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Mastering The Hardest Part of Likeness in Portraits - My Process Video and Brushes!
🕑 Added 2025-10-31 16:59:51 +0000 UTCHello, here are some thoughts and practical tips behind practice 75 and 76. Subscribe to unlock process videos, my brushes, files, and more!
Drinking Water
I liked this cute little moment of nature, but I mostly picked this reference for how challenging its composition was, not only the water but the amount of information the ox had (I'm not sure if it's an ox). For instance, I aim to simplify patterns, shapes, and tones, but the shadow on its head was not sharp, and the different tones of fur were a real pain in the ass to capture with few strokes.
At the beginning of the process, you can see how I defined the shadows and other basic tones, but I figured this particular subject would not look that great with a cell shading approach. So I ended up playing around with textures, and what turned out to be complex (the water render) ended up being way simpler than the animal.
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Mastering the Hardest Part of Likeness in Portraits - Patrick Bateman
I chose this picture because besides being a funny moment in the movie, in which a bunch of full-grown men are competing for who has the best presentation card, I liked the light, the face expression, and the hands. I don't usually do fan art, but if I do, I want to make it out of films or very rare subjects.
For these particular practices, I often struggle the most with the likeness of my drawings in relation to the actor. Lately, I'm not just trying to get my drawing to be a copy. I want to keep one or two features that help the viewer identify the person quickly and change the rest of the facial features toward a more stylized anatomy, similar to the characters I usually create from imagination. The essential features for likeness are often the eyes and perhaps something extra, depending on the most iconic feature in the real face. As for the features for style, I like to keep the nose without nostrils, no facial lines of expression, or little to no information with line art in the face, smooth as possible.
How to practice to get that likeness of the eyes? Very simple, just focus on drawing the eyes of celebrities. Perhaps you could ask a friend if they can recognize who these eyes are from. This is probably one of the hardest things to master, as I still do after years of practice.
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To Learn to See Requires Daily Practice - The King
This last one was a piece of cake. After two hardcore practices, I wanted to go easy on the last one and to play around with the reflection in this material. It's funny how I manage to spot information at first sight when I look at the reference and then proceed to make strokes, but the more I dive into these types of surfaces, the more I keep finding little lights around spots that my brain just ignored. I think developing a vision is not something you achieve and it's done. It feels like a work in progress in which you get reset very frequently and need to start again, to pay attention every single time, no matter how long you have been doing this.
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An Unconventional Cat
I wanted to try something unconventional, so I chose a subject I knew people on the internet like, which is cats, but not just a cute cat but a cat in a weird place. What I also liked about this picture is how the top of the composition looked as white as the IG interface. This also seemed interesting to me from a composition perspective. I did not expect this practice to go viral because I have a set of rules I don't cross when posting, like not showing the face of whatever I'm painting is often a no, but fuck it, I wanted to take a little risk. After all, what's the point of doing this if I cannot have a bit of fun? I think I'll be doing more unconventional practices later, just to see what happens.
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Start Organic and Adjust After - The Van
This reference has been in my files for a while, but I skipped it because I felt it would be too much work for a prop. I like to put the effort into more human- or animal-like practices, but since the cat was not a complex practice, I felt in order to balance the post I needed to paint a challenging subject.
The van in principle looked stylized already. That's why I liked it. The perspective was great, the colors simple and beautiful, and the reflection was a nice touch for contrast. I like to start these practices by building as much as I can without grids or guides and then, after, I refine some edges and adjust straight lines. This way I can keep part of the shape a little bit organic and chaotic but maintain the clean geometric shapes from reality.
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Perfect Shape/Perspective Drawing Practice - Ducks
So while this seemed to be a very simple challenge, I find value in practicing shape understanding. If you are starting your drawing practices, take pictures like this in which the level of complexity in the shape is so little that you can draw it from different perspectives. Use geometric shapes to match the size on each and understand three-dimensional space in objects. Artists like to skip these silly challenges and go for a very complex reference, and then they can't seem to spot what's off. Try little steps before you run.
Practice 75/76 Process Video: https://youtu.be/31LCzVhVHy4
Brushes: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1wHu8wuEHjDk-VfnZqv8iy8rwnvu8Ngmj?usp=sharing
Pre-order my book Life in Every Sketch on the 3DTotal shop: https://rebrand.ly/The-Art-of-RamonN90
Please let me know if you have any questions!
