Head Drawing - Marlon Brando

     Today's head drawing is the young Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. He was not only very gorgeous in this film but his acting style was revolutionary at that time.  Drawing his likeness took me some time and was a bit tricky, because it can easily looked like a generic handsome face.   But it was fun just the same. 

Head Drawing - Al Pacino

   Today's head drawing is the young Al Pacino in his role as Michael Corleone, from the film classic The Godfather. 

Head Drawing - Michelle Pfeiffer

     Continuing with the head drawing practice using some drawing methods I've learned from the just concluded class, here's a drawing of Michelle Pfeiffer as Madame de Tourvel from the film Dangerous Liaisons. 

Head Drawing - Jeff Bridges

        This is my week 5 and final head drawing assignment. Rendering was the topic. It was about design and edges. I still have a long way to go in terms of polishing my rendering, but in the span of 5 weeks, I think I made quite a progress.  I enjoyed doing theses assignments that I will be continuing doing these head drawings for days to come. Till the next one....

Head Drawing - Stan Lee (28Dec1922 - 12Nov.2018) R.I.P.

       Today, I learned of Stan Lee's passing at the ripe old age of 95 years.     I wasn't a Marvel comic reader. I was more of a Dennis the Menace, Snoopy, Garfield comics reader. Even if I'm not much of a comic book reader these days, nevertheless, some of the best movies and series I've enjoyed for the past decade or so, had been the Marvel superheroes like the Iron Man, Captain America, Spiderman, and the Daredevil. They were all based on comicbook characters created by Stan Lee.

       When I was still starting out to become an animator many years ago, I was terrible with drawing humans.  In fact, I was terrible in drawing from imagination, a crucial skill an animator needs to be able to animate different characters effectively.  One of the books that helped me draw people from imagination was the book, How to Draw Comics The Marvel Way by Stan Lee and John Buscema.  Even if the book was tailored for comicbook artists, the fundamental lessons were very much applicable to a budding animator like me at that time. 

         And so, in a small way, I'd like to pay tribute to Stan Lee, with this drawing.  May he rest in peace.

 

Head Drawing - Alan Rickman (Updated)

      It's really important to have a good solid construction and correct proportion as the foundation, but that doesn't mean there won't be no changes along the way. This happened with this drawing. Shadow shapes were further refined and adjusted. The neck and shoulder proportions were also broadened.  But once the basic structure and the general shapes were laid-in, adding the details of eyes and mouth were like icing on the cake. 

Head Drawing - Bruce Willis (Updated)

     This week is the final week and the focus is rendering. Since I've done so many heads in the past 4 weeks, and most of  them are in different stages of completion, I decided to go back and finalized some of them. 

     Here's the updated version of my drawing of Bruce Willis, finally with eyes and mouth.

Head Drawing - Emily Blunt

    This drawing was also part of the week 4 assignment I submitted for the Head Drawing Class I'm taking.  Just like in my Hugh Jackman drawing, I'm showing here the drawing stages that I've learned from the class so far.

  

      It starts with the lay-in of the generic head from week 1. Then the Reilly method rhythm lines from this week's lesson were drawn on top of it. Those lines also served as planar and anatomical guides as well.  After that, the features and shadow shapes were added.  Followed by the adding of  dark tones on the shadow shapes. This stage was where most of my time was spent. Likeness was recognizable already at this point. After this stage, adding some light gradations was easier to figure out. The rest of the rendering was finished in a short time after that.

    

   

Next week would be the final week of the class and it would be about facial features and rendering. Watch out for my assignment postings of those here.

Head Drawing - Hugh Jackman

        So for the past few weeks, I had been taking a class that gradually introduced me to the Reilly Head method.  Having drawn a few head assignments where I learned to separate the shadow shapes from the light shapes, it's now much easier for me to grasp  the concept of the Reilly Head .  Those multiple lines, which can be confusing, represents the head planes, anatomical structure and rhythm lines.  Those lines really help in rendering the form.

