[Yossarian]

Doylo has already mastered that approach (though I might’ve preempted it with Osama Bin Laden climbing a seacliff above a great white shark).

I was actually thinking that reminiscing about men in Lycra trousers with Japanese writing on it and huge chalk bags might be quite a nice antidote to arguing about kneewear...

[nik at work]

My latest effort, a Corten steel garden sculpture.

https://flic.kr/p/2jW1r2e

I frustratingly appear to have lost the ability to find bb code on Flickr...

Nice Yoss, how about a Jerry taking part in the tv show you bet?

[Fiend]

That's ace Nik!

[Yossarian]

My latest effort, a Corten steel garden sculpture.

https://flic.kr/p/2jW1r2e

I frustratingly appear to have lost the ability to find bb code on Flickr...

Nice Yoss, how about a Jerry taking part in the tv show you bet?

That sculpture is hardcore.

Re Ben & Jerry - I quite like that idea, but you’ve got me thinking about 90s climber Big Brother, or I’m a 90s Sport Climber - Get me out of here! Have been working on Wolfgang and Kurt and Alain Robert today.

“Jerry goes to the diary room...“

[Fiend]

Back once again with a Lord Of The Rings Keeper Of Dungeons:





Colour concept was "cold".

[Fiend]

Been climbing 1-to-1 with too many tall fuckers recently, so I'm getting in touch with my inner dwarf:

[nik at work]

That dwarf is cool.
Excellent as ever Matt 😁

[Oldmanmatt]

A few years back (2014) I shared my first attempt at iPad sketching and the drawing that grew out of it. Long gone from the forum now as that Flikr account died.
Anyway, I never finished it. I’d intended to make a full painting on the pad. Well, Lockdown happened.

Thought I’d share the progression from sketch to portrait.



Thats where it started.

Leaving it at this point, I think:



I can’t shake the underlying “Comic book” style, if I use colour, though.

[Yossarian]

I would try using a grey for the teeth rather than very bright white, and possibly the same for the eyes. They’re usually slightly in shadow and they jump out of your picture a bit.

I spent ages earlier this year trying to develop a new illustration style for characters and ended up abandoning it because I couldn’t get the eyes right. Mine was less realistic than yours, but the principle is similar.

You’ve also got quite a lot of stuff going on - fine lines / texture / soft blending. I generally find thinks work better when you restrict your options / tools. Your image might immediately look better if you swapped to monochrome. Less is generally more.

[nik at work]

I think the neck is brilliant.

[Oldmanmatt]

Yeesss!

Ta.

You don’t know how hard it is to people to give you feedback or critique. I’ve been trying to get this portrait out for six years. The real reason I keep putting it down is knowing it’s “wrong” and getting frustrated. The iPad is a new medium for me and I have always struggled with colour. I can pencil sketch or charcoal, even ink, a portrait but despite repeated forays into airbrush, oils or Gouache, I’m limited to landscape or still life. I know I have a tendency to pick overly vibrant colours (I do the same when photo editing) and it just doesn’t work in portraiture.
I spend hours, with a rule, checking dimensions and proportions against source and colour matching. Doesn’t work. My brain is off. I suppose there’s not much pastel, subtle or muted about me; crashing through life like a Pamplona bull on uppers.

Anyway, I re-drew the teeth, entirely in greys with an ivory cast, there’s no white even in the eyes, then I stuck the whole thing under a grey wash and erased the wash over the black behind.
And it was still borderline garish.
So I stuck it through some filters (I love this about working electronically, as long as I refrain from acknowledging that it’s “cheating”).

I’m including the source material, so you can see that I am slightly hamstrung by the reality of her very bright eyes and teeth.



I’m also finding harder because I haven’t faithfully tried to reproduce one of the photos. I quite liked the pose in the bottom centre, but if I sketched it at that angle, it looked really odd in isolation. I liked the angle etc in the centre shot, but wanted it without the glasses etc etc.

