September '09 Jam: Rachel Dashae

[BurnComics]

Alright, everyone! We have some amazing reference images this month, courtesy of Rachel. She's a model with a fantastic gallery on deviant art, which you can view here: http://plastikstars.deviantart.com

[sinj]

finally. was wondering when she was gonna pop up. will be joining in on this one later.

[Tooninator]

Love this chick. Check her deviant all the time. I think I'll try and partake.

[JimH]

It's feeling now like I'm only going to get to do one this time, but it looks like I'm the first in

[krisvahl]

Nice work, Jim. Good cropping.

[JimH]

Thanks Kris -I liked the atmosphere, but the rest of the image was too fish eyed for me to feel like I could do anything with it.

[yipdidoda]

Thanks for the pics...

[jakob westman]

That's really nice Jim,
gorgeous hand and fingers.

/ Jakob

[JimH]

Thanks Jakob! Like the stuff on your site -especially those monsters(aliens?) with the popsickles.
Great graphic style...

Nice catch of the pose yipidododa!!

[pixelbear]

Here is my effort

[Eb0la]

@JimH: the expression is spot on. You removed the distorted part which is fine by me . IMHO on the ref pic the pinky is awfully ugly; I would have modified it to look more "confortable".
@yipdidoda: You chose a contour approach - but I find the line work not precise enough to convey any volume or dynamics, the values also fail to show volume. I'd give it another try by trying to convey the 3D, with line or values or both, whatever, but go 3D.

@pixelbear: same comment for the pinky. Your choice of dark values make her scary. The original pose is softer. Her mouth could be adjusted a bit.

My poor attempts. the 2nd one is a thumbnail work and I am very disappointed with the scanner; I'll try and scan them both from home The pencil strokes and tones don't do justice to the original work and the values are not good either. I don't know if that can be corrected in photoshop.

The scan of the 1st image was even worse, In the original work I tried to play with light vs darks values of the skin and clothes but the scan was so disappointing that I used photoshop to quickly cut a contour and see what I got. I've added a pink background too.
I'd appreciate any C&C.
EDIT: the order of the images wasn't right after upload

[JimH]

Nice efforts in general guys!
Moody drawing pixelbear!

EbOla I be inclined to agree with you, and if you showed it to anyone outside of this Jam, people wouldn't necessarily have an understanding of why a pinky would be drawn like that. Here though, everyone knows why, because they are working from the same reference, and I personally get to take on the challenge of trying to effectively convey that difficult hand configuration.
I confess, that's one of the things that attracted me to drawing it.

As to crits... on the squatting with the platform shoes pose -the rib lines are indicated too severely-you can take out most of the line work you have there. They are much softer, lighter in value, and don't extend down the entire length of the ribcage. Also, I see only 3 rib lines indicated in the photo reference
Think of another way of doing the eyes. They are almost slits in the reference, and you can see her irises. They are not as round and black as you are describing them. You need a much sharper pointed pencil than what you're using to get in there. If you like the look of a thick line, you can go in with a fine line around details, and then beef them up in key spots so they match the overall line quality.
And I don't think you need a wall shadow -just the one on the bottom to ground the figure.

[andreotty]

I don't know why, but I liked a lot this model. Enough to draw this.
And I like the version of JimH

[JimH]

Thanks Simon!
Nice work on her back and the shooooz. And the lingerie.

[pixelbear]

The pinky looks weird, retrospectively I should have adjusted it so it worked better.

I feel the hand looked odd from the get go, had to draw the hand in a different file and add it later.

I'm painting more in Photoshop than I used to and keep working up things to much and before I know it my work looks like it should be in a horror book. Less black more white.

will try and give the other poses ago when I get some time.