Aesthetics Faceup critique me

I would say rely more heavily on pastels before the pencils to get that contoured, gruff look around his nose, cheeks, forehead, chin, and of course eyes. You'll have to do some experimenting to see how colors come out on that crazy red, but I think bringing some cool shades of purple and brown would help give more depth to such a vivid warm base (note how in that Scar picture, the eyeshadow is actually more reddish-purple than black). For the eyebrows, just use more of a pastel base to build out the shape and volume before finishing them off with some defined pencil hairs; it'll give them a softer edge and an overall bushier look.

Just keep in mind that no matter what you do, that electric red base color is going to pretty much delete any color contrast, so it'll be really hard to get that nice range of brown-purple-peach-tan-black exactly like your reference photo.

 

I agree on using purple and brown shades of pastel to help define the shapes of your doll. I don't do faceups myself, but I do watercolour painting in my free time and it's always very difficult to paint over red colours. I find that using various shades of dark purple gives great results! I personally like to use warm purples but a cool purple would add more contrast. For highlights, I often use light shades of pinks before going in with white.

If you need to go lighter on a large section of your doll, I would suggest using an acrylic paint base before trying to blend some pastels in. For the application of the paint, you could try using a sponge. Thinning the paint will make it a bit more transparent as well, which can help not make the transition between red and lighter colours too harsh. As I said before, I haven't done an actual faceup before so this might not work but it would probably be something I'd try.

The yellow eyes also seem somewhat crooked in your pictures, unless that what the look you were going for. Sometimes the position of the eyes can make or break a look for a doll.

 

I really like the eyebrows.

 

I think it looks pretty great o-o

The positioning of the eyes bother me, and I’d also try more purple pastel to increase the contour contrast but your work is nothing to be ashamed of, as is.

The eyebrows in your reference photo are much TALLER vertically, maybe you need to be more daring with the shape if that’s the effect you want? Try lightly blocking it in with a pastel first, a little thicker than you’re comfortable with, and see if you like it better.

Well done, keep practicing

 

Yeah the angling of the eyes and eye brows is off. The eyes need to be corrected so it really looks like he's looking to the side. Right now he seems to have a bit of a lazy eye lol. As for the eyebrows, your reference picture has more furrowed brows. So I thing you need to have the ends of the eyebrows angled father down and closer together. They pretty much harped on the pastel shading so I wont say much, but just pay attention to placement and think about not only shadows but highlights as well! This will give you more life to your face up! I'm a huge fan of the lion king, so I'm very excited for this face up. Also your sculpt has a more smirked expression than your model, that may also be throwing you off!

 

I’m sorry if I came off as harping

That super was not my intent.

 

I think your first try is already good, especially the eyebrows, lines look pretty professional

keep the good work

 

First face up?! Wow, fantastic job!

I'd suggest 3 things that aren't really face up related: adjust one eyeball to match the other, consider body blushing and use fill lighting in your photos to avoid dark shadows on the face.

Keep up the great work! I really look forward to seeing your second face up!

 

I personally like the eyebrows, but if you want to un-neaten them, try making the lines more open and farther apart, especially at the outer ends. You can even make some hairs that are underneath the main brow line a bit. Nice work!