Under the wash:



Filters:

[Yossarian]

I think it works better monochrome. The lower line of the lips is very pronounced, mainly because you’ve not added any shadow below. In the pics (apart from the ones with lots of frontal flash) she has varying degrees of shadow between lip and chin. I think adding that would make the mouth look more natural.

Also, the hair. In some areas you’ve smudged the hair a bit. I think this works better than very discrete / sharp single lines. The hair on the RHS facing looks better than on the left for that reason (I think).

What are you doing this in, Procreate?

[nik at work]

The bottom one works well, there’s still something slightly out of line about the look of the teeth and the top hair section above the black area looks slightly out of position to me?

FYI I know sweet fa about portraiture in general or drawing on an iPad.

[Fiend]

OMM. I don't want to be too critical but this might help. From when you've first posted versions of this picture, I've thought there is something slightly off about both the proportions of the features in relationship to the face, and the relative angles of the facial features.

For the former, I think maybe just a bit more shading around the face, especially the left side of the image would help. In the reference picture, she has the shadow of her sleeve there.In your digital painting it looks like a bit too much cheek making the face look a tiny bit wide and the features a tiny bit squeezed together.

For the latter, it might be worth drawing some precise lines through the eyes, nose, and mouth on both the reference image and your painting and see if there's any discrepancies. To me it looks like there is a slight extra tilt in the mouth, and  the right hand eye (viewer's pov, not her's) is either very slightly dropped down or angled down.

There's plenty of good stuff like the skin tones, overall balance, neck subtlety etc as others have said. And actually it does work well in monochrome, maybe just a bit more atmospheric (ugh, the cliche!)

[Oldmanmatt]

OMM. I don't want to be too critical but this might help. From when you've first posted versions of this picture, I've thought there is something slightly off about both the proportions of the features in relationship to the face, and the relative angles of the facial features.

For the former, I think maybe just a bit more shading around the face, especially the left side of the image would help. In the reference picture, she has the shadow of her sleeve there.In your digital painting it looks like a bit too much cheek making the face look a tiny bit wide and the features a tiny bit squeezed together.

For the latter, it might be worth drawing some precise lines through the eyes, nose, and mouth on both the reference image and your painting and see if there's any discrepancies. To me it looks like there is a slight extra tilt in the mouth, and  the right hand eye (viewer's pov, not her's) is either very slightly dropped down or angled down.

There's plenty of good stuff like the skin tones, overall balance, neck subtlety etc as others have said. And actually it does work well in monochrome, maybe just a bit more atmospheric (ugh, the cliche!)

Too critical? Try growing up with a mother who’s a pro, oft commissioned, artist.

You were spot on.

I would never have drawn guide lines on a paper project, totally missed the point that I could stick them on a different layer and switch them on and off on the pad. I was using the stylus and my thumb... Luddite!
Lifted the lines from the centre bottom photo and altered it to the correct angle.
Yep, mouth was skewed and her left eye too low. Below with guides and the corrected pupil position. You were also correct in that I’d been gradually increasing the width of her face, as I went, leaving the features pinched. This is already shaved back to the correct width:



Took a little exploring of the editing tools, but I moved and blended the features, then re-drew the pupil.



Then I thought about Yoss’ “less is more” comment. So I dialled it all back, for a more Rembrandt (?) (ish) feel.

[Fiend]

Good effort OMM, definitely improvement.

[Fiend]

Some vaguely old skool vibes for the geeks in the house:

Chaos Plaguelord
This is a model by Avatars Of War, but is a direct correlation with Games Workshop's style for Chaos warriors of Nurgle - the Chaos God of plague, pestilence, death and decay. Fitting, huh. Nurgle's traditional colour is a sickly rotting green, but I flipped this idea over and painted the armour in a bruised purple, with only the tabard in green, and used a dark turquoise plume and some verdigris to bridge the tones between that and the purple. I'm quite pleased with the result, having clear recipes for the purple and copper helped.





