Portraits are Hard to Do

I like to try to capture what people really look like the best that I can. Using digital tools has the advantage of allowing me to correct the little flubs that spoil a drawing and are only permanent once you commit pen, pencil, or paint to paper. I can alter digital works hundreds of times to get it right. I often save numerous alternate versions of the drawings because each has its own charms and problems. The AI Mirror program I use to edit the work overlays a filter on top of my original drawing. Here I have used a basic anime style. It takes care of mistakes like not aligning facial features properly enough, not wrapping shadows around shapes believably, and gradually blending color the way I used to do with oil paints. But it also does anime things I don’t particularly like such as unnaturally shrinking the nose and the mouth, making the eyes look crossed when looking straight out of the picture, and making chins unnaturally pointy. And the program will also magnify my own poor choices. I made the pupils in the eyes too small here, giving the poor girl snake-like eyes. I tried to capture the character evident in her hair styling but only gave her uncombed and messy spots on her head. I did not round off her chin enough to make the AI leave it alone. The shadows in the right eye look too dark to me, and the only visible ear seems too large. The portrait does not look like the model because I never quite see the je ne sais quoi that highlights the features that truly say who this person is to people who know her. It seems too generic to satisfy me. Of course, in addition to arthritis, glaucoma and color blindness, I was also fighting a runny nose while drawing this one.

None of what I have said here is probably interesting to you unless you also draw pictures of people, And even then you are probably laughing at my silly struggles, but I like talking about such things even to people who are not listening.