Notes in response to a comment

[telophase]

An anonymous comment was dropped in my previous post about the painting, where I posted Near's face on a white background, to show off the mouth and nose. I think the poster was accidentally logged out of LJ and not leaving a deliberately anonymous comment, because I think I recognize who it is, but I know that it means they won't get a notification of a reply, plus it ended up rather long, so I'm posting it here.




Ohhhh....I was expecting another Near from the colorless draft you prepared...maybe it's because is not complete...can I say that I was expecting something else without hurting your feelings?

The iris were bigger and you reduce them. He looks like a nun. I liked the touch you gave him more teen in the draft. Now he looks childish and femaleish. He also looks too dark like sorta from middle-east features. I always though him German-ish kid. You gave him in the draft a most deep and dark lines in the upper eye which gave him a mischief face....now looks more soft and like a santa Maria Teresa. You also rounded his chin which help to give him even more child-look.

I know I know...there is still a lot work to be done. It's just my opinion. I hope you don't get me wrong! I admire your talent and I like to how you keep us posted with progressive Workin-Progress..

XD


Right, that's it, I'm getting wanky. (And you should have seen this before I edited it. There's significantly less profanity now.)

Are you someone who comments here who accidentally got logged out or a drive-by poster? I think I know who you are, and I know you mean well, but you just hit a sore spot.

If you look at the more-or-less finished Mello and the unfinished Near, they're worlds apart. A painting is not done because you happen to recognize what it is that's being painted. There are no sharp edges in Near. There are no shadows in larger parts of his face. He's blobby and unformed, with the nose and lips just starting to emerge from the morass of colors I slapped down. The eyes are a fast line slapped down with about one stroke of a paintbrush to signify where they're going to be painted when I get to them. This is an obviously unfinished painting far from being done, yet you're making crits that are more appropriate for an almost-finished work.

Here it is, so you can see:



I know I always run the risk of people who really don't know what the stages of a painting are coming through and giving well-intentioned, yet completely meaningless advice. But let me see if I can explain to you what stage this painting is at.

Here a tutorial for painting lips. This isn't actually my particular technique, but it's close enough for argument and the steps are numbered so I can point them out. You are giving me advice based on the assumption that I am at stage 10 or 11 with Near's eyes, pulling close to giving the final touches. I am, however, at stage 5 on the eyes - the stage where I have a very brief indication of where the eye will eventually be painted, with a base color slapped on.

The stage the nose and lips are at is roughly 9. I haven't even started the detailing yet - this is all still rough work.




And now for the specific points:

The iris were bigger and you reduce them.

1) The eyes ARE NOT DONE. Please compare Mello's eyes at two different stages:



There's a huge difference between them, and that first picture is farther along than Near's are currently, because I've started to put down the edges in Mello's eyes in that one, and I haven't touched Near's eyes yet.

(And let me note, concerning another one of your points, that bigger irises actually make a person look younger.)


He looks like a nun.

2) Nun? WTF are you takling about? Because his face looks like it's poking out from a wimple? In case you hadn't noticed, I haven't painted his hair yet. I have no idea what the curls around his face are going to be, and I need to color all his skin before I can start to detail the hair. So I paint his cheeks and forehead back much farther than what's going to be showing in the final work.

Or is it the shading? Because when a surface recedes, it gets darker. When a surface is under another surface, it gets shadowed. The dark areas around Near's face are both (a) receding and (b) shadowed by his hair.

Please note the way Mello looks under his hair:



Note that his forehead is painted in, even when it's going to be covered by hair This is so I can make his hair wispy - like actual hair. Wispy means that you can see the forehead through the hair, and if I haven't painted the forehead yet, it's going to look damn strange. And the only reason you see the shadows of strands of hair over Mello's forehead is that I went back and painted them in *after* I finished the hair.

His shadows are also very, very dark. They look more prominent when they're not covered by hair.



I was expecting another Near from the colorless draft you prepared...maybe it's because is not complete...can I say that I was expecting something else without hurting your feelings? ... I liked the touch you gave him more teen in the draft. Now he looks childish and femaleish.

