[FF1] Feature and Feedback 1

Hello all and welcome to the first episode of Feature and Feedback, where each week I feature work that people have sent me, alongside some feedback about the work itself. Since there are few submissions at this stage, I figured I will just have general features section as well as the things that people sent in, so it's not too short and still brings some new people together to see each other's art c:

The Feedback

Sisa611

"Aaaanyway, for this piece I'd like to ask you if you could help me with what I could improve on the anatomy, especially the face. I've just started drawing humans, and I like to go for a semi-realistic style, but I still want to improve the face a bit. "

Hello there, and thank you for contributing to the first issue! Firstly, let me start with saying that I also am personally going for a focus on semi-realism in human subjects at the moment too, and have found that people in my classes ask me how I approach it also, it's a really growing style I think! It's super fun

Things I've made note of that work really well here include light source and some variation of hues, those are very important things and I think it's really also great to see you're not relying on lines, not that lines are inherently evil, but in my own experience, relying on them especially in the learning stages of art, causes you to see things less realistically, and unless you're going for a really flat anime shading style, it's going to hinder you on the way to semi-realism, so make sure you keep those things up! Do not be afraid of lineless Or at least colouring over guidelines or however you want to do that part. I also like the coloured light source, and coloured shadow, too many people fall into the trap of white light, black shadow, and this has made it really pop having the yellow and green in there.

Something I often encourage for people trying to increase the semi-realism in their people is to target that skin! It's one of the things that draws people in and you pretty much always know you'll have to tackle it in every piece, so it's a good thing to be confident with. I went and did a really quick gif thing to help explain some thoughts (and threw in some non skin things too):


 - emphasize the dark side versus light side of the face, currently the whole thing is much the same in tone, and semi realism tends to have stronger contrasts in the skin than anime shading does, so just try and use a darkness you don't even feel comfortable with and see how it blends, you can always bring the opacity for that layer back a little if you truly do overshoot
 - eyes are not white, in fact, this goes into my old "there is no pure white, black or grey" rant that I'll leave for another time haha but basically, you want your eyeshine to be the only pure white thing, so it will stand out best, but this means your eyeball should be all a light purple-y grey to start with
 - emphasize the darkness at the top of the eyes especially, I like to a strong area right across the top half at least, and even more to define the edges, just dark dark really dark! MORE DARKS WOO
 - take advantage of creative light sources like this and emphasize how it hits the edges of the hair really strongly, although make sure to alter the brush size to be finer and thicker in different parts, you don't want all the hair to be uniform strokey strokes, in fact it's better to hint at detail in hair rather than a "paint every stroke approach"
 - open mouths are tricky and teeth are even trickier again, but the same applies as the eyeballs, even a celebrity wont have truly white teeth except extreme high light dots, so keep them deeper, and add mouth shadow, even when they are open
 - when doing freckles, make sure you have varied opacity switched on and vary your pressure and size, dont stab down and do little perfect black spots, unless you were specifically going for someone wearing them as makeup, real ones are blended into the skin and not so "stuck on", really vary the position, you don't want predictable patterns forming in them

I'd like to end with thanking you for sending in, and sharing your art with us C: Your doing great things so just makes sure you keep up and do as much as possible, because doing, doing, doing is what gets us further all the time, even if we don't feel it

The Feature