Girl, your face is driving me crazy
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Hey guys. Long time no talk. I started messing around with portrait painting a while back and now I'm being driven insane by this one but I can't let it go. If anyone wants to do a paint-over, please do. I cannot get life into her face and I am stuck because I've looked at it for so long. Critique me please
For context this is my version of Anri of Astora from Dark Souls 3 (you never see her face in the game) so it's supposed to be pretty dark.
www.lydiamueller.com
Twitter @lydesigns -
I'm afraid i can't help digitally, but to look at it i feel the Right eye isn't quite right (?)
Also (and you may not want to hear this lol) I think its time you take a day or two away from this piece if it bothers you so much. Look at it again in a few days time with fresh eyes??
Best of luck ^_^
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Just a modest 5 minutes paint-over, trying not to tamper with your original too much (which is a great start, BTW!). I think your main problem are the eyes: They are too closed and small, they look like she didn't sleep for three days (maybe that's what happened to her?). Anyhow, I've enlarged them, opened the upper lid and added more contrast and "spark" in the irises and pupils. The right eye needs more work - I think the angle and proportion need adjustments. The second issue is with the skin color. Skin is a very complex surface, with lots of colors, reflection, translucency, etc... It needs many layers to make it look right. So far I've only added more red nearly everywhere, especially in the shadows, a tiny bit of yellow on the forehead and a tiny bit of blue on the jaw and near the eyes and side of the nose (where there are more veins). I've also added some reflected light on the lower jaw, lower brow and the underside of the nose, a little bit more contrast on the mouth. It needs a lot more refinement, but I hope this helps!
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@lydia-mI really like your painting - I have never played the dark souls game so i don't know what the attitude of this character is - is she tired, fierce, sad? I think it would help to know exactly her personality and what you are trying to convey to get a sense of where to go with it - my thought on the face is that maybe the two side of the face are on different axis? Her left (our right) seems tilted down but maybe her right is title more upright. In my attempt at a paint over i tried to give the skull more mass especially around the right side of her mouth (her left) and raise that side of her face a bit to try to get it on the same axis as the right. I tried to change the tilt of the forehead by raising the top of her hair a bit and changing the highlight ...my thinking was that it maybe should tilt forward a bit more - I tried to warm up the shadows especially around the nostrils too - i really hope you don't mind my novice attempt at this (especially after Simona did a real paint over
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Wow, thank you for the input! I think I'm getting somewhere now. I started this in November and I've been stuck fussing with it off and on. Probably should have given more about the character. Funny thing is @smceccarelli she's actually undead, but the eyes were bothering me and you figured it out. She was kidnapped as a child by a cannibalistic lord but escaped and now she's on a mission to kill him. Her entire storyline is sad and nothing ends well for her.
Gonna keep working on it. Does the side that's farther away seem right? I flipped the canvas and nothing is jumping out...
