Redraw

After taking a hiatus to work on my thesis, I've gotten back into doing some art. I still have two more chapters to finish editing (plus performing analyses that won't actually be finished in time so it looks like I'm going to have to try plan B) but I need to do something before I explode.

I've decided to revamp an old picture of mine. The original was done in 2005, before I had a tablet and PS elements. I remember being quite proud of it at the time. I redrew it in November when I was dog-sitting. I know that I'm still a long way off from being really good but I can't help being really pleased by how far I've come.

I have just spent 3 hours working on the hair. It seems that whenever I have trouble, it is usually when I come to shading the hair. I'm not so bad with dolls, though I often have to retry the shading. I just can't get the hang of digital paintings, they're just too bloody big. Another thing that I've been discovering is that I'm better at shading darker hair. So after two failed attempts at shading, I decided to go brunette. And still failed.

Finally I got my act together and managed to get it to work. It doesn't look great at the size that I want so I will have to resize the final version.

The issue with going brunette is that the thickened outer lines are no longer noticeable. Should I thicken them some more? The thick lines was one of the key features of the original picture.

And of course now I'm not happy with the skin shading. It doesn't look as good with the darker hair. I'm glad I hadn't started shading in the nose yet.

Maybe I should have left this until after the thesis is finished...