Forum posts by Lorelei Esther

First of all, great job on these studies! That's a lot of dedication to draw that many noses, and your draftsmanship and line quality are excellent. You have a really good grasp of the landmarks of the nose, and its 3D form. I particularly like how you differentiate the separate planes of the nose when they're visible.
My biggest critique is that your noses look fairly uniform, both in angle and proportion. You get better at displaying the nose at its actual more difficult angle towards the end of your studies (compare number 11 to number 27 or 32, you can see the evolution of your understanding of the nuances of how the tilting of the head affects the angle of the nose). However I think you could benefit from more studies of noses at extreme angles, particularly heads tilted down or where the nose is only partially visible because the head is facing the back. You clearly already have a good grasp on how to draw a nose in a neutral position, so push your boundaries and expand on your ability to draw without reference by studying very complicated references that will become part of your toolset in the future.(And remember, if this website doesn't have the photos you are looking for, you can always take your own! Honestly a great exercise is trying to draw a nose (or anything) from imagination, and then taking your own reference image to study where you made mistakes and shortcuts that you took that can be expanded on into a style choice)
On the second point, your firm understanding of the form and construction of the nose is actually at your detriment here. Your noses lack variety, which in a series of anatomical studies is okay, but if that lack of variation seeps into your larger work it can cause the dreaded "same face syndrome" and suck the life out of both your style and your characters. (And make your more realistic portraits less accurate, because rather than understanding the nuanced differences in people's features, you unintentionally alter them to follow a more familiar standard that your hand is used to drawing.) To combat this I recommend watching some of Proko's caricature series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtG4P3lq8RHEkeRGn6aFRct0kq4oDwwTa
It's a great resource that teaches you how to see faces and their features as larger, distinctive shapes, and how to exaggerate those to create a more recognizable and appealing subject.
Overall, awesome job, and keep up the good work! You've definitely got a firm grasp on a lot of the fundamentals, and I think you are ready to branch out into more experimental works if you so choose. Have fun with it, and I wish you the best of luck on your art journey!