    After learning the Reilly Head, those rhythm lines seem very obvious  whenever I look at faces now.

Head Drawing - Alan Rickman

        *** There's an updated version of this, see here.***

         After Bruce Willis, it's Alan Rickman in his  memorable role as Hans Gruber from the film Die Hard.  He's got a nice shadow shapes in this photo, that drawing his likeness became easier to capture. Although I wasn't quite sure when I first started with the basic head construction.  I skipped the outlining of some of the features and just went straight to sculpting with tones. It took me awhile but eventually I did manage to get his likeness.   I kept the values limited to three, with some hint of whites in some of the hotspots. Plus a light grey background to frame him nicely. Cool, huh?

Head Drawing - Bruce Willis

 ***There's an updated version of this, see here.***

    This was one of the head drawings for my week 3 assignment in the Head Drawing class I'm taking, rendered with 3 to 5 values only.  Still not concerned with the eyes and mouth, it's amazing how effective this method is in drawing the likeness based on the dark patterns of the head.

      I used the basic generic head construction I learned from week 1, and then  modified it according to Bruce Willis' head shape and proportion. Followed by the mapping of the dark shadow shapes, avoiding the eyes and mouth for now, using only three values, the paper's value for the light, mid-tone grey and the darkest dark.   To add some polish, some whites are added for the hotspots, and black background to frame the whole head.

Head Drawing No. 5 - Can You Tell Who This Is?

This is now my 5th head sketch, where I draw the likeness through shapes. Even without the eyes and nose, this face is easily recognizable.  This head drawing method made my previous portrait drawing using the grid system seem obsolete.   This method is all freehand, a more enjoyable method for me.

Head Drawing No. 4 - Can You Tell Who This Is?

        While the previous three head sketches (see here, here and here), had been a struggle and took each a day for me to finish, in this sketch I was able to do a quicker lay-in almost effortlessly.  This took less time that I was able to do two more head sketches after this,

       Could be that this head had a easily recognizable shapes, or  I'm getting used to this drawing method.  Either way, I delightfully realized that this method of constructing the head is effectively training me to focus on the general overall shapes first, ignoring the eyes and mouth for the meantime, while some likeness must be evident at this stage first, before proceeding to add the facial features and  final rendering.

          I'm liking my progress in this class thus far...
      

Head Drawing No. 3 - Can You Tell Who This Is?

     This week 2 assignment required  me to do twenty-five of these heads.  As with the previous two sketches, getting the right shapes took time. I was already doubting myself if I'll be able to do more than five at the rate I was going. I was only managing one head a day at that point.

     My first  and second head  sketches conformed to the generic head construction easily than this third one. Miscalculating the angle too much while laying-in the generic head was my problem. The top of the hair confused me with the perspective of it.   So I had to carefully observe the slight angle tilt of the head and try not to overdo it.

     Getting the right shapes also took a lot of time. A wrong shape easily destroy the likeness. In the end, I'm still not sure if  I achieved the likeness. What do you think?

Head Drawing No. 2 - Can You Tell Who This Is?

    Another one of my no-eyes-no-mouth head sketch.  As I mentioned in my previous post, this is the lay-in stage where I decide that if  I can't get the likeness at this point, going further won't help either.

   The more handsome the face is, the harder it is to get the likeness, It was suggested that getting an "uglier" face would be easier and lessen the pressure of trying to get it perfectly. I should have listen to that suggestion. Because this was such a struggle.  After  multiple starts and stops, erasing and revising, this is the closest to the likeness I was able to manage. 

   What do you think?

Head Drawing - Drawing Likeness Through Shapes

        In my last post, I mentioned taking a head drawing class, where in the first assignment, I learned to draw the proportions of a generic head in different angles.  The following week, using that generic head as the standard of measure, the lesson was about drawing the likeness of a famous face based on it's overall shape and silhouette.  Focusing only on the general shapes, the eyes and mouth were not drawn.  One should be able to tell whose likeness this is at this point. If not, there's no point in continuing.

