Date : July 27th, 2007
Media : Photoshop 7 & Wacom Tablet : Tie pen pressure to both brush size AND opacity for best results
Image:
Thoughts :
Done in 1.5 hours, from complete scratch, entirely on the computer? That's pretty amazing, for me at least. I'm normally wretched with CG sketching. It helped that I had such a fixed image of my head of a stitched on grin... I love the hands, the lace, and the teeth. Nothing but the tears look poor to me. How *does* one illustrate tears? I also don't think I quite captured the extreme distress of the grinner. What an odd feeling it is, as an artist, to try and capture an extreme negative emotion. Do we project an attempt at the mood upon ourselves? Are we inflicting it upon our subject? How can you capture the mood without feeling it in some way.
...Perhaps if I understood biology or psychology better I could explain this fact, but regardless I know it to be true- a mood is brightened by smiling. Your own false or force smile, a received smile, an offered smile. Any and all elevate the mind and the mood. Some may question the inclusion of a false smile but please do not miss-interpret it. I do not mean a sneering upturned corner of the mouth or a sulking twist of the lips offered up to some relative. Instead, replace your default blank expression with a slight curve of the mouth. At the very least, un-furrow that brow. Such strain often offers low level distress and you'll find you cannot keep it so tense and easily grin. ...
1 comment:
Actually, smiling does put you in a better mood, just as frowning makes you grumpier-- there's a bunch of interesting and well designed mood studies that had well balanced naive subject pools take mood tests while holding a pen in their mouth, either in a horizontal line in their teeth ("forced smile") or with their mouth in an "oh" shape, holding the pen tip ("forced frown").
I love how expressive your stuff always is-- cool image. Stronger, more subtle tears would be wet though, not blue. You have a color environment that's all brown/red/orange, and tears should be like lake water or puddles-- they reflect what's in their surroundings, distorting the image slightly because of the shape of the water surface. Also, water's really defined by it's surface reflection-- sharp highlights on top of a line of soft shadow are what illustrate moisture, not color.
Post a Comment