Tutorials done by Stanislav Prokopenko who is an instructor at Watts Atelier.
Right click + New Tab to see the images in their original size. There are 10 images, sorry I had to chop them up because Tumblr has a image size limit and starts resizing.
Ok, attempting to demonstrate something…
So this is Ned Stark. And I’m going to render a section of his hair. This is good practice.
I start by laying basic colors, marking off shadows and highlights. If you’re still getting the hang of measuring things, try drawing at a different size from the original. The point is not the size or shape so much as the lighting.
His hair is naturally light brown (look on the other side of the photo where there is no sunlight), but when the sun hits it, it looks almost white. So I lay in colors accordingly. I start big and get increasingly more detailed.
It might sound unexpected, but if you’ve watched Bob Ross paint, keep him in mind when you’re doing realism. You don’t have to draw every little thing. You only have to give the impression. In photorealism, you only have to draw what you see. In the original photo of Ned, you don’t see every hair. Instead, you see blobs of white and ovals of black and orange squiggles. Draw what you see, and draw only enough to believe it.
A few more points:
- Human hairs are individual, but you will never see all of them individually. Instead, you’ll see triangles of white and black, blobby shapes, and dots. Draw that stuff, not the hair. Look for places where the shape, color, and tone changes. That’s what drawing is: conveying a visual change.
- Also, be deliberate. Lay on solid colors as fast as you can. Do a base coat of color. Don’t leave any white space. Don’t hesitate. It’s scary, but practice it. It’s much easier to deal with a digital painting if you already have something on the page than if you have nothing.
- Paint first, then draw.
I’ll have more in the eye drawing coming up later. But this is a good start, maybe?
I think the biggest roadblock people run into is patience. It’s going to take you a long time to be able to draw like this. There’s no way around that. It will take you a long time just to see this stuff—even just to figure out what you’re looking at in one little section of hair. You’ll be WTF AM I DRAWING THIS IS A SENSELESS MESS a lot of the time. That’s okay. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what you’re looking at. Sometimes it’s hard to stop thinking “hair is supposed to do this” and start letting your eyes see what’s really there. Give yourself time. It takes practice. That’s why practicing on little sections (especially eyes, which are nice because they give you pretty little drawings in the end) is helpful.
Right then. :)
“Teratophoneus WIP3”, by Sergey Krasovskiy (~atrox1)
“Teratophoneus (meaning “monstrous murderer”) is a genus of carnivorous tyrannosaurid”
Gary Meyer doing a head demonstration explaining the light and shadow, color theory and forms. You can see how he shows the eye as in multiple parts, as a spherical glossy surface, as an iris, and the pupil. Many people don’t view eyeballs as balls, and they don’t place in the proper shadows, tones, and highlights that a glossy ball in a shadowed socket would exhibit.