        This was the first head of  twenty  I finished, which took me hours, if not more than a day, to get this to resemble my subject even remotely.    What do you think?

       

 

Back To Basics - Izzy's Three Simple Rules of Light

 Unlike drawing, where lines are used to delineate shapes and forms, painting uses light and shadows to describe an object or surface.  Very basic idea it seems. But the challenge is to be able to visualize how light is affecting a surface correctly. It's a fundamental skill an artist needs to master, if being able to paint without copying from reference is the goal.   One amazing concept artist/illustrator who explained the concept of light and shadow really well is Izzy Medrano in his YouTube videos, which are found here & here.

My 3 Rules Of Light painting exercises toggled with Izzy's paint-over critques,  plus his red number indicators for his notes as enumerated below.

  He breaks down those fundamental principles in three simple rules, that seemed deceptively easy. This is how he  breaks it down: (Watch his full explanations from here and here)
1. Objects most perpendicular to the light gets the most light.
2  Light's power gets weaker on more distant objects.
3. If something solid is between your object and your light source, the object gets NO light.
  - Every object that is lit by the light source, itself becomes another light source.
  - The light being bounced cannot be as bright as the original light source.

  To completely understand Izzy's 3 simple rules, I did some painting studies, using black and white photo references. Then I analyzed the photo reference's lighting, by transferring the lighting info unto a light sphere, showing the direction of the light source.  Then apply those lighting information onto a completely new surface forms.   To determine if I did a good job, I submitted this study to Izzy in his Patreon page for his critique.

   
   He did some paint-overs and gave me a few notes, which  were very helpful.   Here are his notes: (Please refer to the images with numbers as indicated in red.)

1. Your light sphere is almost  directly overhead. The specular and hot spots on the cheeks and nose tell us that the light source is closer to us on this side of the picture plane.
2. There is no reflected light in your origin image.
3. The cat is half-lit according to the rules of the image with the same lighting as the image though the object shouldn't catch light the same way.  Reference would help you figure out your planes, so that you can tell which surfaces are more likely to face up to the light source. A cat doesn't have the same planes as a human does. So a cats nose can't cast a shadow like a persons, and that's why you have a big black streak on the second image's face.
4. These eyes look flat. The overall face needs more reference in the same way 3 does.

  With this exercise, it is humbling to say that my main difficulty was in visualizing correctly the many subtle planar shifts of the surface form, and how light would affect them correctly. Also, good references for my studies should have been used, to correctly understand and render the different subtle form and plane changes.  With these new insights, I need to do more of these and have them reviewed and critiqued again, which would help solidify those three simple rules of light into my brain, and then hopefully, would serve as a good foundation as I develop my skills to become an artist who is not a reference slave. 

  If any artist is interested in learning and understanding the logic of light and color, I highly recommend Izzy Medrano's tutorials that can be found in his Gumroad page.  And perhaps be a patron of his and get critiques of your work.  You can check him out in  his Patreon page.

  So, if you've watched and did the Izzy's 3 Simple Rules assignment practice also, how did you find the exercise? How did your study turned out?  Love to hear and see what you've done.

 

Bunny Rabbit's New Look!

        When I designed the original Bunny almost 4 years ago, I was just starting to learn digital painting in Photoshop.  I wanted to see if I could animate a single image without having to draw the character multiple times.  And so, based on a single fully rendered image,  I edited it by cutting, distorting and pasting the character's body parts to create the different poses of  the action. Any additional drawings needed was kept to the minimum.  I achieved what I wanted at the time. 

   

New cleaner design

      Since then, my understanding of the built-in timeline have improved and so is my character design sense. It's been awhile since I've animated in Toon Boom that I have already forgotten how to use it.  Photoshop is not my ideal animation application to use, but it can do simple animation loop like this well enough that can be exported to GIF easily.   So I decided to use Photoshop instead.

New lighter color with some pink added.

