ed_the_atom
01-18-02, 07:48 PM
Before I begin the Malcolm M image some brief notes.
A lot of what I have read about capturing a likeness....while probably right in most cases, were not right for me.
Many artists ask... What is the basic form of the face? Round, square, triangular, long etc. Then work on their findings.
While I retain the form information I tend to dismiss it, because it is not what I am looking for.
Why? Well I tend to think that line of approach is for Industrious hacks. It is what I feel the face to be.....the message it gives my set of circumstances...the 'gesture' of the face... if you will. More of a subjective approach as opposed to an objective approach.
We see many faces, these faces mean a lot more to us, than looking for arguments sake at a block of wood. We are geared as humans to 'read' anothers face. So why are they so hard to capture on paper, or canvas for many people?
I believe we don't see the face, we see the actions of the face as we try to peer past it into the brain, or soul of another person. The face is transperant, a facade, or on the periphery etc.
It is much like a hand written sign. All people reading the sign see the words, or the message, not the individual letters. Ask a person to copy the sign from memory (obviously forgiving roughness) and upon completion not one of the novice sign makers will have any of their letter shapes right, or for that matter the kerning between letters. They will not achieve the 'flow' of the letter style......yet to them it looks 'right'. They will argue black and blue that an upper case M in block form is the same width as most of the other letters, while also maintaining the V shaped downstrokes stop halfway down the letter height....as pictured in the typed upper case M...here. They are wrong. Most block letter styles The V is the full height of the M letter, and at least one and a half times the width of the letter R.
So objective observation is necessary, but I keep it controlled. I may use it to find a recognisible "handle" to hang my likeness on, but that is as far as I go. I would rather paint, or exaggerate the'gesture' of the face to illuminate the emotion, feeling I receive, character etc to give what I term....'the smell to the orange'. Life is imparted to the image.
I don't know whether or not I have actually said anything there.......as to me, my approach is now the sum total of my portrait information, and has now been compacted into a 'Knowing'.
Gesture for the uninitiated....is the sum total of what a countenance (face), or body maybe doing.....smiling, every action of the face.....muscles, eyes, nose all contribute to make the smile happen...then we work on happiness....with color etc.....working above the objectivity. Thus completing the whole. For the body...if it was throwing a ball......everything the body is doing points to one thing......the ball.
A signature....is a gesture.
Anyway........I invite argument.
Below while I organise Malcolm.....is one of my likenesses of Bush in cartoon form. There are many ways of 'capturing' Bush. I chose this way. It isn't as simply drawn as it could be, nor is it necessarily "right'. There appears to be only four ways in which Bush's cartoon form is drawn by cartoonists.....my rendition falls into one of the four groups.
I have included a Bush tool here.....for anyone to play with, or alter to their own specifications. The tool is pictured on the left in the image. Colour works wonders on it. It has been optimised, so has lost a definition. You may argue it looks nothing like Bush, but hang a few 'Handles' about, as in the cartoon, and your mind tells you to forgive. I shall probably be bombed now. Cartoon done at the height of the 'Chad' war power struggle.
http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1011411901rzu.jpg
TOOL
bush1.zip (http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_file-1011412049gnt.zip)
Malcolm M........
Pic of him at http://www.indelibleinc.com/kubrick/films/clockwork/
In some ways it is a relatively easy image to copy. It is in a great deal of shade, there are defined blocks of colour, and it has some easily identifiable 'handles'.
What I do when wishing to copy a coloured image is to look at it for 5mins odd, then move on to the individual parts to see how they work within the whole.
That done, I have a mental understanding of the image. I then go and do something completely different for anything up to 2 years, then one day paint the image I saw. A break is needed from the initial study of the image. It has to have time to be 'absorbed' into your system. Thirty minutes is sufficient. You may not even have to consciously think of the image, just know it is in your mind.
Then I sit down to begin painting it....but before I touch anything......I ask myself 'What did I see?' What feeling does the image give me? What did the individual parts tell me? How am I going to answer the image's question?...in other words I am judging a view of the image through my set of circumstances. I have my answer......I see an image in my mind that has registered every nuance. In the image I feel danger, madness, human, the evil within myself, then slowly a yielding of the reptilian brain, and consciousness takes over. I then paint. Sounds ridiculous I know, but that is the best way I can explain it. Kinda Zen like.
