I took a bit of a break this week to rather do a full render study. This took me quite a while to do (I think 22 hours in total and I still need to do the hands). It's from a referance and the aim was to get as realistic as possible.
Now smooth surfaces and basic detail I could do, but the hair I have no clue how to even approach. I tried a few things but got a bit impatient with myself and just painted brown over it for this post.
Also, I would still not be able to do this from imagination or place this in an environment. I'm hoping I can learn that from this course.
I also do not know how long something like this is meant to take.
My process is basically to block out a silhouette and spend as much time as needed until it is perfect. Only once I'm happy with it do I move to blocking out basic colors (can still see this on the hands) to get the big values down. Then I spend a ton of time going over every area adding progressively more detail. Repeat adding detail until I'm tired of the image.
For referance I open the same image twice, one in black and white, and other color. I like haveing the black and white version open to see the values better.
It was fun to do something else. The monotony of the exercises can sometimes get to me but I'll get back to them next week with 1 min gesture drawings.
