Sunday, September 13, 2009

Face


I rarely draw cartoons of humans, and when I do, I usually use a mirror or a reference.
I tried this one from without either.
I used an underdrawing to help place the features but they still seem a bit floaty.

Update (self-critique a day later):
Left eye too big, right too small and too high up,
Nose too big and turned too right,
Mouth should be more forward.
Shading incomplete, awkward.
Hair details a bit sloppy...
And as I observed yesterday, the features seem to float.

I'm not playing the I'm a baaaad artist! Please tell me I'm good! game here. It's tricky to draw human heads. At least with life drawing I can hold out a pencil and measure proportions. For Cartoon Girl I cobbled together what I remembered about eyes, skulls, noses.
When I look at a really good cartoon- even if it's very stylized- the features seem anchored and interconnected. How the heck do they DO this?

6 comments:

Sally said...

Love those green lips!

Namowal (Jennifer Bourne) said...

Thanks, Sally.
Not sure why I made them green.
I guess the critical part of my brain was so obsessed with the drawing that it handed the coloring to my (more playful) subconscious!

GhostBuild said...

"I cobbled together what I remembered about eyes, skulls, noses."

Not sure if the program you are using has an "onion-skin" feature... are you using a proportion sketch to map facial feature placement before digitally "inking" the illustration?

If you did that freehand without such a thing... then hats off to you for skill! I have always needed the sketchy framework first so that I could draw on top of it... http://tinyurl.com/ovgjaj

Namowal (Jennifer Bourne) said...

Hi Ghostbuild,
I did an underdrawing something like the one you showed for placing the parts. The underdrawing looked more cohesive than the final result, :)

Linda Davick said...

I like the big eye and the little eye farther up... but isn't it funny that you really can't critique anything until a day later (or after you've taken a break from it)?

Namowal (Jennifer Bourne) said...

Thanks, Linda.
I wonder why it's easier to critique something a day later? Or by flipping it horizontally?
Just another example that what we see and what's actually there aren't the same thing. Weird.