Here is the pic I am working on:

   I am using Corel Painter (for the first time with this pic) Any way, what I really need help on is her face right now.  Something about the structure of her face looks wrong but I can't figure it out.  I want her to be very beautiful, and right now, at least to me, she's not.  If you need to do a paint over to show me what needs to be fixed, that is fine, and if you see anything besides the face that needs fixing please tell me!!! Be harsh, I can take it. :)

 

Ah, well, beauty is in the eyes of beholder... I think she looks great.

Usually, an attractive face is very avarage looking. So if your facial features are very even and avarage, human brains will have easier time to process the information, which is more pleasant, so it is "pretty." Right now, you can see her cheekbones, so maybe it will help if you tone those down a little bit. Also, you can giver her some eyelashes. 

If you bring out the highlights and just polish up the details, I think it will look amazing. She is quite pretty to start out with, I think, so you just have to finish the painting and it will work out. Here, I polished the image a bit; I made the eyes a little bigger and her mouth a little smaller and the lips a little thicker, and I gave the dry lips some moisture so it looks like she is gonna give you a big munch munch, but everything else is pretty much the same.

Thank you very much! She does look much prettier with a few adjustments! I hadn't added details yet because I thought there was something wrong with the actual structure of her face. Does the lighting look right? The diamond shaped crystal (which isn't painted yet) is supposed to be glowing.  Also, if you can see anything else (in the background, or in the composition that needs changing or would be "better" please let me know! Hopefully I can post an update soon! :) Thanks again

Yian makes it look easy, but anything easier if you know what to do. The thing that brings a face to life is highlights. The gloss of her lips, the sparkle in her eyes,  the glow on cheeks and nose which take away the flatness. I look forward to the update.

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Normally the face is one of the easiest parts for me.  I love putting lots of highlights and playing with the tones of the shadows, but her face has just looked "wrong" in this one... I was hesitant to add details yet because I thought I was going to have to make some serious changes to her face. Thanks for commenting! :)

Hello Ace! I'm sorry I don't have a lot of time to verbally explain how I did your paint over, so I must be brief but if you have any questions don't hesitate to ask. I'm sorry I'm also not good with words.

Anyhoo, such a beautiful painting it made me rethink my ethics. XD I vowed never to do paint-overs, but.. what the hell. It's a gorgeous piece and I see so much of myself in it technique wise that it scared me!

 So.

What I did using Yian's paintover:

-Added shadows around her eye to hint at the roundness of the eyeball under the lids and skin.
-Added more skin tones towards the temples instead of eyeshadow and used the "Basic Round" brush on Jitter 1 and low opacity to get the glittery effect of makeup to hint at the color instead of coating it.
-Defined the chin with shadows on the neck, though this may be something you want to soften
-Added more forms in the cheekbones to hint at the hollow mouth underneath
-Added more shadows AND highlights to the mouth (check that out, highlight more on the bottom area of the lip, more shadow on the top).
-Gave her some musculature on the brow just above the eyebrows then sculpted the eyebrows to fit the form of her skull.
-Widened her nose and gave more shadows around the eyes and nose, roughly using the tutorial found here: http://www.furiae.com/popup.php?text=nosetutorial (I'm such a Linda Bergkvist Tutorial Link Whore. I know! I'm sorry) Please note that I couldn't finish the nose, as it was the last thing I did. I only found her nose a little narrow as the corners should generally fall under the tear ducts and I think I might have moved the tear ducts in the reshape.
-Widened her lips. I know I might have lost a bit of her expression, but damn I love big lips. Also, didn't finish any texture or adding the glossy wetness Yian did. But he did an awesome job there.
-Redid the eyes and got this.. far off look. x_x I am incapable of making a character look at the freaking "camera".>_<

I realize somehow I turned her almost.. African, with such exaggerated features, so I apologize. I kept thinking of dreadlocks when I saw her hair... Dreadlocks and then the stormy sea made me think of Storm from X-Men...

 So. A bit of constructive criticism and a pointer or two, if I may.

 

1. Just a guess, you're using a photo reference "too much". (Well, not too much, it just seems as if you're trying to duplicate it too hard. Trying to be too perfect).

While photos are wonderful tools, so many beginner artists use it as a crutch (Myself included!). It's the easy way out to anatomy. If the figure is there, why should we learn it? The problem is, we tend to try and only see 2-D. We only "choose" to see certain aspects of a figure. Period. I don't care who you are. The problem with that technique is that we don't strive to understand the colors and shapes that we are trying to represent and therefore they appear "off" or "wrong" somehow or just "not quite what we wanted".

