Any pointers on how I can improve?

[Scentless Apprentice]

I've been painting for 4 or 5 months now. I think I'm getting into a grove, but I know there is so much more that I can do to better my work. Any help would be appreciated. Here are some of my jobs:

My first attempt


Second:


Third:


Fourth:


Fifth:


Final:

 

[Stevejack2]

I'm at about the same stage as you, still early days for me and I don't have a lot of time to practice painting but what I've found really helps is painting under a magnifying lamp like this:


It helps to see the finer details and makes the end result look much cleaner (but then again maybe my eyes are just bad).

Use thin coats of paint on the hair and eyebrows to fade the transitions.. I have trouble here but generally painting on individual strands of hair in different shades of the hair colour works pretty well to add depth around the hairline and for the eyebrows.

Vary your skin tones a bit - you want to paint thin, using a variety of similar shades.. (i.e. start with a base skin tone and then mix in other colours to add shading in areas that need it on your successive coats).
Use some very watered down red to flush the skin and add mottling, and use a dark pink of some kind to shade the areas around the eyelids a little to add some depth and contrast there too.

Putting into practice is hard, but the above tips have helped me to slowly improve the end result each time over the last few that I've done. The Jack Bauer one is the last head that I painted, and was basically a test to see how the skin would look using the red shading + mottling.

 

[T-Squared]

Nice work so far. I've been a commission painter for a little under 2 years. Happy to help if you've got any questions.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Scentless Apprentice]

My two most recent attempts at painting.

 

[joebiwan]

The one thing I see missing from each of your paint ups is eye lashes. Men have them too. All you need is a very thin application of dark paint partially on top/below the eyes to help suggest the presence of the lashes. Nice progression of quality is evident in your skills so far. Keep going!

 

[SiriX]

Good start! Pay attention to the details and be careful in painting.

 

[Kr1pl3d]

looks like you aren't diluting your skin tones. also, you may want to try using reds in the low/fleshy areas around the eyes, around the cheekbones, deeper points in the ears, etc. do some mottling with reds and darker flesh tones, and matte varnish each layer of mottling, then dilute more flesh and lightly wash over the sculpt, layer as needed. seal when dry. After its dry you can even come back and dry brush some shadows and highlights to make it look a bit more dynamic.
someone mentioned crushing up pastels and using them. i haven't used pastels for anything other than weathering clothing and accessories. but, i have seen others do some amazing paint apps with them. worth a shot for sure.

good luck.

 

[Kr1pl3d]

for hair, try alternating highlight strips of browns, both light and dark sporadically throughout the sculpt. use a little fading at the roots along the hairline. go from very light (almost flesh tone) at the roots/hair part, gradually getting darker the further down the length of the hair you go. then apply random highlights to the dark areas and throughout the whole hair do. make sure you matte varnish/dull coat the face. For the hair, use matte, satin, or gloss varnish depending on the hair style.

wet look: shinier varnish
dry look: matte/dull coat

also, use gloss varnish for the eyes
eye tip: reflections on pupils, or the little white dots you see on the pupil and iris should always be on the insides of the eyes close to the nose.
those white dots you see people do are light reflections. when a light is placed in the center of someone's face, those reflections tell the doctors whether or not you have crossed eyes, or vision problems.
its a little known diagnostic short cut to shine a light in the eyes and look at the highlight placement to see if they match each other, and both reflect to the inside of each eye.



whew, that was long winded. apologies