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  A* Portraits are here! & I talk about drawingSep 03, 2011 4:57 AM PDT | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Since you're reading this, you may enjoy the curious way in which I draw things. You might even have wondered how actual people—maybe even people you know—would look, drawn in this way. Well, if you have $5 and a photo of the person, wonder no more! Because now there are...
 
A* Portraits!
 
(smbhax.com/portraits)
 
The details are on that page, but it pretty much is as simple as you sending me (over the magical Internet) a photo and five smackers, and I send back to you my version of that photo, drawn digitally fresh just for you. Here are some samples I whipped up from stock photos (they are actually pretty mundane poses, too, so hopefully some of you will send me some more interesting ones to do!):
 
Image Image
 
I try to keep it light and quick, and they're actually pretty fun to make. So I hope you'll have something for me to draw for you!
 
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This portrait thing came about because on Wednesday night I had a few facial proportion questions nagging at me, and I thought maybe a good way to resolve them would be to trace over some photos of faces. So I did that, trying to work over each face as quickly as possible so as not to get bogged down in boring details, and it was surprisingly fun, and the result seemed rather interesting. I think it turned out to be a more productive exercise than I had imagined it would be; since one thing I would like to be able to do for A* is to produce drawings—from scratch—that have certain photorealistic qualities, rendering some photos into my own style provided nice benchmarks as to how my drawing can have some of those qualities—while still, hopefully, looking lively, expressive, and a bit unpredictable. And it did provide a handy comparison for how facial features actually look in relation to each other, and from different angles, with my lasso drawing technique; it reminded me, for instance, that I've sort of fallen into the habit of drawing unusually small noses and lower lips—that was intentional, in the beginning, but it's rather become a habit that I'd started to take for granted.
 
So all in all it was a very helpful exercise, I think! I've read before of aspiring comic book artists tracing over the drawings of their favorite artists—or, come to think of it, even aspiring fine artists working painstakingly to reproduce works of "The Masters"; you come across such art students in art museums sometimes—but I always thought that sounded a little odd—like, why would you want to stick yourself with the habit of drawing in someone else's style? To learn a very specific type of brushwork or something, I suppose—but that's a rather boringly mechanical goal, if I may say so. Tracing over photos makes more sense to me, but this was the first time I'd actually tried it. I don't intend to make it a feature of my comic work—I'm always disappointed, for instance, to learn that some comic book artist I was really impressed with was relying on direct photo reference in their best work; I think there's a real danger of that becoming a crutch that limits your compositions and style—but I think maybe it has a place as an occasional exercise or refresher.
 
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Speaking of other things I draw, let's not forget that my Sunday fairy tale comic, "The Princess and the Giant," will be getting a new page this weekend, as it tends to. Here's a preview/link for last week's page, to get you caught up:
 
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Okay, have a nice weekend! I think Monday is supposed to be some sort of holiday here or something but I will probably just spend it drawing a new A* page for you anyway. :D
 
 
 
 
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