Shadows and Drawing

So I was originally going to do the entire walk through of my shadow technique page with step by step pictures of every major change.  But then I thought my internet was down so I just did the page.  So now I’m just going to talk about it.

So this all came about this morning while I was talking with my boyfriend in bed. I wear glasses and I hadn’t put them on yet. So all I could see of him where the shadows that the light was making on his face. So this is my drawn from memory picture of him using only shadows.  I used Corel Painter Essentials 4 and my Wacom pen tablet.

I started with a palette of grays and yellows. They were sitting there from my comic banner. And I didn’t feel like mixing more. For this exercise I wanted to try ‘painting’ without a lot of guidelines. So instead of my normal process of sketching out an entire face and then painting over it, I instead just used a few guidelines. Head shape  with eye and nose line. That’s it.

Next I laid down all my dark colors. With the light coming from the left of page that would cast  the right side into shadow as well as his brow line in certain areas on the left side.

Then I turned my attention to the right side. I knew for the most part the lightest parts wouldn’t get as light as they do on the left side. So I chose a mid range gray for the lighter colors on the right side. This allowed me to place check bones and a better understanding of where they eyes set.

Next I worked on the nose. By adding lighter colors over the dark I was able to flesh it out and give it some definition. I followed this same process with all the areas of the face. The eyes I colored with highlighted colors to make them stand out.

I finished the painting by applying highlights to certain spaces.

Is this perfect? Hell no. I can see right of the bat that my eyes are not straight. Also the nose is to short for the  face and should be elongated. So I know better for next time.