This week was the first attempt at doing portraits. I think the hardest thing was that I had to spend a week looking at myself (hahaha). This is what I have been waiting for this whole semester so I was so excited to jump into this week!
Although I watched a lot of Youtube and TikToks on how to do portraits on procreate it was harder to follow them because my picture is different then the picture they created. Some of the first things that I learned is that I was actually tracing the picture. And after I realized this my attempts became significantly better from that point on. The next tip that I took was that for the style that I wanted I need to outline everything in black and then go from there. This made it easier having a stencil of the picture on one layer. And about layers I learned that you NEED to break up almost everything in layers. This makes everything easier because if you have a mistake you aren’t erasing all your work it is just a small layer. Finally, for this piece I wanted to add definition so I chose to do that by adding some shading. This was kind of just sprinkled in from some portraits that I have seen over the years. Although I took a lot of the information of what they had to say I had to branch out on my own.
Still I was having troubles with the hair and eyebrows so I reached out to Caelyn (who is also doing Procreate for her Learning Project) and she helped big time. She was able to give me some tips on how to shade the eyebrows so that they are not so harsh all the way through. And that I need to put the darker colour of the hair on the majority and the lighter in with little strokes like the ones in this TikTok. As you can see the little strokes that this person adds to the blonde hair. And with this my piece came together nicely! And I am excited to say that this is my ABSOLUTE favourite piece I have done so far!
