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Portraits inspired by BodoB


candacew

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My experience is primarily in Corel Painter, a raster program. (Previously, in traditional media.) I have always wanted to use vectors to create art, as I was originally inspired by the work of Charley Harper, (an abstract illustrator of the middle twentieth century) and his work is so obviously comprised of abstract shapes.

 

I am posting a collection of portraits that I created with Affinity Designer. The very talented artist, known as BodoB, has posted some very inspirational portraits which inspired me to try this difficult subject of human faces with vectors. My motivation is to learn to simplify!! With the raster program, or with pencil and sketchpad, I tend to start with the left eye and work outward, capturing every tiny detail. I believe that you can see my progression, from complicated details to simplification, in the attached works. (Not necessarily in the order presented!)

 

Thank you for creating this wonderful program.

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post-20761-0-34654900-1464047971_thumb.png

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Thank you, jmac! Spock is my favorite, also. He is the last one that I did, and I spent much less time on him. The others were actually better at earlier stages, but I did not save the early versions. The more that I do to them, the worse they get, lol!

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I don't think the others are bad. I do think that the Spock portrait is the best likeness and to me, captures the feel of the the individual being portrayed the best. It's interesting that the likeness to the persons they represent in other three is better when viewed at full size than it is in the thumbnails. Though the thumbnails are identifiable as the people they represent, there is something not quite right about them. Maybe studying the thumbnails could give you hints about what might need changing. For instance to my eye, the face in the Prince thumbnail seems too long. But I don't have your references and am not that familiar with Prince. I could be wrong but that is my initial reaction to that one. I think you have done a lot of great things as far as creating detail using vector shapes and I don't think you have to leave all of that out to accomplish what you are after. I like the simplified Spock portrait best because to me it captures him better than the others capture the subjects they represent. Maybe the simplification is the reason for that. I'm not sure.

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Hi candacew,

As you said this is not an easy subject and simplifying portraits maintaining their traits, keeping them recognisable is even more complicated.

All of them are easily identifiable but i also think Spock is closer to what you are looking for. One of the reasons is because it has very specific traits (eyebrows, the fringe line (bats) etc) that helps to reference the original person without requiring much detail. Looking for those traits and representing them (even if through some geometric expression rather than mimicking the natural lines picking some Charley Harper influence) is the way to get there, but only practise will help to really capture their "essence/likeness". It's way more harder than it looks but i think you're doing great. Just keep at it and don't forget to update this thread with your progress :)

Thanks for sharing.

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Thank you both for taking time to look and comment. I do appreciate the feedback so much. I got very involved in the shading, gradients, etc., on the Prince picture and totally lost the likeness. This is all a labor of love for me, and I enjoy spending hours learning how to use the program! I can say that, as a result of all of that over-working, I really picked up some proficiency in using the pen tool, which will pay off in future endeavors.

 

I decided to remove the Bowie picture, because it was based on a photo that was taken at the end of his life, when his illness was very evident. I prefer to remember him in a more vibrant time. I will start over with a different inspiration!

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Hi candacew,

we inspire each other, and this forum is one of the best places to do this. We take ideas and work with them, this is life :)

Spock is my favorite, also. A little more details in the eyes, maybe;-) I look forward to seeing more from you. Keep it up!

Illustration & Grafik bodobe.de

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