Created using 500,000 fish hooks
Isla (Seascape) by Yoan Capote
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. :)
So here’s the other demonstration, wherein I draw the eye of Ned Stark.
The thing about eyes is:
- The whites are almost never white. Here, the whites of Ned’s eyes look sort of gray/pink.
- The iris isn’t necessarily round. The pupil isn’t necessarily visible. You might not see any eyelashes. Draw what you see.
- Eyeballs have shadows on them just like everything else.
The thing about skin and realism (and photorealism) in general is:
- Thinner skin looks redder and more saturated because it’s closer to the blood underneath. Thicker skin looks yellow, more opaque, and less saturated. That’s an anatomy rule to keep in mind, but it’s not necessarily a visible thing that you can draw. Sometimes, anatomy goes out the window, especially if you’re drawing only what you see.
- Relatedly, in photorealism there can sometimes be odd colors in weird places regardless of skin quality. This is called an optical effect, which has little to do with anatomy and more to do with the photo medium, whether it’s a film or a photograph. A good example can be see in screencaps. Check out this page of SPN screencaps. Notice how things look greenish? That’s because of the camera. Remember: when you draw from a photo, a camera saw it first. Different cameras capture different things. Not only that, but editors, directors, and photographers armed with their own equipment might have had a go at the image before you came along (one of the many reasons why, no matter how much you might think it does, no screencap, no graphic, and in some cases no fanart can ever be your property). This is not the case with life drawing, where the only optical effects are what exist in the room with you, but it’s something to keep in mind.
Like with the hair demo, I started big and gradually got smaller with details. The very last detail I did in this drawing was the white highlights on the eyes.
It’s not the way everyone paints, but it’s how I do photorealism. Hope it helps you. :)
“Teratophoneus WIP3”, by Sergey Krasovskiy (~atrox1)
“Teratophoneus (meaning “monstrous murderer”) is a genus of carnivorous tyrannosaurid”
The above are photos of the fossil remains of Thylacoleo Carnifex, commonly known as the “Marsupial Lion”. Pound for pound, Thylacoleo carnifex had the strongest bite of any mammal species living or extinct with a massive skull and cutting teeth. T. Carnifex also had long thumbclaws and is estimated to be faily fast moving. In all it’s a ferocious predator. Science and art often must come together in the re-creation of extinct animals. The bones are often drawn by scientific illustrators who study the remains, and extrapolations of muscle build coat color and possible behavior are made which culminates in illustration restorations of these magnificent animals.
Two photo comparisons of T. Carnifex skull shown next to an African lion skull (Panthera leo).
Illustration of bone fragments done by Richard Owen.
Wells, R., Murray, P., & Bourne, S. (2009). Pedal Morphology of the Marsupial Lion.
Illustrated restoration by Mark Hallett.
Illustration reconstruction by Adrie and Alfons Kennis.
Riusuke Fukahori Paints Three-Dimensional Goldfish Embedded in Layers of Resin
Japanese artist Riusuke Fukahori paints three-dimensional goldfish using a complex process of poured resin. The fish are painted meticulously, layer by layer, the sandwiched slices revealing slightly more about each creature.
A must-watch video!:
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.
