1 Hour Portrait Study

Sat down today and was able to try a portrait. I always have this internal fear that causes hesitation before I try something like this. These types of drawings always upset me. I hate looking at an observational drawing and then comparing it to the reference and seeing how badly the proportions are off. Anyways, I went for it and after an hour I had this pretty close. It doesn't look like the actor in the photo but it's decent. And I refined the lines and shapes several times over before it looked reasonable.

Update: I've added some quick overlays in Photoshop and used some contrast/color adjustments to create both a specular map and glossy map that gave me the following results. I'm pretty happy with this and I think I'll move on to the next prop for my scene. This lantern took me one week from start to finish.

Update: Got most of the color texture done. I'm not the best painter because I struggle with color and I don't quite have a process. As a result, I just go at it painting away in an uncontrolled and experimental manner until I'm happy enough with what I see.

Update: Finished sculpting phase mostly. Next I will add some imperfections like scratches and a dent or two. I'll soon texture this lantern to look old and fill the crevices with dirt.

Tonight, I worked on one of the many lanterns I plan to have in my bazaar scene. This is two days of work so far. I just started right in with Zbrush sculpting using the default sphere. I spent a few hours making Photoshop patterns observed from reference photos.