and I'm realizing that I don't have those things. I still want to draw comics, be more expressive, but I can't draw expressions that well. My art is becoming conceptually flat compared to what I drew last year, based on only aesthetics. There's still so much I can improve in.

I'm not sure what I'm chasing anymore with my art. I've kind of lost/forgotten why I draw. But I'm grateful that I've been able to come this far though. And I want to keep going. I'm planning on working on ART School again this summer, and this is hopefully a revival post. If you're here, thank you so much for reading through the whole thing. I hope you found something in here for yourself

- Michaela

milkcee12 2022-05-19 18:58:23 UTC #52

First 3(?) days of portrait studies.

Heads are all from reference. Slowly remembering how to construct heads. I wanted to be able to draw a head from reference accurately only with construction and without measuring techniques, but all the heads turned out rather anime and stylized as a result

Tried to to the same thing again where you only use construction. Pros of this method is I get a balanced head every time. Cons are they don't actually look like the reference, lol.

The most successful of many attempts. I gave up after basic construction and overlayed the image a few times to figure out where my constructions were going wrong. I don't have the intuition built yet to construct a head accurately from reference, I have to do this a lot more times.

Wanted to take a break from drawing so I spent 1.5-2 hours painting the portrait. I haven't painted often recently so it was pretty relaxing

milkcee12 2022-05-21 03:56:35 UTC #53

I try to make a finished piece every 1-2 weeks, so I felt like it was about time to start working on one instead of doing studies. I've been trying to make an IP with Rain (the blue-haired character) for a long time now. This is another attempt at it, with her being a priestess preparing to carry out a ceremony.

I spent the first day coming up with a composition and color key I liked.

I've pretty much been linearting the entire second day. I usually draw with a hard ink brush for linearting but it wasn't turning out well, so I switched to an opacity-pressure round brush. I really like the quality of the lines that are coming out. Drawing the character was really fun, but now I have to draw everything else in the image

Overall I like how it's turning out so far though, I hope I can do a good job on this piece.

Lockenheim 2022-05-21 14:11:23 UTC #54

Your work is so lovely! Welcome back!

milkcee12 2022-05-23 20:47:44 UTC #55

@Lockenheim thank you so much, glad to be back as well

Lineart is done! I'll spend some time cleaning up the colors and probably do some portrait studies again today.

milkcee12 2022-05-28 00:25:04 UTC #56

Finished!! Feels a little over rendered as usual and not perfect, but I'm glad I was able to do a more ambitious piece again.

Plus a portrait study that came out well yesterday. Got to do more head studies again, I want to finish Anatomy 1 this week and start the perspective project soon

soft.raincloud777 2022-05-28 06:31:04 UTC #57

your art is gorgeous I want to cry huhu
I read you mentioned that you wanted to draw comics and your struggles, and I very much relate to that 🥲

cheering u on!

Lockenheim 2022-05-28 21:59:27 UTC #58

Very well done! Difficult piece with so many hands!

milkcee12 2022-06-11 16:48:44 UTC #59

[Term 2] Anatomy 1

Small art dump!

Drew Rain again because i wanted to find a nice shading style. I really like how the hair turned out!

Practiced the Reilly method again. I did the 100 portrait challenge by Ahmed Aldoori years back and that's where I first practiced the method. I've found that while the Loomis method is great for overall construction, the Reilly method is really helpful for keeping the facial features balanced on the face.

Side profile sketch.

Another drawing of Rain. I went on vacation for a few days and spent time thinking about her story. When I got back I was itching to draw her again so this is the result.

As a personal project, I've been creating a character sheet for Rain. I've been able to see where my older drawings of her were unbalanced in the face which means improvement!!!

I'm realizing that I'm still not studying that much. I really want to improve a lot in my portraits but I still struggle with things like painting details, creating an accurate sketch, creating a balanced head. I don't know if I should move on from Anatomy 1 or just keep making portrait studies.

playforwho89 2022-06-12 12:48:30 UTC #60

Your portraits look absolutly amazing i cant stress enough how much i like them. Creating acurate sketches especialy of the face is a strugle becouse even a very minute difrence in propotion can decide if you get the likeness corect. If i were you i would try my hand at furher classes even just to try your hand at full body anatomy studies. You are next level, keep it up!