Here is a work in progress I would like to share it with Astahosters.

Lately, a friend of mine joined my blogging team at Splat. She had been of great help even before when I was working on my website WiseTome.com though she just joined Splat. To show my appreciation, I thought I would gift her an artwork. And with this, I hope to improve my skills too.

So, here goes.



It is still a work in progress.

I used her photograph as a reference and worked on it from scratch in Inkscape. The basic outline with flat colors is done, and I have just started to work on the details.

I hope to complete it as early as possible, but every now and then, I would post updates here. Nothing much would change other than the shading detail I would be adding. Right now, little work has been done on the highlights - work still remains on the highlights. After that, I would need to work on the shadows.

For those who know vector art, I would like to state that to this point, I have not used any gradients. I have only used bezier paths and polygons with flat color fills. I might use few gradients to give additional depth at the end of it. But as far as possible, I am trying to get this artwork done with flat colors.

Effort Spent: 3.5 hrs
Software: InkScape

This post has been edited by Vyoma: Dec 29 2006, 08:55 AM

I don't know much about drawing, but I'm wondering is that weird colour blotching due to the image perhaps being compressed or some such? Iv'e noticed that look one some video and games the it's lost colour or had it reduced, something like that.

Or is that how it is meant to look?

The blotching look would come, Chesso, since I am still working on it. It still have just basic flat colors applied.

To illustrate the point, look at her left eye and right eye. Her right eye (left one on the image) is less blotchy looking and more crisp for one reason - it has more details. Her left eye (right one on the image) is very blotchy and flat. I have not yet put in the details.

Here are some screen shots from Inkscape of the left and right eye.

Her left eye (less detail):


Her right eye (more detail):



Similarly, her left cheek looks blotchy:


And her right cheek and nose looks smooth and shaded:


Get it? So, it is not because of the compression or something. It just has that much details - I am yet to begin fleshing it out. As indicated it is till in the WIP phase.

Oh I see, it's just that I see that blotchyness alot due to image compression on a lossy level for because of reduction in or stretching in size and what not.

I never thought of an image starting out that way lol but I understand why now.

The eyes and teeth you drew are a bit too big, I don't know if she really looks like that, but I don't find it feminin, you should check the proportios of the picture before including more details.

What makes you think there too big? They look fine to me, if anything i'd say the nose is too big but some people have big noses so meh.

It's not like there animish .

Chesso - no problem. I am glad that I could clarify.




I too had doubts that I drew the eyes and mouth (with teeth) a little big than it is. To verify, I overlayed the photo I used for reference on the image I drew with a bit of low transperency. It matched, and it looked like the proportions were correct.

It all lies in the use of light and dark tones to emphasise the curves. I have not yet reached that point yet, and I hope I catch those cruves and creases properly to accent the feminine feature. Thanks for pointing it out though.



She does have a chubby nose - but yeah. I need to flesh out the cheeks a bit more.

And even now - the teeth looks a bit big now. I studied the photo a bit in detail and here is what I found out. Brighter colours make the objects look bigger than they are. When I add shading, and tone it down a bit they will look in proportion.



Ha! Yeah. Anime does have the effect on how we expect the images of women to be - big eyes, small mouth. (Most of the times, no nose).

Here I was trying to draw a vector art that was close to reality.

Real women with big eyes and small mouths and next to no nose, for some reason the thought of that scares me greatly lol.

I think it would scare me too. I mean what has big eyes, small mouth and no nose?

Here is a quick and dirty sketch up in MSPaint:

Ok yeah, the big eyes, small mouth and no nose thing can stay with animation lol.