3) The painting isn't done yet. And if he ends up younger or femme-y, so what? The painting is in my head, and I will paint it to my liking. If you like it, great. If you don't agree with the portrayal, then great. But unless someone is paying me to paint for them, then I will not paint to someone else's desires.

So, yes, you can say that you were expecting something else as much as you want, but I am not painting it for you. I am painting my image of Near. And yes, I'm probably going to end up taking him younger than Mello, because I'm having too damn much fun painting his lips like an eighteenth-century cherub. Maybe I'll do another one of him at a different age later. Maybe I won't.


He also looks too dark like sorta from middle-east features. I always though him German-ish kid.

4) You are being fooled because you are comparing it to the white background. Near is several shades lighter than Mello, and Mello's pretty much a white boy. Here's Near's skin compared to Mello's:



And here's the exact same piece of Near's face on a dark background and on a light background. Cover #1 up and look at #2, then cover #2 up and look at #1. You see how the exact same picture looks differenet compared to the background?



And I cannot give him ultra-pale almost pure white skin. He'd look weird and nonhuman, for one thing, and scondly he'd suck all the attention away from Mello and unbalance the composition. Light colors draw the eye, and Near's about as pale as he can be without screwing over the painting as a whole.


You gave him in the draft a most deep and dark lines in the upper eye which gave him a mischief face....now looks more soft and like a santa Maria Teresa.

5) Again: I haven't even bloody started the eyes yet. You have no idea how they're going to be painted. Even *I* don't yet know how they're going to be painted. You know how much time I've devoted to the eyes so far? About fifteen seconds. Enough time to slap down the outlines and the pale color so I can have a rough idea of where they're going to be once I start painting them, and to get the proportion and position right.


You also rounded his chin which help to give him even more child-look.

6) You will note that IT IS NOT DONE YET. Scroll back up and look at Mello again. You see how Mello's chin is defined by his neck? Where the dark of the shadow meets the light of the face? Near as of yet has no neck, no chin, no dark line of shadow to define his chin. You have no idea what it's going to look like.

Comments

[tokyoghoststory.livejournal.com]

...nun....

[dragovianknight.livejournal.com]

I love this wank because it is edjumacational.

Does Mello hate anonymous posters?

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Seeeee how much I can teach when I'm spazzing off the deep end!

Well, Mello does hate everyone...

[llamameeljueves.livejournal.com]

I'm soooooooooooooooooo sorry. I didn't know I was posting anonymous. My last intentions was to be mean.
I really know nothing about painting but a small drawing course I took long time ago. I didn't mean to criticise your work. I didn't mean to be mean. I'm just so clumsy to say my opinions.

You are absoluetly right you paint whatever you want the way you want and you will do so. It never occurred to me you should paint because of others likings.

I was just giving my opinion. I am a horrible liar Stefanie, and if I would have posted to tell you that I loved your Near, then I would not be true to you and you don't deserve that. Maybe I just could simply shut my mouth up....but I really like your works. Mellos is fantastic. I just loved the Near in the colorless draft.

I'm so sorry.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I know I overreacted, and I apologize, because I know you didn't mean so be confrontational, but - I'm just learning. I've never completed a realistic digital painting (and only completed one realistic oil painting). I've done several partials and never got around to finishing, and I'm stretching myself and racking my brains trying to figure out how to do it, so I'm going to be really touchy about it.

When I look back at the sketch, part of what I think you're responding to in his eyes is an expression that is created by the shape of his eyes - which is actually created by the locks of his hair falling over his eyes, so I won't get to that until I start his hair.

Here:



In the sketch you can see that his hair falls over each end of each eye, which narrows and focuses his gaze on Mello. With the sketch brought up to full opacity and placed over the painting, you can see where his hair falls over his eyes there - so he will, eventually, have more expression in them.

In the manga, Obata used Near and Mello's hair to put a lot of expression into their eyes because neither of them has eyebrows, which are what make a lot of expressions possible, and in the sketch I'm doing much the same.