     

         So last weekend, I decided to give Bunny Rabbit a new look and new animation.  The old version was a 10-drawing cycle.  This time, I added more drawings, cleaner lines, and a more streamlined design.  I drew the face and body with a more feminine look.  The head is more triangular, reminiscent of  Kisses chocolates. The eyes are also triangular to complement the overall shape. The eyebrows are thinner, the lashes longer and more pronounced.

        Instead of the skipping animation cycle of the old version, I animated the thumping foot from one side to the next, reminiscent of Thumper's foot thumping in the Disney classic film Bambi. This bunny is inspired by Thumper after all.

A 26-drawing animation cycle.

A more feminine design

The animation is a bit longer now with 26 drawings. Instead of editing from a single fully rendered image, I did it just like how I would do it if it's done traditionally.  Line key poses were animated first, then in-between drawings were added after. Once the timing of the action  was done, colors were added in.

FX and Drop Shadows added

        I kept the original theme of the blue bordered box to contain the bunny, for continuity reasons. Who knows, this might still evolved in the future.  I added some FX and Drop Shadow elements on top of the finished animation to help it pop out more from the blue background.  This wouldn't be complete without the Pixie dusts, so I reused the old dust animation cycle but changed its timing. It's now a bit slower and dragging a bit. 

        And so.... here's the new, improved animated icon of this blog.

Bunny Rabbit Pixie Dust logo

Wk 6 Digital Painting - Mood boards & Making Dragons

     This week, for the first part of the assignment, we were to take a subject we don't like, then redesign it, by creating moodboards- a collection of images where we can show the concepts we have in mind, in re-envisioning the subject we chose. For the Mastering Animals part of the assignment, we were to design a dragon.

    While researching for this, I came across some paintings of Saint George Slays the Dragon, typically depicted like this....A knight riding a white horse, about to slay a dark-colored dragon, with a spear or a sword, while a princess looks on from a distance. The dragon represents evil, while the princess represents different virtues

     I'm not much into dragon fantasy, so I'll consider this as my Not My Favorite part of the assignment. I thought this concept would fulfill both parts of the assignment. While collecting costume, look and style references for St George and the dragon, I envisioned St George as a hero archetype, well-built, good-looking, in dynamic poses, inspired by Frazetta's paintings. And I thought a bigger dragon would be more menacing and and dangerous.  I also thought of changing the typical staging, into a more cinematic and dynamic composition.

      Quite an ambitious task. Not sure if there'd be enough time. So I decided to just focus on designing the dragon, and see how I go.  So here's a few sketches I did, using reptiles like crocodiles, iguana, komodo dragon and other reptiles as the basis, which is similar to the story, but I haven't decided if  it would have wings or not.

  
     Halfway through my research, where the typical dragon I see were the big, ferocious, fire-breathing monster kind. I felt overwhelmed, so I changed my mind about the whole concept and decided that instead of scary-looking, ferocious, flesh-eating monster, I'll go for a pet dragon instead, much smaller and cute.  So I started to play around with this new idea and came up with two designs and a little character personality and descriptions:


     Still maintaining the bat wings, the first one is a combo of Camel/Llama, with Lion body and Tiger stripes, plus serpent tail, lined with spikes.  This dragon is a small one. Not very strong due to his small size.  Doesn't spit fire but spit a lot of foul-smelling saliva.  Haha.   Can fly very fast. Smart and funny, and talks about a lot of good knowledge but also a lot of nonsense.  Pretty much a good pet and friend to any young wizard-in-training. Eats a lot of fruit, particularly berries. I haven't decided the colors yet. Will play around as I go.

     
 

     The second one is a Hippo Dragon, a combo of Hippo head, and a  fat puppy -like body, covered with reptile spots. and has reptile tail. Also lined with spikes. His feet have claws. Also have bat-wings but too tiny to really help him fly. He can glide though if he jumps-off from a high place then sort of glides down. and flies more like a chicken. Really pathetic. That's why he's sad-looking.    But a real darling and puppy-like.  A good pet too.  But don't get fooled for his real power lies in his strong ability to let out a big yawn with fire, that easily disintegrates anyone who mistakenly cross his master. Ha!

