AWKWARD ZOMBIE

I'll look for my tablet then. Still debating though.

Amateurs are more than welcome, in fact they are encouraged.

For everyone participating, today we kick off AZ: Art Class.
This week's subject is a portrait of Ian McKellan

Here are a few refs I collected earlier:
Black and White
Black and white ones should be slightly easier to work from as you're not distracted by colours and this pic has a bit of dramatic lighting helping make his face more defined with lots of dark tones to work with.
Same pic in colour

Super charming

Another black and white

You don't have to use these references, if you have a better picture please share. This is just for your convenience.

There's no pressure to draw a perfect picture. These twelve weeks are a process. You'll get another chance at Sir Ian.

Portraits are due next Monday. So when Katie posts her next comic it's about time to post your work.

If you guys are having any problems or just want a review of your WIP let me know.

Would you mind uploading the black & whites to imgur so I can download them to my phone?

http://imgur.com/KQ4kkUY.jpg

I'll just use this one.

Is the portrait supposed to be colored/shaded in any specific way?

No, just don't booty around being 'stylistic'.

Work in whatever medium is comfortable. It doesn't have to be hyper realistic but we're aiming to be accurate.

Would you rather we do it on paper and scan it? Or just whatever

bodaciously what ever you are comfortable with.

http://imgur.com/fbxsCIO.jpg

Progress so far.

If it's alright for me to mention a couple of things,
I would say to be mindful of where the base lines of his face are. It might just be the expression, but his chin and his mouth seem a little out of line (His lower lip seems too far to the left, while his chin seems a touch too far to the right, maybe angle the chin up to meet the cheek crease a little bit sooner?), which makes the sketch lose some of its depth. However, I haven't seen the reference, so it might just be the expression from that particular angle.

However, I like how you're shaping the nose, and how you just dived right into his heavy-lidded eyes. I can tell that it's a sketch of Ian McKellan.

Edited because I'm a dummy who can't keep left and right straight.

Thanks! I'll see if I can fix it tomorrow.

Rather liked this picture I found, not the best, even with some touching up I did it's a little difficult to make out his hairline but I liked this one. I'll probably use a few more pics but this is my baseline.


aaand sketch

things I immediately notice that need fixing is his heads just overall too big and slanting a little too far too his right, his nose looks a little too bulbous with the mouth too close too it, and i forgot to lower his forehead when I adjusted the rest of the face.

Is this supposed to just be a sketch, or a completed drawing/painting?
Because if it's just a sketch, then I'm done.

Riku the position of your sketch's hands is now putting into mind Ian mimicking the aliens guy.

"I'm not saying it was mutants...but it was mutants."

A bit more refined, working on strong shadows right now.

I almost didn't do this; I'm honestly not sure how useful these lessons are going to be for me because I hated life studies in school/college and I've spent the past ten years focussing on drawing from imagination rather than from life - so I can't say with any degree of certainty how useful these lessons will be toward my comic art.

But I went ahead and had a go anyway - took me 80 minutes to get to this result. I went angular for the sake of speed rather than aesthetics. It is just a sketch and if I had the inclination I would tidy this up further and soften the hard edges somewhat.

At the moment I err on the side of sketching both in line and colour/tone because if I focus only on the linework I find I have trouble colouring/shading a piece later (I warned you my approach to this might be different to everyone else's).

I don't hate it - and I guess I may have got something out of this lesson; Idk, honestly.

Hopefully it looks something like Ian McKellen.


I accidentally submitted this to my main gallery on dA instead of my scrapbook at first; Fun times.