scales
Lately I have been trying to paint scales. Haven't figured it out yet. Here is practice from a photograph.
Clarification
When I say I "ref'd" something I mean I looked at something- a photograph, an object, a mirror, or whatever- to help me draw something. Sometimes for practice I will try my best to recreate what I am looking at and I will always be honest about using reference. I don't ever trace anything and if I did I would say so.
Here is the first picture I posted in different stages of completion. Usually when I do a portrait I start out sloppy and have to fix all my mistakes later on but this time I got it pretty close in the beginning stage. I did notice after I was finished that I had gotten some things wrong, like the size of her nose and angle of her features were different in the photograph, but I felt like it was still good enough to stand on its own. It wasn't that hard to do because it was grayscale. The key to making something look realistic is light and shade, and when you use color it obscures relationships between lights and darks. Plus I just suck at color.
