Workshop: Vector Critique #23
tuts workshop

Workshop: Vector Critique #23

on Oct 26th 2012 with 6 comments

Vectortuts+ is all about helping people turbo charge their skills, and today we have another special community post that will help our readers take their images to the next level. The best thing is, you can be part of it too! Find out more at the jump.

How to Participate:

  • This workshop contributor has offered a piece of work that they would like help with, please keep this in mind when you share your thoughts. The images are not perfect, but they can be with the right advice and some friendly encouragement. (Vectortuts+ reserves the right to delete any rude comments)
  • If you’re better with pictures (let’s face it, most of us are) feel free to take a screenshot of the image using Little Snapper, Skitch or a similar program and paste a link to the annotated image in the comments section with an explanation of the tweaks.

If you want to take part in the next Vectortuts+ Workshop:

Add your work to our facebook photo gallery or submit it via the Tuts+ Workshop form, with a description about the piece and the help/advice you’re looking for. We will chose one to be published on our site as part of the next Vectortuts+ Workshop, if you’re not chosen straight away – don’t worry – your work will be chosen for a future session.

Designer: Adit Didit

Details:

"Done in Adobe Illustrator CS4, I use Pen Tool, Pencil Tool, Gradient and Gaussian Blur for shading, I hope you like it"

Feedback

What are your thoughts on the work above? Critiquing work helps the artist see new possibilities, and it also helps you learn to evaluate art, which will help you take that same analysis and apply it to your own work. Participate in the comments below with your opinions on how to improve the work above.

 
Enjoyed this Post?

Subscribe to our RSS Feed, Follow us on Twitter or simply recommend us to friends and colleagues!

By

Rollover to read this author's bio or click through to see a full list of posts by this author.

Sharon Milne aka ChewedKandi is an Illustrator and Writer specialising in vector art. She's from the North East of England. She's also our Editor on Vectortuts+. You can check out her website portfolio by going to ChewedKandi.net and keep up to date via her Facebook page.  

Plus Premium
 
 
  • http://vector.tutsplus.com/ Sharon Milne

    I’m a great Adele fan – so I’m so happy to see this submission!

    I think it’s been very well rendered and looks like you’ve followed your reference image very well, however the main thing I pick up on which I’d see as an area of improvement would be the contrast.

    While you’ve got bold colours for the rose and hair, the skin seems washed out, too low saturation creating a greyed effect. This is most apparent in the lips and eyes area. When you’re working on a portrait and you find that this happens (if you’ve ever seen any of my portrait tutorials, I do this often), go back and balance the saturation by adding gradients and duplicates of the skin base shapes set to say Blending Mode Color Burn. Adele has fantastic eyes, so these should be seen as more of a focal point of the portrait, however with the low saturation, they don’t pop as well as they should.

    Regardless to this, there is not much else to fault apart from minor tweaks. I think you’ve done very well with this portrait, I’d be keen to see more!

    I hope this helps :)

  • nosane

    As I am not a big fan of that kind of “realistic vector rendering”, I must say it’s done pretty well :).

    The only thing I would change is colours saturation. As Sharon said, skin tones are too desaturated, especially comparing to clothes or hair. Similiar skin color values make it flat. So now you’ve got pretty 3Dish hair and flat face and hands.

    The simple way to check if your values work right, is to make new black shape on top of your scene in Ai, and change it blending mode to “saturation”. Now you can see your drawing in black-and-white, where colour values are clearly apparent.

    You can see it on the attached picture I made for you. Few contrast and shadowing changes, and your drawing already looks better and more three-dimensional.

    Keep up good work :). See you!

    • http://vector.tutsplus.com/ Sharon Milne

      Very good tip!

  • Amir Hameed

    Waaow . i loved it. its great.

  • gebeine

    The skin shading is very minimal i like it but the eyes/facial shading looks to passive. I really love vectorized pictures such as this keep it up!

  • Dr. Evil

    The shadow cast on the background is not correct. Follow a single light source because your shading is all over the place. I like the fabric however. I personally don’t think there is anything wrong with pale skin. Some great artworks have portraits with pale skin, but if you are going for a unsaturated color on the skin, at least make the makeup a little bolder and the edges where the ear and the neck meet can be a couple of shades darker, as well as the subtle brown shading on the nose area and cheeks. I agree that the eyes are a little passive. Make your blacks darker. Other than that, it friggin’ looks awesome! It’s more than I can do in Illustrator.