M2M Day 48: Fighting for photorealism
This post is part of Month to Master, a 12-month accelerated learning project. For December, my goal is to draw a realistic self-portrait with only pencil and paper.
Today, I spent a couple hours working on the eyes and nose area of my self-portrait.
My tonal approach is noticeably different than that used on the Derren Brown portrait.
With Derren, I wanted to ensure the portrait emanated three-dimensionality, so I pushed aggressively on the contrast of the portrait. I also didn’t care much for the micro-gradations of shadow/light, as I was more concerned with the correctness of the bigger shapes.
As a result, the portrait definitely has a stunning roundness, but I wouldn’t call it photorealistic.
Thus, this time around, with my self-portrait, I’m aiming to more closely match tones, while also paying attention to the smaller areas of light fall-off. With this attention, my hope is to create a more realistic rendering of my face.
It’s still hard to tell whether I’ll be successful, but we’ll find out soon…
Read the next post. Read the previous post.