I actually have the image inside myself in another form as well...the best way to explain it is...not in bitmap form, but in a kind of binary format. The image exists as a meme. It is its own life that floats the ether.
Yeah well.............
Whatever...... I now know the image, and how it works. It is a tangible life form.....not just a picture. Every part gives it breath. It exists.......and it demands. Everything that is human is embedded inside it...understand the freedom it needs, as it is constrained by colour, by thought, by ignorance.
By now, you must think I'm a complete tosser, however I am now relaxed enough....through the knowledge attained to paint the picture. Should I begin to falter, and the image inside my head wane....I stop.
When I have finished....I return to look at the image I have been copying, not my image. This is the first time I have looked at it since my initial study of it. Then I make objective adjustments.
This method of 'learning' the image, has another benefit......once painted......one can then paint it again practically perfect from your mind many years later.
Anyway enough....
Below are the tools necessary for the image.
I modelled only what was needed.....and then roughly. I was going to post the polymesh, but it was too big filewise. It wouldn't optimise very nicely. The optimised tools here are a right bugger to polymesh....the hat keeps changing position.....so good luck if you take that road. I polymeshed in my image, because it was the only way to have the hat fit the model properly. So if layers are used to place the hat.......some postwork adjustments will be needed.
The back of the hat is the rougher end....obviously. I modelled the likeness in its most basic form. All I needed is what the image told me, and I was looking at improving it with paint......which is perfectly achievable.
TO model a human likeness in 3d perfectly. ie have the whole head perfect......here I mean A portrait of a person who exists.......is a tough road. I can be done, but don't expect the profile will be correct, even if you have the frontal view correct.......It won't be.
I hope all that makes sense.......it's late and I'm tired. Plus I hadn't written this out earlier......I just began typing it all.
I'll read it later.
TOOLS BELOW
http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1011444853ebc.jpg
clokoo1op.zip (http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_file-1011445022oin.zip)
The hat axis is dead centre front......symmetry Y........don't ask.
1bowlerop.zip (http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_file-1011445153lqo.zip)
A lot of what I have read about capturing a likeness....while probably right in most cases, were not right for me.
Many artists ask... What is the basic form of the face? Round, square, triangular, long etc. Then work on their findings.
While I retain the form information I tend to dismiss it, because it is not what I am looking for.
Why? Well I tend to think that line of approach is for Industrious hacks. It is what I feel the face to be.....the message it gives my set of circumstances...the 'gesture' of the face... if you will. More of a subjective approach as opposed to an objective approach.
We see many faces, these faces mean a lot more to us, than looking for arguments sake at a block of wood. We are geared as humans to 'read' anothers face. So why are they so hard to capture on paper, or canvas for many people?
I believe we don't see the face, we see the actions of the face as we try to peer past it into the brain, or soul of another person. The face is transperant, a facade, or on the periphery etc.
It is much like a hand written sign. All people reading the sign see the words, or the message, not the individual letters. Ask a person to copy the sign from memory (obviously forgiving roughness) and upon completion not one of the novice sign makers will have any of their letter shapes right, or for that matter the kerning between letters. They will not achieve the 'flow' of the letter style......yet to them it looks 'right'. They will argue black and blue that an upper case M in block form is the same width as most of the other letters, while also maintaining the V shaped downstrokes stop halfway down the letter height....as pictured in the typed upper case M...here. They are wrong. Most block letter styles The V is the full height of the M letter, and at least one and a half times the width of the letter R.
So objective observation is necessary, but I keep it controlled. I may use it to find a recognisible "handle" to hang my likeness on, but that is as far as I go. I would rather paint, or exaggerate the'gesture' of the face to illuminate the emotion, feeling I receive, character etc to give what I term....'the smell to the orange'. Life is imparted to the image.
I don't know whether or not I have actually said anything there.......as to me, my approach is now the sum total of my portrait information, and has now been compacted into a 'Knowing'.
Gesture for the uninitiated....is the sum total of what a countenance (face), or body maybe doing.....smiling, every action of the face.....muscles, eyes, nose all contribute to make the smile happen...then we work on happiness....with color etc.....working above the objectivity. Thus completing the whole. For the body...if it was throwing a ball......everything the body is doing points to one thing......the ball.