Goblin Hack 'n' Slash
A Goblin Hero from Gamezone Miniatures. Again quite comparable to Games Workshop's old/mid-skool style (not their modern rubbish), but even more charicatured. This was....variable to paint. Most of it was okay, the weapons were really fun getting a strong blended metallic, but the hood did not turn out as planned...  My red recipe was b0rked with not enough red in the mid-tones, and the complex folds and creases were exactly in between "textured enough to be effectively washable" and "clean enough to be easily blendable". So I'm not fully happy with that but the overall vibe I'm okay with.

[Oldmanmatt]

I actually like the goblin’s hat, it just seems more faded and worn. Fabrics don’t fade colours evenly, so in ageing they both change colour and shade.

Love the oxide detail on the axe, too.

[tomtom]

Is the overspray deliberate?

[RobK]

Always enjoy seeing these. I haven't painted Warhammer since my teens (not even remotely to this level!) but these make me miss it. How long do you reckon something like that goblin takes you Fiend?

[Fiend]

Thanks guys. OMM  - yeah I don't mind the finish on the hood, but it's not as vivid as I wanted. I am chuffed with the other dude's axe though, a prominent part of the model and I think I got the balance right between brightness and weathering.

RobK - too long. I'd say most of these take me maybe 15-ish hours, plus procrastination time? I'm constantly trying to speed up my painting but still end up faffing on some bits...

[Oldmanmatt]

Ok, advise sought.

I did this sketch when I was 14/15 and it’s lived in my old art folder ever since it came down off the classroom wall.
Typically for me then, it started as a doodle on the back page of a textbook, in a different class. I then cut the page out and glued it onto a bit of scrap paper to alter the composition before sticking it (with tape) into the standard black paper frame of a 1980’s “O” level art class.
I’d like to salvage it, the backing paper has wrinkled and distorted, but that can be easily replaced. My question is, there is quite a lot of brown discolouration on the sketch it’s self. I’m thinking this is because I used a bare finger to smudge the pencil at the time, instead of a sponge, and the oils  left on the paper have developed that patina over time. Does anyone have any ideas how to remove it? Obviously, without destroying the pencil underneath.

[Andy W]

I would leave it, the discolouration etc, gives it character, value etc. The marks from the finger smudging are intrinsic to the way you worked at the time and in my mind add to the drawing, A new frame will maybe give it the fresher look you are looking for.

[Fiend]

Wait for one and two come along at once....




Some exotic knight dude or dudess from Privateer Press.

The colour scheme was inspired by Hellpoint, a cool sci-fi soulslike game I was playing over Christmas. Yes the armour is kinda fancy, yes it was a paint in the arse to paint, but no those two aspects are not related! The actual armour painting was pretty simple (dark turquoise base, black lining, two translucent purple highlights, one brighter purple highlight, lilac edge all over, pale cream edge on the sharpest points), but repeating that over the whole thing did my tits in, and that would have been the case for any colours.

It's just like all those naff Youtube videos floating around: "INSANE HACK TO PAINT AMAZING SPACE MARINES QUICKLY OMG!!!" which show you how to do a lovely swift kneepad in 10 minutes.....and then all you have to do is to repeat that over 38 other sodding armour plates 🙄. "Draw two circles....now draw the rest of the fucking owl" etc etc.






Kommander Sorscha of the Khador faction, from the Warmachine game, by Privateer Press. One of the earliest "classic" figures from this company, despite the somewhat goofy pose. The traditional Khador colours are red, black, and gold. So I went for blue-grey and steel-silver .


Next toy soldier will be vaguely topical. You have been warned.

[lagerstarfish]

Nice, Fiend.

Middle daughter did a bit of Warhammer painting at scouts before Covid. The little lad (9) has shown an interest in having a go. Are there starter kits or something that he can have a go at?
Any recommendations?
He's not particularly artistic, but can follow instructions and has an interest in fantasy/sci-fi