frilliposting + a lil gerard i rlly liked :]

ohhhhh they’re so dear to me

ok i was gonna make it short but boom. get adviceblasted

THANK YOU AUGHGH!!! and hmmmm let me think......a big thing i like to keep in mind is always where certain features are in relation to each other if that makes sense? like, if ur trying to sketch out a face and it looks off, try looking at ur reference image and see which features line up with other features in order to be able to place them correctly (fx. on the frank portrait, i could see in the original image that the corner of his mouth lines up w the edge of his nose, which then helped me place it more accurately instead of just completely eyeballing it) human faces can be so hard to draw because the tiniest details can throw off an expression completely or just make them look a little offputting, so really looking out for where a person's facial features sit in relation to eachother is very important:)

subtlety is also key, trust ur colours and shadows to do a lot of the work instead of overly-lining everything (a lot of beginner sketched portaits have this issue, where they draw a clean line around the entire edge of the mouth or eyeballs or something, which overly-defines them and makes the subject looks less recognizeable. i see this happen with mouths especially- the parts of a mouth where you should be defining the MOST are typically the cupids bow, corners, where the lips meet, and shadow under the lip (this is not always the case depending on lighting ofc but it usually tends to be)) colours and shadows are what do most of the defining on a face so UTILIZE THEM!!!

also!!! remember skin has many different undertones! if you just use one flat skin colour and shade with darker/lighter versions of that same shade, your portrait will not look as lively as you would like it to! instead try and notice which parts of the subjects skin have warmer/cooler tones to them:) looking at the frank portrait again, u can see how i mainly use this one greenish-yellow darker tone, but his nose and lips are much more pink, and his undereyes are a mix of pink and yellow.

also. ur allowed to trace for practice. DONT DO IT IN THE LONG RUN BECAUSE WE ALSO WANT TO GET BETTER AT REFERENCING!!! BUT when i was FIRST starting out drawing portraits around age 12-14 i would always get super discouraged during the sketching process, because it was so difficult to get the face to look right, that i never really got much of a chance to attempt the rendering part. so sometimes, in order to complete a sketch, i would trace the face so i could have everything correctly in place, and then reference for the rest of the process. this helped me get much more comfortable with shading and rendering, before returning to the challenge of sketching off of reference (which i had even gotten a little better at at this point because of my newfound understanding of shadows and stuff on a human face!!) again, i don't think you should do this for very long, because it can also very easily stunt your progress if you feel too afraid to break out of it and try the more difficult way, but it was something i did a few times that personally helped me:)

AND FINALLY....TRUST THE PROCESS!!! from personal experience portraits almost always start out looking super off until youre well into the drawing, so you gotta just keep going and see it through to the finish line, i promise itll look good once you get into the flow of things

(my instagram upload of this piece actually includes a speedpaint on the last slide if u wanna see what i mean- bro starts out looking SO off before you start to actually recognize his face LMAO)

ANYWAYS!!!! NEVER STOP PRACTICING I KNOW UR GONNA MAKE SUCH COOL STUFF!!!! U JUST GOTTA STAY STRONG AND HAVE FUNNNNN RAARGHHHH

guy who feels incredibly normal about frank iero

THE FLESH BECKONS

acrylic x collage, 25x30

ohhhh yeah baby it’s refsheet time

ref for @skewiie !!!!!!! love this lady. moshpits huge girlfriend

in honour of monarch of monsters being my most listened album of the year and for sure going down as one of my favourite albums of all time

@vyl3tpwny thank u for consistently making the coolest stuff ever:)

scrimbles

a kitty for @tomboytransgirl

:)