A signature....is a gesture.
Anyway........I invite argument.
Below while I organise Malcolm.....is one of my likenesses of Bush in cartoon form. There are many ways of 'capturing' Bush. I chose this way. It isn't as simply drawn as it could be, nor is it necessarily "right'. There appears to be only four ways in which Bush's cartoon form is drawn by cartoonists.....my rendition falls into one of the four groups.
I have included a Bush tool here.....for anyone to play with, or alter to their own specifications. The tool is pictured on the left in the image. Colour works wonders on it. It has been optimised, so has lost a definition. You may argue it looks nothing like Bush, but hang a few 'Handles' about, as in the cartoon, and your mind tells you to forgive. I shall probably be bombed now. Cartoon done at the height of the 'Chad' war power struggle.
http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1011411901rzu.jpg
TOOL
bush1.zip (http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_file-1011412049gnt.zip)
Malcolm M........
Pic of him at http://www.indelibleinc.com/kubrick/films/clockwork/
In some ways it is a relatively easy image to copy. It is in a great deal of shade, there are defined blocks of colour, and it has some easily identifiable 'handles'.
What I do when wishing to copy a coloured image is to look at it for 5mins odd, then move on to the individual parts to see how they work within the whole.
That done, I have a mental understanding of the image. I then go and do something completely different for anything up to 2 years, then one day paint the image I saw. A break is needed from the initial study of the image. It has to have time to be 'absorbed' into your system. Thirty minutes is sufficient. You may not even have to consciously think of the image, just know it is in your mind.
Then I sit down to begin painting it....but before I touch anything......I ask myself 'What did I see?' What feeling does the image give me? What did the individual parts tell me? How am I going to answer the image's question?...in other words I am judging a view of the image through my set of circumstances. I have my answer......I see an image in my mind that has registered every nuance. In the image I feel danger, madness, human, the evil within myself, then slowly a yielding of the reptilian brain, and consciousness takes over. I then paint. Sounds ridiculous I know, but that is the best way I can explain it. Kinda Zen like.
I actually have the image inside myself in another form as well...the best way to explain it is...not in bitmap form, but in a kind of binary format. The image exists as a meme. It is its own life that floats the ether.
Yeah well.............
Whatever...... I now know the image, and how it works. It is a tangible life form.....not just a picture. Every part gives it breath. It exists.......and it demands. Everything that is human is embedded inside it...understand the freedom it needs, as it is constrained by colour, by thought, by ignorance.
By now, you must think I'm a complete tosser, however I am now relaxed enough....through the knowledge attained to paint the picture. Should I begin to falter, and the image inside my head wane....I stop.
When I have finished....I return to look at the image I have been copying, not my image. This is the first time I have looked at it since my initial study of it. Then I make objective adjustments.
This method of 'learning' the image, has another benefit......once painted......one can then paint it again practically perfect from your mind many years later.
Anyway enough....
Below are the tools necessary for the image.
I modelled only what was needed.....and then roughly. I was going to post the polymesh, but it was too big filewise. It wouldn't optimise very nicely. The optimised tools here are a right bugger to polymesh....the hat keeps changing position.....so good luck if you take that road. I polymeshed in my image, because it was the only way to have the hat fit the model properly. So if layers are used to place the hat.......some postwork adjustments will be needed.
The back of the hat is the rougher end....obviously. I modelled the likeness in its most basic form. All I needed is what the image told me, and I was looking at improving it with paint......which is perfectly achievable.
TO model a human likeness in 3d perfectly. ie have the whole head perfect......here I mean A portrait of a person who exists.......is a tough road. I can be done, but don't expect the profile will be correct, even if you have the frontal view correct.......It won't be.
I hope all that makes sense.......it's late and I'm tired. Plus I hadn't written this out earlier......I just began typing it all.
I'll read it later.
TOOLS BELOW
http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1011444853ebc.jpg
clokoo1op.zip (http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_file-1011445022oin.zip)
The hat axis is dead centre front......symmetry Y........don't ask.
1bowlerop.zip (http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_file-1011445153lqo.zip)