Spent 5 hours on a digital portrait and the eyes ended up looking like a cartoon frog.

I was zoomed in so close I couldn't see the big picture. Has anyone else had to scrap a piece because one feature just refused to cooperate?

2 comments

2 Comments

andrew91618d ago

24 years of doing portraits here. I had to scrap a watercolor last month after 8 hours because the nose just would not cooperate no matter what I tried. @the_simon makes a good point about catching small problems, but I think spending that long on one area trains your eyes to see things that aren't actually there. Sometimes you just need to walk away for a day and come back with fresh eyes, or even better, start a new piece and use what you learned that didn't work.

the_simon18d ago

Actually I'd push back on that a bit. Zooming in tight on details is exactly how you catch the small problems that make a portrait look off, and five hours isn't wasted if you learned what doesn't work. The whole idea that you should always step back and see the big picture sounds nice, but sometimes a portrait fails because you didn't stare long enough at the eyes to fix the little asymmetries and reflections that your first pass missed.