Pair of Females *Caution - Nudity*

I did these a few months ago at the request of a female friend, although I obviously never got around to finishing one of them. A bit different from my normal work since I've only drawn nudes a couple times in my life and even then I wasn't really trying. So here you go, my first actual attempt at drawing nekkid wimmen folk. Maybe one day I'll even go back and finish the second one.

Blue jeans.
Green dress.

Any criticism besides the odd proportions of the blue jeans crotch area (which I didn't realize until it was too much trouble for me to fix) are welcome.

The second one looks the best, because all the proportions are pretty...proportional.

The first one...the waist is waaaaay too small. And the hips look great, but gargantuan when compared to the former.

And I only gripe because I've seen your work before, and know you're incredibly talented. I dunno...ask some girls if they'll pose for you? The worst that could come from it is a slap on the face and a restraining order. =p

My females don't need rib cages! Cool, thanks.

And I could definately use a restraining order.

The figures and drawings don't remind me of life drawings but more of anime-esque renditions. I think it's because her face comes to a point and her head and figures aren't proportioned like a typical human being would. However, the painterly and pastel qualities of it make me overlook the figure issues.

It's nice, but the figure needs work. If you didn't tell us you drew this from an actual model I don't think anybody would have thought it was.

Nice work.

I think hair and clothing is your strong point.

Nice drawings Mech. I like that you're painting over the pencils, and not necessarily leaving the line art (so the final product looks more like a painting and less like a colored drawing). Here's some things that stick out to me, giving some allowance for artist's style and sort of thing. Your characters seem more anime-styled, which automatically tends to throw away some rules about head size and stuff like that.

First though, the things I really liked. The hair on both is really well done, and the design for the wispy trailers of hair in the second pic are cool. The second pic is much stronger overall, and she has a great, really expressive face, and that hand holding the cigarette is pretty much perfect. Nice.

However...there's some proportion and anatomical issues. It looks like you used the "stick figure" method of figure building, which I do too, so I went over your pic in purple, showing what it seems like your "stick figure" looks like. In blue, I showed how I'd correct it, but I make no claims to being right either :)

Fig 1. General rule, a body is divided in half from top of head to bottom of crotch, and from bottom of crotch to bottom of feet. In your picture, her upper half is only a little longer than just her thigh...so her legs are way too long if you stood her up. Her right arm is way too long also; trying doing it yourself. The elbows should rest at about the waist, but hers is almost there now and it's foreshortened. Thigh bones should be coming out of the socket, yours are coming from underneath the pelvis. I place the level of her eyes bit lower.

In both pics, you have the breast pushed together, which doesn't happen naturally. Now, when a girl reaches straight up, the muscles will pull and stretch breasts upward and apart...they really have to have their elbows in close or shoulders very pectorally pulled in (like vintage capcom art) to get the cleavage effect. For your pose, they'd just hang naturally.

Fig 2. Overall, fewer problems. Main area is in the hips again. She seems to be sitting on her left hip joint, with no meat around it, and her right leg seems to connect the same place. Character seems very long limbed as well, but it seems like that's part of your style...however, her right leg is still way too long. Compare the purple upper leg lines, about 1.5x bigger than her left. Her left arm might be pushing her breast in bit, but they still look stiff. In my corrected version, if her left arm was to rest on her thigh (since the thigh couldn't anatomically be where it is now) it wouldn't affect the breast at all.

Anyway, hope you find that helpful, and I hope it doesn't seem like I'm bashing your stuff. The second one really is neat; as you may have found though, it's much easier to criticize the things that are "almost there" than something far more rudimentary.

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Originally Posted by Andrew

It's nice, but the figure needs work. If you didn't tell us you drew this from an actual model I don't think anybody would have thought it was.

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He didn't say they were drawn from a model, just for a female friend.

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Originally Posted by Andrew

It's nice, but the figure needs work. If you didn't tell us you drew this from an actual model I don't think anybody would have thought it was.

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These were totally from my head, FYI. And thank you.

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Originally Posted by FuryFox

However...there's some proportion and anatomical issues. It looks like you used the "stick figure" method of figure building, which I do too, so I went over your pic in purple, showing what it seems like your "stick figure" looks like.

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Technically, yes. I use a stick + "bubbles" sketching, the latter for head, upper body, and hips.

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In your picture, her upper half is only a little longer than just her thigh...so her legs are way too long if you stood her up.

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I'd imagine I did this because I've rarely (if ever) drawn a person head-on while kneeling, so that probably just totally threw me off.