This is why soooooo many artist harp on and on about learning your anatomy - yes. LEARN your anatomy. Learn what the heck is going on, don't just learn the painful names and places of bones and muscles. It does you no good. Understand how they interact to give such shapes to the human body. Screw "parrot" learning as I heard Em call it.

 2. As with what I said before, it's most important to get form perfect. Once you understand form, color comes into play.

When dealing with the two at the same time when learning, we struggle to define where form ends and color begins. My guess on why you're having trouble with something 'just not feeling right' is that you're concentrating on using color to express form.

A case example in your drawing is how you are using her makeup to define her eye's socket and lids, not shadows.

Some artists choose to learn how to paint in black and white, perfect the form and then go to color because it's easier to work on one thing at a time. Others use color to sculpt. I think it's a personal preference - there is no right and wrong.

3. This is a personal note XD I noticed... while concentrating on making her beautiful, I can tell you want to erase imperfections. I noticed there are no wrinkles. No beauty marks. Her face is very very smooth. As if you were trying to concentrate on making her look "Barbie" perfect. Barbie is plastic. Barbie is a doll. Screw Barbie.

Sometimes, however, imperfections make us beautiful. I don't care what science says about an "average" of looks.

After all, the importance of beauty or attractiveness in the scientific sense (cause we have to do this scientifically) is to attract the opposite sex, yes?

Well what does the opposite sex like?

This isn't a hard question.

Boobies and 'tocks.

So, by definition she is already beautiful.

Yes, it's that simple. (See Yian's response? XD)

I must be the ONLY freak in the entire world whose perfect would rather have strange features and interesting faces to paint. Perfection is boring- anyone can achieve a Barbie perfection. Real talent, I have found, is making something unique and yours and different.

 

As a closing note, I would like to say that I see in you real talent and potential and by the way you're striving to better your art, a willingness to learn you have everything needed in the recipe for success. I meant no offense by anything said above, I never know how people will take one of my critiques but please know I did it all with a smile on my face and no malice in my heart.

I cannot wait to see what you do with this, and I am definitely looking forward to more posts from you.

vonicker the pic isn't showing up so I took the liberty to reupload it in my post. :) Everyone this is vonicker's paintover.

 

Well, I'm not so sure about her big nostris (and the sturcture of her nose seems a little strange) and heavy eyebrows. She now has every feature of a face, from big and small, and they are all very, very prominent. Some of them could be a little too strong, in my opinion. I thinm if you want an attractive face, you might want to downplay certain elements. This is why a lot of celebrity's photo get lots of Photoshop work done in a magazine. Those shops might make their face look unreal, but it certain very pretty. This paintover looks a little too real for me.

Thank you Yi! We saw that same problem at the same time XD

My husband says it's looks like Tia Dalma:


I'm inclined to agree a wee bit. XD

vonolckers:

My husband says it's looks like Tia Dalma:


I'm inclined to agree a wee bit. XD

 That's a good thing. Naomie Harris is gorgeous. 

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Taste varies so much. To me Vonolckers version is a bit of an ugly mare, soz. I think Ace should take on board the advice and post his/her own version.

I've been having a look at the image at the top of this thread, and it's a strange thing - the larger version of the face looks attractive enough, albeit in an average way, while the reduced version looks quite ugly.

From that, I'm guessing that it's not the proportions of the features that are the problem at all. I think the problem is with the makeup - when reduced, the tones are making the features seem differently shaped to what they really are.

 

 

That's my take on it. 

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Thanks everyone!

vonockers: Thanks for doing a paintover for me, but it is still not showing up, even in Yian's re-upload.  I would really love to see it. Thank you sooo much for such an in depth critque, even without seeing the paint over it helped me a lot.  As for using a photo referance, I did originally have a referance, and was at first trying to make it too much like the referance, but I started over again on the face from scratch, without looking at the ref.  I haven't even looked at the ref in weeks (yes this pic is taking me a very long time to finish).  I will try and learn my anatomy better though. Thanks for the compliments too, by the way.

 em...: I noticed that too, but I didn't realize it was the tones of the makeup that could be causeing it, I will play around with the makeup and see if it looks better at a distance.

 I will try and update soon with the changes I fell are needed (out of everyones crits and feature suggestions). However I have school and work, plus I am still not used to Corel Painter yet... I miss my photoshop.  Meanwhile, here is a small update I did after Yian posted a paintover (the irises of her eyes are different sizes O.o, also I think her face looks better from a distance in this one):

Looks like you are staying with the Barbie doll look. Average as it is, that's probably not a bad idea. Barbie is easy to appreciate, so it works well in a illustration of a beautiful woman. Unless you decide to attach a 2 page long artists statement to every drawing of woman you do and convince your audience that this is a drawing of a pretty woman, you probably want to do something that everyone can understand.

Very nice! LOving the face aceoni!

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