I Cheat Towards the Pretty

A few years back, I refused to do digital art at all. I considered it "cheating".
After all, "the materials don't make the artist", right? Or at least they shouldn't. I resented the praise that digital artists got for "smooth lines" and all that shiny crap you can do so easily with a computer and tablet.

I didn't download gimp until I felt really good about pixels.

(Some weird thing for a pixel site I was active on)

I refused to get a tablet until I knew I could work with the touchpad on my laptop.

("The Last Great Touchpad Project")

I denied myself use of pressure sensitivity, a undo/redo button, by using that silly little paint program on facebook.

But I've realized that in the end, no one cares about the process but me. My job is to serve the end result, and find The Pretty.
I can make more, and better pictures if I use the tools I have.

So let's draw a weird-ass baby!

First, I make a trace a little map for myself. I've used gridding before, but I have problems keeping things feeling three dimensional that way.

Then I create a new document, and start blocking in general areas of color and shadow, using the original as a reference.

Then I spend a million years layering, and relayering, until the form is solid enough to remove the lines.

That's when the real cheating starts.
I've gotten to the point where my free hand sketch will almost line up with the original anyway. But why go through the trouble? I know I can do it, so at this point, I just overlay the drawing with the original and fix all the proportions from there.

At some point, I get distracted by some amusing detail. At which I switch to my tiny brush and detail it. It takes about an hour for every 100x100px box I detail. Slightly less for eyes.

I'm not going to finish this baby because it break my number one rule in my art: the painting has to be better than the reference. Otherwise, I'd be a super cheat and just take pictures. ;)

Why Gareth Bale looks like a Shark

If you're a football aficionado, you're probably familiar with the "Gareth Bale/Monkey" theory.
Though fairly accurate as far as proportions go, it's also completely uninteresting to me.



According to the internet, if you wear glasses, have a low brow, stick out ears, a larger nose, a shorter nose, thin lips, or have ever opened your mouth in public, you look like a monkey.

So what? Humans are built nearly the same as monkeys anyway.

Myself, my first thought when I saw him was "Shark". My friend agreed, and demanded that I study this further.

I began by mapping out our two subjects.


The first, a young 21-year-old welsh human.
The second, a fearsome great-white-shark, of indeterminate age and gender.

The similarities are striking, right?

Okay, so it's not as pronounced as monkey is.

Here's Bale, reduced down to a cartoon. Just enough to keep him looking like himself.
This is what I know about him.

1. There's a weird dip between his cheekbones and brows from front and 3/4 veiws.

2. This is partly due to his low, heavy brow line.

3. There's just barely enough room for an eye-width between his eyes.

4. At rest, his mouth is of average size, as near as I can figure (the corners fall under mid-eye). But when we look at it with the rest of his face (the narrower back part of his jaw, his tiny nose, his small close-set eyes to name a few) it sure does seem massive, doesn't it? I guess he has a narrow face or something.

5. We can fit a hole eye-height between the bottom of his nose, and the top of his upper lip.

6. The form of the muscles around the mouth is huge. It makes crazy lumps.


Additionally, it's worth noting that he has a jutting jaw to the front, and his neck is super thick.

What happens if we measure these things on a shark?

1. Although the sharks eye sockets are formed differently, which kind of destroys any brow line, the shape is still present. At least to me. This kind of thing is like cloud watching: I'm like "Oh look! That one looks like a shark!" and maybe you think it looks like a duffle bag.

2. Sharks don't have to shade their eyes from the sun, so they don't have little bony crests up there like we do. Also, they don't have eyebrows.

3. This time, we can fit many, many eye-widths in. Bale doesn't have Shark-ish eyes, that's for sure.

4. Massive mouth of doom. No lips to speak of. Also, this shark has dimples like Bale. Aw...

5. From some angles, shark noses look huge. From others, they're humorously tiny pointy bits. Bale looks more like a Shark as viewed from below. Just before it devours you.

6. Massive mouth of doom requires massive muscles.


Four out of six. That's not bad.

The moral of the story: His mouth takes up too much room and his head is lumpy.

And he gets bonus points for his giant muscled neck that would allow him to glide through the water with minimal drag.

(Dear Mr. Bale, sharks are awesome. You're face is awesome. You're awesome.)

My Noses Keep Falling Off

Somewhere between drawing the eyes and drawing the mouth, I always lose my way. I just can't connect the mouth to the nose properly.
These are some scribbles of the stuff that's been going through my head lately.
The gray is symbolic of my lack of insight into the situation. The noses symbolize that I like noses a lot.