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Thigh bones should be coming out of the socket, yours are coming from underneath the pelvis.

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This came about from me raising the pelvis in a failed attempt to fix that proportional screwup.

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Now, when a girl reaches straight up, the muscles will pull and stretch breasts upward and apart...they really have to have their elbows in close or shoulders very pectorally pulled in (like vintage capcom art) to get the cleavage effect.

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I know this but I don't think it even occured to me during the first drawing, must be from drawing too many shirted women. Hadn't really noticed it before but her breasts are mystically drawn together. For the second one I figured the right breast was pretty much hanging and her left arm was partially pushing in the one on that side, but maybe it just doesn't look right to others and I'm a bit blinded towards my own art.

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Character seems very long limbed as well, but it seems like that's part of your style

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Yeah, I kinda enjoy that. I used to draw muscular male characters closer to gorillas, with bigger forearms, hands, and calves then they should've had and longer-limbed then they should've been.

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Anyway, hope you find that helpful

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Very much so, thank you greatly! Your sketches are also quite helpful.

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and I hope it doesn't seem like I'm bashing your stuff.

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Not in the slightest.

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The second one really is neat; as you may have found though, it's much easier to criticize the things that are "almost there" than something far more rudimentary.

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Is it ever.

Couple comments of my own: I love the hair of the first one and am in absolute adoration with her mouth. The second one is more proportional because I spent way more time tuning her base sketch (you can see a lot of the original marks, like how far out her right knee was), although her left shoulder bugs me and I don't like her lips as much.

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Originally Posted by MechDeus

Couple comments of my own: I love the hair of the first one and am in absolute adoration with her mouth.

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You know, I didn't notice it so much at first (probably because I was in picky-picky mode), but you're totally right on that. Those are really great lips, and I think lips are really hard to draw. They either disappear or become too pronounced and tacky if you try too hard. The first drawing hits it just right. The eye is great too. That's a neat style you've developed, with the long narrow eyes, versus the big dinner-plate eyes you see a lot.

Can you go into detail how you went about coloring the images?

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Originally Posted by Regus

Can you go into detail how you went about coloring the images?

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Let's see what I can do:

I started by taking a real picture and grabbing three colors, a base, a dark, and a highlight. For the first picture I used a shot of Veronica Zemanova because her skin was exactly the color I wanted, and then I browsed her body with the dropper (this was all Photoshop, btw) until I found three colors that went well together. As you can see in the second pic I first lay either the base or the highlight color on a different layer then the sketch. The sketch still becomes a slight part of the final picture, as all the dark lines you see in the first pics face is from the line drawing, although the rest of it is hidden for the "snapshot."

Base sketch.

Then I trace the away from light portions with the darker color and begin layering the highlight shade whenever I feel it need be. This is when I start busting out the Blur and Smudge tools and if need be I'll grab an extra color or two for enhanced light or dark.

Almost everything is a seperate layer; hair, jeans, boots, skin, and facial detail. Most of it is sketching with color and then blurring as need be, although the jeans took far longer then I thought. I think I recolored them a few times because I'm not the greatest with flow lines in clothing in regards to a person's stance, so I kept redoing the shadowing trying to get the creases right. There was plenty of Smudge tool here, if you couldn't already tell.

It was worse with the second picture because I first tried coloring the torso without stealing colors from a real pic and it ended up looking terrible. I then tried to dick around with hue, saturation, and all that but it just never looked right so I had to scrap that and start over. Then came trying to make the dress look like it was silk, but I had a hard time doing it by hand so I tried a bit of beleveling, which sorta worked but not for the full dress spilling all over so I'll end up having to toss it out anyway.

I also tried debated on footwear for a while, the first girl was going to be barefoot but then I thought sneakers would be real cute. After looking at the sneakers for a while someone else suggested boots and we all agreed that they looked far superior.

Sneakers.

The hair was done by laying the main color first and then using a fine brush to run red lines at the bottom on up and white lines for the highlights up top. I wanted the red strands to be more like fine hair so I left them alone but the highlights I blurred to give it more of a glossy look. The nipples were a bit harder then I thought because it took a few tried to get a color that worked with her skin, I think I initially tried a purplish and then more pink before I realized brown was the way to go.

FYI: Everything was done using the brush tool at usually size 2 or 3.

So, um, anything I missed or that you want elaborated?

i wish i could draw like you guys.....but maybe i will start today. I guess i will start sketching something and post it later