[helen-keeble.livejournal.com]

I am utterly astonished that you haven't completed many realistic paintings. From your style and skill, I assumed that you had walls of 'em racked up in your studio. :-)

And I'd never noticed that Mello and Near don't have eyebrows (though I've only seen them through your manga analysis/icons/drawings). Interesting. Is this a general stylistic choice by the mangaka, or specific to these characters? Any reason for it?

(love the way the painting's going!)

[telophase.livejournal.com]

:D It's only in the past year that I've been even attempting them - I've finally accreted enough skills and moxie to think that I might be able to pull it off.

I'm amazed at how much of the painting shows up unintentionally - you look at, say, a nose and see all teh little smudges of color and shade and think that the artist must be some sort of genius to think of combining all of those. And it turns out, that the artist was jsut slopping colros on, thinking, "Okay, now the nose needs to have more shadow" *pick random purplish from eye area* "It's too dark and looks like a bruise now" *pick random light color from cheeks* "And it eneds a highlight" *throw white on* "Oops, now it looks like he needs powder" *blend down* "That's right, there's red on the cheek, there ought to be red on the nose to match" *throw red on* and it's the result of the artist failing to blend it all in that makes all the smudges of color sit there ... and eventually at some point, all of a sudden it's a nose, which is just as surprising to me as it sounds like.

The eyebrow-less-ness is particular to those characters, and to L as well. I didn't notice it on any of them until I started to draw them, because shadows from the hair and the eye shape serve to give them expressions. I think it's a subtle way to emphasize the otherworldiness of those characters, because all other characters have eyebrows.

[llamameeljueves.livejournal.com]

You didn't overreact...I don't know what is happen to me lately that I seem to be unable to say a nice thing. I think I should stop commenting in other's journals for a little while.

You say you are learning??? but you are a great artist.

Thanks for posting those two Nears "nearby". I am trying to concentrate and look at them to find out why I love so much the draft one over the one with more work. One thing for sure is the irises. He looks more mean. Another thing is that for some weird effect the hair in the draft seems to be more abound (Near has lot of hair, but you know that better than me). Maybe is the "white-ness" of the draft which gives him a "atmosphere" that I like. Maybe is the nose which I was imagining less pointing, but you know what....I hope you realise I am talking about why I like the draft Near, and not that I am criticising the other Near *winks*

BTW....you are right, you should be very proud about Near's nose work. It's excellent.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I meant to add that no, I absolutely don't expect anyone to lie and say they like something when they don't.* It's that it's too early in the painting to make such a decision.

And my entire diatribe above can really be summed up more calmly and politely in those two sentences.



* As long as they don't use the words "I'm sorry, but I expected better of you," which will send me RIGHT OFF THE DEEP END unless the person saying them is my teacher. Uh, yeah, someone said that on one of my DeviantArt pieces last year, for something I'd deliberately put into that piece of art, which made it doubly infuriating. That's the sort of language I use when I'm lecturing someone on plagiarism, not when they screwed up their proportions.

[homasse.livejournal.com]

Wow. I learned so much from this. :D

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I think the best thing I got from my oil painting class is that it's going to look like crap until the very last minute. If it still looks like crap, it's not done yet.

I spent some time looking through digital painting tutorials to find the one above that shows the stages of painting in some way approximate to the way I do it, and I was surprised it was really hard to find. Most of the digital artists on DA who have made tutorials tend to start with really refined drawings - if I do that, then I just get frustrated that the painting isn't as good as the drawing - slop a few base colors down, and then get to work on the details, starting with the eyes. I save the eyes til last when I'm doing the face, and try to work the cheek, nose, and mouth at roughly the same time.

I may be forced to do a tutorial or a walkthrough, just to show that there's other ways of doing it.

And I also reinforced my notion that people think photorealism and exactly duplicating a photograph is Good. And I'm WTF?! If I wanted a photograph, I'd go take a damn photograph. And there's technical skill involved in duplicating a photograph, but the eye of the artist is removed from the equation unless they took the photo to begin with. It's still art, naturally, and it's still hard to do, but ... why would you bother to reproduce it exactly and not add or take away things unless someone commissioned it from you?

[batwrangler.livejournal.com]

I'm just popping to say how absolutely devastatingly yummy Mello's snear is. XD

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I keep looking at it, going "I did that? I did that??"