[Gabrielle]

Now it's going to be a image, I think.
Gimptalk is a little difficult :o:
thank you for your respond :h:
the fliping is very useful, I found out lately. but easy to forget though.
hair is the moste difficult to make. for me at least.
thank you for giving this respond, it's quite helpfull to know what I do wrong^^

[Griatch]

Please, a *thumbnail* is a small clickable version of your image, like the images if the tutorial itself. As it is, it's stretching the page too much!
Refer to the thread I recommended above.

I made your huge image into a link, to make it stretch the forum less.
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Griatch

[Gabrielle]

I did what it said in how to place a thumnail, but got only that big picture:/

[Griatch]

If you don't go with an image host, you must of course rescale the image yourself to make it small. The link to the small image is what you put in the IMG tags (the URL should point to the full-size image)

Like this;

http://www.link.to.your.thumbnail.jpg

(This is not something especially strange about GT, by the way. It's standard for essentially all normal discussion forums on the internet)
Maybe it's not very clear from the FAQ. I'll try to make it clearer.

EDIT; No, it's actually described exactly like this in the FAQ. Only problem is that the FAQ cannot include the brackets, since that would actually make it into a thumb.
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[Cilla]

Just wanted to post a pic of the current state of my work:



As always, thank for the tut! ;)

The only thing I have problems with is hair...
I am not satisfied with the eyebrows...
And yeah there are no eyelashes( yet). ;)

[Griatch]

@Cilla

Nice start! That's a great eye, I'm not really missing the eyelashes that much, for a male eye you won't see them that much anyway. As for the eyebrows, consider working with a custom brush consisting of a few small random round dots -- this is a very efficient way to make hair strands like those in the eyebrows, especially if you blend their ends into the skin with the smudge tool.

Since you have opted for such a close-up of the eye and surrounding face, you should consider blending in some other colours in your palette than just the ochra-yellow skin tone -- or your face will look pretty flat. Add some dashes of purple, green and/or blue and blend them into the skin and you'll find your image come alive in a whole different way (I realize this is not in the tutorial, consider it a bonus hint). Take a look at the mini - tutorial linked to this picture to get a feel for the "impossible" colours that can be used on up-close skin. You also currently lack any full highlights of the skin and eye -- when lighting and shadows are applied these will come forward a lot more and feel more 3D.

I have no anatomical critique though, it looks very good and I'm especially liking the iris of the eye, that has just the level of detail that makes it look ok without having it stand out from the surrounding structure. You have a great start here, I'm really looking forward to how you will proceed!
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[alexiadeath]

Thanks for the comments. I know the anatomy is off. Its semi-intentional tho. People somehow turn out for me like that, but I'm slowly learning to control it :). I will try to do another one to try to get it right to prove myself that I can:). The nose and lips are where I feel your tutorial helped me most... I never could understand noses before.

[alexiadeath]

http://alexiadeath.deviantart.com/art/P ... a-72512035

Attempt no 2. theres still something about the jaw I'm not understanding... all anatomy comments in particular are very welcome.
EDIT: updated image.

[Griatch]

@alexiadeath

This is a much more expressive image than your previous image, and also a whole lot more realistic human. The anatomy is decent here I think. Possibly you should try to paint a skeleton to check if the jaw would really fit under the skin.

The hair -- try to make the contrast to the skin a little stronger, by applying some shadows "under" the edge. You overall need more global shadows in the image; this is the final touch of the image.

It's a big improvement, great that you keep experimenting!
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[alexiadeath]

Thank you so much for your feedback! I have tried to add some stronger shadow to the image and rather liked the result. Sadly I seem to have overwritten my working copy with a flattened version :( so I have not got much room for further fixing .

Your tutorials are really great. If you get into the mood of making something else, perhaps one about proportions, expressions and poses in general? how to sketch them etc...

[Griatch]

@alexiadeath

Handling the saves is an important bit. Always only save to an .xcf and avoid flattening at least one of your files. I usually work up until a point where only post-production work is needed (tweaking the colour tones, contrast etc), at which point I use the "Save a copy" feature to save a file imagename_layers.xcf so I always have those layers remaining somewhere. Then I flatten the layers (I usually flatten foreground and background separately, ending up with two or tree final layers that can be tweaked separately). If I should find (or be told, most likely) about a main flaw, I have the layers and can revert back to those if I want -- or even copy layers over to the flattened version if it should come to that. Hmm ... this should probably be in a tutorial somewhere ...

The most "pose"-like tutorial is probably the character sketching tutorial, with the grumpy farmer. Not sure if I have any good subjects for showing a general posing thing, but thanks for the suggestion!
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[Behin]

I just signed up here so I could post what I've done with your tutorial.


I used alot of what you posted here, but took some liberal creativity, as I wasn't particularly going for realism.

[Griatch]

@Behin

Welcome to GIMPtalk!

