Sketchbook Random Thoughts

I don't do this as frequently as I should be, but ever since I picked up the ASUS Zenfone 2, I've been slipping in some time to practice a bit.  Nothing serious and they are pretty terrible works, but I like that I'm not using up paper on this.  So, on to some of my random thoughts while doing this latest piece...

So, I decided to try and paint while adhering to the thick points instead of trying to draw using pencil as I did back in the day.  This is what I came up with.

This was a quick sketch using the pencil tool and and then I started to do my usual transparency and airbrush tricks to come up with this.  I also used the eraser with the blurred circular tip to do finer lines like the lips and the nose.  

The next item was to start painting over the quick sketch and add more details to it.  Before I actually started colouring, I had made even darker shades of the side of the face.  Also I cleaned up and adjusted several things on the face.  I also was having to guess at how the light and shadow would behave and that's something I have to learn some day.  Anyway, once I had completed the basic black and white shadow without details, I started adding the eyes and I also fixed the lips to make it wider.

This is when I started to play around with skin colours to give it a more natural look.  At first I was really iffy about painting over everything without respecting where the eyes were.  But I soon realized I could just control how the whites in the eyes were after painting the entire face.  The face proportions are likely way off, but I didn't really study anything when I did this.

From that point on, the final touches were about fixing the eyes and lips mostly.  The eyes needed to have more of that shiny specular lighting effect.  For the lips, this was the first time I tried to do the lip gloss effect.  Not sure how it turned out in the end, but I suppose it's not too bad.

Note: I was also using a cheap stylus which works way better than using my index finger.  A lot less tiring too!