     So... I find myself developing these pet dragons further, and now enjoying it. I refined the drawings a bit more. and also realized that my original Hippo Dragon sketch, didn't actually look like a Hippo, but more like a Rhino, So I revised it to look more like a Hippo now.  I started to do a grey scale study of it. And played around with some colors, but haven't decided with a final one.

                                                                                                                                                                                  

     The thing I like with starting in grey scale, I can play around with colors.  And so I did.  Here's what I came up so far.  Since Hippo Dragon is more of a pet than a menace, I decided to give him some bluish colors with touches of pinks. His spikes are translucent. His personality is more on the quiet, timid, shy type, but he can be dangerous when angry. Remember, he's got a deadly big yawn with fire, that disintegrates any enemy.

     His wings are very thin and small for his size. It's more a remnant from his dragon ancestry.  It doesn't really help him to fly but do help him to glide down when jumping off from a high place. He doesn't fly that high, more like how a chicken fly. His ancestors were powerful dragons and they all spit fire, but since his great, great, great grandfather had been captured by a powerful wizard and made into a pet, the succeeding generation of dragons had been very docile and their powers unused, their flying skills undeveloped.  Thus gradually became almost useless.  Except for the spit-fire power.  It never went away, but would now require him to be really, really, really angry for that to happen.

     It's quite a challenge, since his personality doesn't lend him to get angry easily. But one thing that does, is if anyone harms his master. A true loyal and protective pet, he is. Definitely a good companion for any young wizard-in-training.

Here's Hippo Dragon in color.... (click to enlarge)

     So, I started the week, not quite sure if I would enjoy this assignment. Having to do a subject we don't like and turn it into something we like.  I think I succeeded. I like this dragon. Although he may undergo some more changes if I develop him further.

     And what about St. George Slays The Dragon concept?  Hmmm...  I'm not abandoning that concept quite yet.

     To see previous weeks, click here : Week 1, Week2, Week 3, Week 4, Week 5

Wk 5 Digital Painting - Big Master Study

For this week, I only managed to do one part of the assignment, which was to do a big master study, with at least 1 full body figure and a landscape background.  So I chose William Bouguereau's Homer and his Guide (1874) for this assignment. 

I decided to start the painting in tonal values, to prevent me from getting distracted with colors at a stage where I want to accurately capture the correct proportions and likeness of the original.  I placed the characters and the dog on separate layers so that any adjustments later on would be easier.  It seemed that this is a slower method. It took me 5 days to finish Homer, the boy and the dog. But it only took me a day to add colors to them. I wonder how long it would have taken me if I used the other method of painting them straight in color. 

For the background, I decided to use the second method and it took me just over 2 days to finish it, together with the additional characters and dogs in the background.  Since they are secondary characters, I can be a little less accurate with them. These extra characters are on separate layers as well. I also divided the background into 3 layers: BG, middle ground, foreground, so that  I can paint them in broad strokes.  I used some custom brushes for the clouds, rocks, ground.  I didn't attempt anymore to match exactly  the original background but just tried to capture the essence of it, as I don't have the patience to.  Same with adding the texture of the basket. I hand-painted it as I haven't discovered any PS tricks yet to do it quickly.

For Homer, the boy and the dog, I used a custom brush called Tyrion from the Shaddy's brushes collection. I'm liking that brush that it's mostly the only brush I use.  I tried to capture the likeness of the original, but for the details like their hair, and the dogs fur, it's not an exact copy. Again I have no patience and don't see the point, except to just capture the essence of them.  Even for the color palette, it's just an approximation.  I think I got it pretty close.

I wasn't expecting to finish this assignment on time, but I did.  But I ran out of time for the animal studies.  I knew that that would be the case, so selecting this painting is a chance for me to at least have some animals incorporated in it already.

Here's my study for the week in progressive versions... ( click to enlarge)

To see previous weeks, click here : Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4