Realistic Self-Portrait

One thing I was given feedback was the size and curvature of my eyes. They were far too big and a bit too wide. I went back and redrew both eyes significantly smaller and changed the curves, making them much more realistic. I also received feedback that my neck was way too long and needed to be altered. Because my hair complete covers any shoulder lines I had to define my collarbone in order to make the neck look right. After doing so I think the entire portrait looks much better.

The very first I thing I noticed when I put the two portraits side by side was the shape of the face. In my pre-instructional portrait my face is very long and skinny, and the mouth is practically on my chin. In my final my face is much rounder and softer, and the features are all in the right place. The next thing I noticed was my neck, which was way too long. I got a lot of feedback on how to properly define the length of the neck in the portrait process, and I’m very happy with it’s size in my final. I also saw in my pre-instructional portrait that my eyes are far too big and reach almost to the sides of my face. In my final I was careful to make them smaller and define the curves better so they looked more natural. The last thing I notice is that my hair is very, very flat. It has little line variation, and almost none of the strands differ in direction so the hair has no volume or shape to it. In my final I was able to add different sizes and directions of lines, as well as focused more on highlights and shadows, so it had much more motion and volume which, I think, gave it more dimension.