Tutorial Critique 4: Portrait Replication

Today's tutorial critique will be over portrait replication, portrait replication (as the name implies) involves the artist looking at a photograph and transferring exactly what they see onto the canvas.

Once again, I went to my old friend deviantART for this tutorial. A little on the artist—he is a professional artist, more specifically an illustrator, and he has a BFA from Maryland Institute of Art.

Now, as usual I will give my thoughts on the tutorial.

Pros

• The tutorial has images.
  
• The tutorial steps are detailed, so much so that the artist goes over ever facial feature individually.
  
• The artist encourages drawing flaws on the face (such as wrinkles). Physical flaws are a essential part of the physical appearance of the face, it’s what makes the person them. Ignoring this could change the picture drastically and make the portrait look like someone completely different.
  
• The tools used are mentioned, such as the program and tablet. This can be useful for those who want to copy the technique verbatim.
  
• The final product is done well, implying the artist knows what he’s talking about.
  

Cons

• Comments are disabled, so giving feedback is limiting. Though the artist did give a reason (he was changing deviantART account).
  
• The images and text have to be viewed separately. Not because they’re on different pages, but the image is so large that the viewer has to constantly scroll up and down to reference the image and read the steps.
  
• The text is long and stacked with little space in between lines.
  
• There are numerous emoticons in the text. This can be a problem since there is so much text to begin with; adding something extra can be excessive.
  

For this tutorial the experience level required is a bit of a tossup. While I understand the tutorial is over replicating a drawing (so no conceptual aptitude is required), I have seen people have a difficult time tracing an image, let alone drawing one free hand. Based on that, I would suggest the artist have some level of experience, since they’ll need to know how to draw a face proportionately, how to blend colors properly, and understand how lights and shadows fall on the face. Overall, I think this is a good tutorial, if a bit for more adept artists.

As usual, here are my efforts.



Cited Works

coldsnapkiller. (2011). 1-1.gif picture by coldsnapkiller. Retrieved December 2, 2011 from http://s1098.photobucket.com/albums/g371/coldsnapkiller/?action=view¤t=1-1.gif

deviantART. (2011). deviantART. Retrieved October 21, 2011 from http://www.deviantart.com/

Digital Citezen. (2009). Ron Weasley. Retrieved December 1. 2011 from http://digitalcitizen.ca/2009/09/03/harry-potter-wallpapers-for-iphone-and-blackberry-bold-9000-480-x-320-pixels/printable-card-from-wallpaper-41/

shley77. (2005). Painter Portrait Tutorial. Retrieved December 1, 2011 from http://shley77.deviantart.com/art/Painter-Portrait-Tutorial-21629016

shley77. (2011). shley77 on deviantART. Retrieved December 1, 2011 from http://shley77.deviantart.com/