If you're a relative newcomer to the blog you can see the previous attempts here and here. You may want to go read them for a refresher even if you've been around a while. Since you won't have bothered doing that, here's a refresher. Found a photo of Nephania and chose it to be my litmus test for how my illustration is coming along. I picked this particular image for four reasons:
It's a difficult angle to get right at the best of times.
I was previously unfamiliar with her, which removes preconceived notions of how she should look.
She's got a very distinctive profile, making it easy to judge how well I'm doing.
She's ridiculously pretty, which is harder to capture than the looks of someone like Me, or Jeremy Clarkson say.
My rules are simple, I have to replicate the image using nothing but my eyes, a piece of paper and some pencils - no grids, tracing or other mechanical assistance (and in this particular case no eraser, but that's not actually a rule). If I'd allowed myself to use such things I'm pretty sure I would have a spot on likeness, but I didn't.
What I didn't know when I started (back last year, not this latest picture) was that she's not only a model, but a bloody good photographer too - so that put me in my place I guess. OK, enough preamble, here's the pic.
Which looks... better I guess. I mean this one pretty much looks like her, despite the few proportional issues. What are they you cry (or actually maybe you don't, maybe you spotted them right off the bat). Well, her jaw is the wrong angle her head is too low (The top of the hair should be a little higher), her neck is too thin her arm too thick and her boobs are too big. Other than that and her eyebrows it's a fairly close match. Look:
Obviously the illustration is in white (negative). I'm quite pleased with her actual face though - I mean look, everything more or less lines up, and the angles are pretty close. I find it amusing that things at the top of the image are too small (the top of her head), while things at the bottom are to big (her lady bumps). I have to wonder if this is something Freudian, whether it's just because I have my drawing board at too steep an angle or whether I'm just incompetent. I'm going to go for the middle option, while secretly thinking it's a bit of the first and last.
Here, for the sake of reference, is a comparison of all my efforts thus far:
You can click it bigger if you want a better look at the reference lines.
I left drawing this one for far too long. I meant to draw her again before the end of last year, but I wasn't confident and didn't want to do it if I was going to make a complete mess of it again. Obviously I did just that in the end, but not near as much as I had feared. I won't leave it this long next time... maybe.
This one took the same amount of time as the whole of the first one and as long as the layout on the second more finished one (an hour).
Next time we'll see if I can finally nail it (and yes, I almost typed "her" there, stop sniggering). With any luck it'll be a close enough likeness that I can move on to a different picture to butcher for my litmus test.
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