Haha! Excellent!

Modifying angles, lighting, or the original 3D form of the reference is the kind of stuff I'd like to ultimately do when using references. Just anything that demands the 3D form is understood so that it could be used to produce other 3D forms is what would benefit me most. I tend to be more 2D-oriented when copying photos regardless of whether I'm using measuring devices or just freehanding, and that's useful for copying 2D images, but not for inventing 3D ones. I tend to ask questions like, "what's the 2D shape of this highlight? How does it relate vertically and horizontally to this other mark?" Rather than, "what's the 3D form of this figure"? If I understood the 3D form, then I could invent my own highlights without using the precise shapes in the photograph.

I pretty much knew this picture wasn't what I should have been doing when I started on it based on my goals, regardless of the grid (though the grid made it that much worse). I set out only to draw the reference as accurately as possible and nothing more. In that sense, it's one of my biggest failures since that's the last thing I want to be doing in the future as I progress. I didn't even try to experiment with painterly techniques - I was trying to be as unpainterly as possible in this one so that it would look just like a photo. Generally I get the most comments about the painterly aspects of my works when working from photos, but this time I really wanted to try not being painterly (I tend to be painterly for economical purposes, not intentionally). I didn't even really achieve the photorealism I intended to achieve despite the use of the grid for the line drawing, so I didn't even succeed in that respect. While it's completely against my personal goals, I still admire the artists on here who can make their paintings look just like a photograph. I was hoping to achieve it here, but I think I deviated too much in the shading and still relied too much on lines which gave that sort of cartoony effect in places.

omg biggest posts ever. great pic and i've been a victim of the grid in the past. when the masters of the past were working on frescoes - they couldn't draw straight from life, so they did their preliminary drawing and they would grid that whole wall up before doing some of the greatest paintings ever made, theres no shame :):)

Mmm... (damn you essay writters.)

I really like this! did you really spend that much time on this?? Now that's patience. He looks so much like someone I know....I can't put my finger on it...

Wow just..... wow. You belong, believe me.

Reminds me of General Zod from Superman. Without the crown.

Version 1 looks like a comicbook panel.
Version 2 looks like a bronze statue.
And the 3rd I mentioned.
WOWZERS.

just awesome! love the tendons in his neck..yowza.

This would have been great when we were all doing Halloweeny pics ..hehee she sorta looks like Rush Limbaugh.. hehe

ABC

What a horrible beast. Great facial structure.

nice!! i like the colouring...and the face of course :)

DOODLE MORE. <333

Looks like that alien from simpsons

I wish you would work on this a bit more comd, it's a fabulous detailed piece. Color color color....

It has a Giegeresque feel to it. This will be great.

pretty cool stuff, David...looks a little bit like one of the coneheads from Saturday Night Live... :) (I like the labyrinth design inside the outline of her face)

I like them both, too. This latest one sort of looks like a combination of Anthony Hopkins, and Charles Laughton.

Anthony Hopkins and Charles Laughton.... on a stick!!!
...I'm sorry.

I like this thing you do where you add colour/value with little short lines. Looks cool, very different from other stuff seen here.

Thanks everyone, but yes, I was really wondering what was up with the comments. Did everyone else realize this is a head impaled on a stick with blood coming out of the eyes and the eye on the right being pushed out of the eye socket? I think it's really ugly and nasty: a terrible thing to look at. I was in a terrible mood when I doodled this, and it was really frustrating to me that I couldn't delete that original version which wasn't even marked as finished. Now I wish once again that I could delete, as this is a thing of nightmares.

The short little strokes and scribbles are really just me being lazy. I want to not be so painterly and blend things in, but I had a hard time doing this in lascaux. In painter, I tend to paint this scribbly way at first, but then I use the blend tools to quickly smudge them into these nice smooth regions of color. I can't really do that so easily in lascaux. :(

Hmm, if you're going for tougher, I think first thing you might wanna do is, get rid of some of the 'aged' definition in his face. You'd especially wanna lighten up on the wrinkling below and around the eyes, and the lines going all the way around the mouth (mostly that bit under the mouth). Another tip to making a 'tough' looking character would be to go for a more square-er face, especially in the jaws (widen them and making the angles of the jaw, sharper).
Hopefully this will help some :-/...

Thanks Gigandas - this is just a construction schematic, so the contour lines are there not to add character but just for me to establish a feel for the topology. By tougher I just mean not necessarily comedic or prone to caricature, as Don Knotts certainly is (not necessarily a tough character, but just some head with a very prominent skull which doesn't have any really exaggerated features). I'm hoping to find some way to establish the base for a skull-head from which I can get some sense of how to draw heads at different angles, but a Don Knotts head is kind of an odd one to start out with. I'd appreciate any help along the way with respect to anatomical correctness and perspective (digital alterations appreciated). The faster I can construct them without significant errors, the better.

I agree with Gig about tough guys often having a squareness of the face, that kind of hulking-brute look. But I think that wrinkles and such don't detract from a person looking tough; done a certain way, wrinkles and other imperfections can make a guy look wizened and tough. Clint Eastwood has had wrinkles for quite some time but with that squint of his he still looks tough as nails.

I'm really impressed by your dedication, comd. If you don't end up improving by leaps and bounds (good as you are already) I think it'd be some sort of cosmic crime. I can't really give you any advice on anatomy or such, but you might try asking Cloxboy about that - he draws tons of faces at all sorts of angles without references. IIRC, he did tons of anatomy drawings back in the day, so he might be able to guide you along the path to anatomical enlightenment. ;)

Thanks danvincipollag. I want to be able to tackle some complex angles. This one was just a straight on shot, so I just tried to draw fairly symmetrical here. I still got the eyes pretty off. :( I noticed in the thumbnail for the earlier revisions that one was quite a bit higher than the other.

I'm still quite stuck at just drawing heads. I still have a long way to go before I can draw full-figured characters at any angle I want without creating a picture I hate.

For the antialiasing, it makes a huge difference in file size. I think I would have went past my limit already by now if I had turned it on.