An interesting result, to say the least! As it is meant as a rather abstract piece it's hard for me to give any decent critique on it; only thing you should be careful with using stock effects like the coffee stain or the cubism filter in an image without severe after-modification since they are so easily recognized for what they are -- quick effects. Nevertheless you have captured the form of the head and eyes are looking good, Is that green blob his/her brain in there? Just for the sake of it, you might try to make a "normal" full portrait too. Even it that might be a bit mundane and not fit the style you want, it's never bad to know how to do it, also if your art style is more abstract. The greatest abstract painters all worked very well in normal, non-abstract paintings as well, to abstract reality it helps tremendeously to first know how reality looks very, very well. :-)

A good first post, looking forward to seeing more works from you! If you could supply me with a thumbnail I will post it in the "hall of fame" in the first post of this thread. :-)
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[halluzination]

Hey,
I found my way here via your (amazing!) DevArt account and have wanted to try this for ages. Now that my graphic tablet finally arrived, I did ^^
I was going to do this as my first digital painting, so I could learn the basics, but then I decided to try to do something on my own first, so I wouldn't immediately be forced into someone else's style. Good thing that I did, I think, because the two paintings I did before this one look very, very different. But it was still fun to try this out, even though I failed at doing a clean painting that looks less messy and chaotic than my other two. =/

But anyway, here's the result. I see quite a few mistakes myself, but to be honest, I was too lazy to fix them, as I am unsatisfied with the whole picture anyway.


Thanks for the tutorial :)

[Griatch]

@halluzination

Ah, sorry for not noticing this sooner, I've been on vacation. Welcome to GIMPtalk, halluzination!

I think this came out well indeed, and not something you should feel unsatisfied with. I like the tattoo on her forehead, also the general shape of her head which makes her look a bit Greekish actually. :)

I don't have much critique on this, you followed the tutorial and came up with a really neat result, especially for being only the second try! The critique I can give is possibly around the ear region, where it feels like you have used a somewhat too large a brush -- the ears look a bit swollen as a result. Also the chin is a bit skewed (but there are people who look like that by all means). In the future you might also consider experimenting with tweaking the colour tones a bit more as well; whereas there are people with ashen skin, her skin colour is probably a bit too lifeless for any living person to have naturally.

Good job and thanks for trying out the tutorial! I'll put this up in the hall of fame!
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[Griatch]

Updated the tutorial for the new forum format and the new version of GIMP (not much to change in the latter regard).
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[david2169]

Hi
Well i managed to do my tutorial, and as usual i find lots of faults with it. However i did find that doing the tutorial helped me learn a lot more about how to use gimp, for which i am really grateful 8)

One thing i have learned is the wisdom of knowing key board shortcuts, its a lot of effort for an old brian, but its worth the effort. Look forward to your critique. :roll:
David

[Griatch]

@david2169

Thanks for managing through the tutorial in one piece. I think you pulled off the light and shadow of this well, Especially the faint light of her right cheek comes across well without skewing the image face too much.
I'm not sure about the reflection you put in the lower part of her eyes, eyes don't reflect light like that, the highlight is much more sharp and defined. As it is the bright patch makes the eye -- especially her left -- look smaller than the other, almost damaged somehow (if you look at the thumbnail you will see this very clearly). Just removing that reflection would go a long way. It is really useful to flip the image horizontally on a regular basis as well as look at it zoomed-out to catch such things. The hair could possibly use more work too, looks like you grew tired with it after having done a few strands. ;) A hint is to make the hair as one dark brown mass and then just add brighter strands in there to bring out its structure and shine -- much faster and easier than trying to do individual strands.

But anyway, you are quickly improving your portraits, glad this was of use. I'm putting your image up in the "hall of fame" in the top post. :)
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[Songwind]

This one was a toughy, but I enjoyed it.

I think maybe I put the color on too thin. Most of my smudging seemed to be a fight not to accidentally make it transparent/gray.

Here's my result:

[Griatch]

This went well, songwind! :)

I see what you mean about the skin being a bit transparent, this is a matter of balance between what you set your opacity to -- if you use a tablet it is very personal how hard you press down on it; I press rather hard but if your hand is lighter you might need to change the opacity a bit. A good idea when noticing a painting begins to be dominated by a colour you don't really want (or its contrast being too low, or grayish) is otherwise to simply put an off colour in there -- like purple or green. It's kinda amazing what one can get away with colour-wise even in a face, and not only does it force you into a lot of colour-changing to work it in; it also gives more life to skin (especially green and purple, in small doses).

I like your mouth, looks very good. The eyes are are quite big for the face, but this is more a matter of style choice than anything (we are not going for hyper-realism here, just remember that eyes actually are rather small in a "real" face, also on a "big-eyed" woman). Otherwise I think the anatomy of the face looks fine, possibly the eyes are a bit too high placed, but measuring it seems ok, so it's maybe a bit of an illusion. Hair is easiest done by starting the way you have, then smudging those colours together into a mass, then adding much smaller strands in different shades on top of that (it need not be very many) to give the illusion of it meing made of individual thin units. Especially the transition from the forehead to the hair we have here (combed-back hair which exposes the root of each strand) becomes much easier if done with smudging and then doing some minor brushwork afterwards.

... but I'm purposefully picky in order to give you some feedback. ;) This is a good one and I'm looking forward to more. Thanks for trying the tutorial I'll put you up in the hall of fame. :D
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Griatch