male shout 04.12.23
© 2023 Aunt HerbertDone as part of a practice session with poses of 1 hour in length.
Still tryharding a convincing crosshatching technique from a bunch of half-understood concepts. Looked promising about half an hour ago, before I messed up the distinction between the different darkness values again.
My current goal is: Develop my own signature drawing style (advanced)
Polyvios Animations
Hello and good morning, Aunt Herbert.
Nicest works on your latest and oldest ink rendering of a face and expression above here. I love the motion, spaces, relationships, lights and shadows, and of course, gestalts. Yet, I'm still not getting enough of that most calligraphic swelling and weaving of the most graphic lines yet. Would you like to kindly loosen yourself up with our 2 hour class mode of facial expressions?
The reason why is because, your faces and expressions and your control and understanding of them can and will become the least stiffest and the most dynamic, expressive, emotional, and fluidest. And furthermore, for most inspiration, please look into some drawings by Frank Hoppmann for caricature practice on his Instagram and the German satire magazine, Eulenspiegel for more illustrators and cartoonists.
Let's hope you'll find these useful.
Solid work, I can feel the expression through the piece. It appears you aren't letting enough negative space do the talking for your art. Just as you pointed out the distinction between values appears to become muddled. I would suggest letting the white space take priority on either the skin or the tongue since the mouth and skin appear to have the same hatching density. Or, let the lips be a bit bolder with negative space to allow for that "line" between the mouth and skin to be clearer. You're on the right track, you might just have to do less rather than more.
Yes, less would look better, at least at my current level of skill. My goal atm is to figure out, how I can put in the maximum amount of work into a single piece, for that maximum finished and polished look, before things start falling apart.
It is quite frustrating, but the frustration is kinda the feature, not a bug, as the goal is pushing beyond my comfort zone and identifying the problems that show up.
Currently identified problem areas:
a) to make the hatching pattern consistent enough, so it doesn't indicate details or texture on the subject, when I just want to indicate a flat plane of a given value of darkness.
Currently I keep switching between straight lines and curved lines, that follow the one or other bent, mostly on a whim, and without much of a guiding principle, which produces too noisy and random results in total. Also, there is of course the challenge of even controlling placement and line weight enough to achieve the intended result, while at the same time thinking about the underlying form and the distribution of shadows.
Especially the lighter end of halftones is a pain in the butt, as I need the smallest amount of ink distributed evenly over a shape, and still find a way to make the outline of the shape readable, especially, when it borders actual highlights and direct lights.
b) reflected lights in the core shadows are another problematic halftone area. If I leave them white, they look like direct light, which breaks the overall voluminous effect of the body in space. At least indicating their outline shouldn't pose that much of a problem, as they naturally border dark areas, but in practice I often end up overworking the borderline then, and having the areas of reflected lights eaten up by the surrounding shadow.
Thank you for critique, as it really helps me reflecting on where I am, and conceptualizing, where I want to push towards next.