People on the Bus Rock my Poor, Uninformed World Pt. 2

People on the Bus Rock my Poor, Uninformed World

It never occurs to me that proportions like this happen. I think that's pretty lame.

The Life and Times of a Solitary Arm Fuzzy (And how he found his shadow)

This is not a story about a face. This is a story of friendship and joining together! A story of light, and shadow! A story of the rise and fall of arm fuzzies!

Barry was a hair. He was dark and tapered, just like a hair should be. He grew up out of a funny little crater, just like a hair should. He even got light highlights and dark shadows on his body, just like a fuzzy should

But Barry had a problem. Barry had no shadow.

Barry was pretty sure he was supposed to have a shadow. Doesn't everybody?

Barry knew that an object's shadow was defined by the direction of the light and the angle of the surface the shadow is cast on.

Barry plead with the universe "Why! Why don't I have a shadow?!"

"HAHAHAHAHAHA!" Said the Evil Force of Diffusion ", I scatter light, and blur shadows!"

Barry gasped ",You blurred my shadow to death?! Oh! If only I were larger so I could defeat you!"

Suddenly, a great, chill wind blew and all Barry's friend rose, and stood beside him. Each cast their own, small and blurry shadow. Together, they made a slightly larger, reasonably visible shadow.

"Huzzah!" said Barry "I have a shadow!"

The End

(A) When I started drawing.
(B) When I got bored of hair and hair shadowing.
(C) When I realized it was ridiculous to try to illustrate something that I just figured out is nearly invisible anyway.


Moral: Diffusion doesn't give a rat's ass how big you are, it'll blur your shadow just the same. If that means the shadow no longer shows up, too bad. Diffusion has no patience for weakness.

Yep, I've been doing that all wrong. I've been carefully edging far too many, far too tiny shadows.

The Evolution of the Face Map: Part 2, 3d Puzzles, A WIP

Where were we... oh yes. I finished up the stupid flat way of seeing things and moved on to bigger and better things.

It's like this, when I want to draw a face, I have to make the picture in my head before I draw it. I used to do this by lining up two dimensional shapes like tan-grams, but now it's like building models out of foam.

I start by making a kind of contour drawing of the forms I know and how they fit together on that face: a map.



The shapes that I mark out are fairly consistent, and only getting more so as I practice.

They bear a resemblance to the points marked out by facial research groups.

Have you ever looked at the faces made by those programs? They're often hideous and make no sense. I think their models neglect the third dimension and facial structure. (You all know giving people creepily tiny chins is more attractive, right?)

I have a bad habit, starting with that dumb circle. I don't like circles, they don't leave any lines on the page to help me with depth of field. I like boxes and intersecting lines much better.

I tend to mark in the forhead or brow line next these days. From there is easier to sketch in the trapezoidal prism of the bridge of the nose.

I know I should be putting that curved line that shows the center of the face first, but I never think of it until I've already failed at the nose a couple times.

The base of the chin has to come next.

Next is the marking out of the cheeks and eyebags.
Depending on the day, I might mark the top, crest, or bottom of the cheekbones. I haven't figured out which is the most useful yet. As long as I remember which one I'm marking, it's all good.

Especially on the right side, hopefully you can see some fancy parallel curves (wow, I thought I made that up) happening.

Recognizing curves that are parallel, or the amount by which they are not parallel helps define form.


It's one of those things you have to practice.

Here, the line-age is about to get complicated, so let's turn Chris into a mexican wrestler so you can see what I'm doing.

If you've got a good eye, you can see the shapes I've got below the nose don't quite fit together right below the nose.
If you've got a poor eye, I'll just tell you. I have trouble lining things up below the nose.

List! Everything I just marked out up there:

- The dome of the forehead is marked in pink, and the temples in yellow

- Nose-turning-into-forehead-triangley-bit, in yellow

- Two halfs of the eye socket in purple and green, with that little triangle bit I like so much (discussed already Here)

- Sides of the face, under the cheekbone, in green.

- Third eyebag shown in pink.

- Nasal labial folds in green.

- Boney nose bridge in green.

- Ball of nose in blue.

- Mouth cone in pink.

- Upper lip planes in green and pink.

- Lumpy bits that make up the lower lip, in blue.

- Chin ball in green.


It's a work in progress.