Portrait

Hey Brelise,

Great work! You can definitely tell you've put in a lot of practice.

Since you're asking for critique, there are two areas I’d suggest working on: construction and line quality.

Construction: If you want to create realistic portraits (or images of anything, for that matter), it's essential to be able to construct simple forms in 3D space and then "attach" the details (e.g., eyes, mouth, nose, etc. for faces) onto them. Your construction seems a bit weak, as the eye line, for example, isn’t parallel to the nose and mouth, and the left eye appears unnaturally larger than the right. Also, the right side of the person’s face is not well-defined, which makes the whole head look flat and lacks depth. If you really want to focus on this, I suggest practicing simple forms (you might find the free website drawabox.com helpful). However, if that feels too boring (and it can be, trust me :D), try doing a bunch of skull studies while paying close attention to perspective. Skulls are great for understanding basic form since they’re rigid and less soft and round like a face.

Line quality: Clean, beautiful lines can make a huge difference in improving your art. You create beautiful, flowing lines in the neck and chest area but tend to "chicken scratch" in the important areas, like the bridge of the nose. This is a typical beginner issue. It’s understandable—getting proportions right is nerve-wracking! But making one clean line instead of many not only makes the result more beautiful but also helps immensely in identifying mistakes. I suggest describing a feature with a single line (really think about its angle and placement), and if that doesn’t work, just redo the whole line rather than layering several on top to try and make it look right.

I took the liberty of doing a quick overpaint of your work to illustrate my points.

https://imgur.com/a/construction-line-quality-V1J6rEQ

Hope this helps!

Keep up the great work, and happy drawing!

Thank you very much for your constructing critique. It helps very much. I mean, I really understand my mistakes. I'll try to focus on construction and clean lines. I am used to draw nudes and I have problem to draw them in this classical way (volume and them the details), I only draw what I see. I understand that I can not draw the faces like I usually draw.  I'll have a look on the webside drawabox.com . Your corrected illustration is very useful! Once more many thanks!