Preserved Topic: Little Ms. Riding Hood

An airbrush image I made in PS. Appreciate any comments and crits:

WOW .... i like a lot and i want to know how to make that kind of work.


HM+Design+Web

It's looking ok! But (damn don't you hate those "buts") it still needs some refining. It's pretty blurry and areas like her arm need some fixing up - it looks flat with many bumps/dimples on it.

Refining aside, it's coming along fantastic!

Thanks..

As far as method goes:
I generally use a reference pic (she was a model in fitness magazine) to draw the image freehand. Then I scan it into PS and adjust the levels to clean it up. Make a new layer and set it to multiply.

Then I open a skin pallette image I use for tones and use the eyedropper to pick the right shade for the base.
Zoom into an area, pull out my 'works just as good as a wacom but didn't cost me a fortune' graphics tablet and start painting. Use the airbrush with different size tips and pressures to make the base. Then change the brush to screen for highlights and multiply for shadows. When you want to make a different part (ie. the lips) add a new layer. When your happy with it, merge it onto the skin layer and use the smudge tool to blend it. Before you realize it, the image will take shape.

Look at your reference frequently to note shadows and highlights. These are the most important feature in making an image look realistic. On a 2D medium like paper or a computer screen, the only way to give an object depth is with light and shadow.

Eventually, you will be able to hide the outline layer and your image will be ready.

I have other images like this at http://www.webwyvern.com
You can find great tutorials on digital painting at http://www.epilogue.net

Hope that helps.

I imagined Little Ms Riding Hood as more around the ages of 5 to 10. This girl looks around 20 to me. However, for the age she looks like, the drawing is still very good. I think the hood needs more texture.

Good start there, WebWyvern. The proportioning is good, and the skin tones blend pretty well. The light and shadow fall fairly well , on the light thing, if you go by the shadow from her arm, the hood and cape should cast shadows across her face, but the light on the face seems to be coming from somewhere else. More than one light source is ok, but you have to define them and let them interact with each other.
Same on the face. The skin tones don`t have enough tonal separation. Makes it look flater than it is. Wrap the darker tones around the edges of her face ( minding the light source(s)) to give it more depth.
Her..dress looks like a layer effect. There should be a gradual gradient on the round parts, instead of that sharp hilight fading to flat, then too quickly into deep shadow. Gives the impression of a beveled edge instead of a nice, round, smooth, ...shape.
Last nit pick. The passing through the bottom border bothers me for some reason. Just a personal thing.

Love to see this one updated. Nice work so far.

<edit> I just rooted around your site a bit. You`ve got some nice stuff over there. Love * Blood Moon*</edit>


Cell245

[This message has been edited by docilebob (edited 06-05-2002).]

Thanks for the tips everybody.. I will work on it and add a background.
I see what you mean about the dress. It wasn't a layer effect though; just the dodge tool gone mad. lol

Thanks for the comment about my other work. The 'bloodmoon' image was from a photopong game I played on a different forum. One of these, days, when I'm not so busy writing, I should sign up for the pong game here. You guys have some awesome games going.

Not knowing what all the parts of the face are called...I'll jst say this. That's bloody good work WebWyvern, but that little dent under her nose? We shouldn't be able to see so much of it. It makes it look like her face is twisted slightly from the mouth down.

Koan 63, written on the wall of cell number 250:
Those who Believe
Can
Those who Try
Do
Those who Love
Live

Looks quite good, but I agree with synax and db.

There's something else that bothers me a bit with this. Unfortunately something that there are no quickfix for.

Her facial structure is somewhat off.
If you look at the curved line from her forehead to the tip of her chin, something is not right.
At the moment it looks somewhat as if she's got a receding forehead or a protruding jaw/moth area. That gives her kind of a cat/nehanderthal aura.

It could be that you've got slightly different viewing angles of the top 3rd and the bottom 2 3rds of her face. You shold not be able to see that much of her eye when viewed from that angle. If straight ahead is 0 degrees in angle, the eye seems to be viewed in about 30 degrees and the rest of the head in like 80 degrees.

If I may use one of my oilpaintings for reference (not that I'm a portrait guru):


In this you can see about as much of the eyelid as in your painting, but that makes you see a lot more of her face as well. Hope some of this made sense.

Definately agree with nimraw - there is a very large discrepancy in the anlge of the face.

On top of that, I will reiterate my comments in response to an earlier 'airbrush' image you posted -

It looks like 'an airbrush picture'. That's not a good thing. The reason for this is that there are many fatal flaws that free hand airbrush artists often fall prey to, and they are represented here quite well.
The biggest issue of all is soft edges.

*Everything* in the painting has soft edges. There is no definition of...well, anything. That makes it very unbeleivable. Makes everything fuzzy. Regardless what your media or your tools, there are basic principles that apply, and ignoring them simply because you are doing an 'airbrush image' is not going to get you anywhere.

I would strongly suggest going back and putting some serious work into *defining* where and what things are, as well as boosting you shadows and highlights - working in some deeper tones.




[This message has been edited by DL-44 (edited 06-05-2002).]