Wow! Your Realistic Portraits Are Amazing! How Do You Do It?

Wow! Your realistic portraits are amazing! How do you do it?

Made another one to answer this!

Thank you! I'm far from an expert with realism yet, but it's been fun to experiment. It's a lot different than my usual style; instead of focusing on lines I have to focus way more on building up the facial structure and giving depth though shading. And since I'm trying to work with sort of realism, I also have to limit the amount of clear lines and focus on differentiating parts through shading.

- Sketch

- Fill in the major colour fields of the sketch with each colour on a different layer

- Use a clipping mask to shade (multiply) and highlight (overlay/high opacity light colour) each field separately and add details like eyes

- Add mostly flat background

- Blend character with background using additional ambient shading (multiply) and add other effects

Maybe I should try my hand at speed drawing again sometime...

Got called a "sexyman" in my Bill cosplay and I don't know if I should be flattered or offended.

Also a little girl adressed me with "hey nacho" and she's my hero.

I am way stressed because of IRL junk and have gone way too long without drawing send me wholesome sketch ideas

So since we've finally established Bill isn't actually human...

Consider this a teaser for next chapter.

(Transcript below)

Do you know what it's like to not exist?

I have the power to do everything but never get anything out of it. No smell. No taste. No touch. No sensation at all. Just... Nothing.  A vast nothingness stretching on and on forever like the uncomfortable silence after a bad joke. I could watch. Nothing more. Infinite power but no meaningful way to use it.

It's self preservation, really. Stealing bodies. I never wanted to be human. I didn't. It's all that damn shaman's fault. He was supposed to help me. Save me. But he betrayed me. He cut the lifeline and tried to kill me with an ancient ritual. A human energy circle. 

But they didn't have the right humans.

Lacking quality, they made up for it with quantity. The entire island. All those tiny little candlelights throwing themselves together into one flash of an inferno before burning out. The energy was immense.

But not enough.

They couldn't destroy me. But he could stall me.  He went into my mind.  He removed all knowledge of where the island was, where the gateway had been built, how it looked, and how to find it. With his last breath he cursed the land itself. That no-one would ever be able to find it without being led there.  That it would never be added to a map. 

All so that I wouldn't find it.

He couldn’t blind my all-seeing eye. But he did mar it.

So, I did the next best thing. I settled for experiencing the world through human eyes.  Kings, queens, beggars and priests… I was everything. It was intense. It was vibrant. I was alive.

A human body is a prison, but a prison is better than a nothing.

But eventually, it wasn't enough.

I'm a being of unlimited power. Do you have any idea how constricting it is needing to waste a quarter of my life asleep? Do you have any idea how bad food tastes after centuries of eating it? I have been like this for ages. Everything is the same flavour of bland. The pleasure. The pain...

None of it is fun anymore.

Without chasing the next high, I feel nothing. And every time I need to reach higher and higher to get anything out of it at all.

I need to exist as me. No matter who has to die.

So, I made a new goal for myself: Find my old gateway.  Find a body. Find a crew. Don't stop sailing until I track it down.

I couldn't remember the location. I couldn’t remember the name. All I could remember was the smell of salt and the sound of churning waterfalls. So, when my first crew asked, I simply called it ‘the waterfall port’. ‘El puerto de la cascada’.

I moved from crew to crew, century to century, body to body.

It didn't matter that my eyes went from blue to brown to grey. 

It didn't matter if the shade of my hair changed. 

It didn't matter if scars under my clothes came and went. 

Very few who came close enough to notice ever lived to talk about it.

With a changing world came changing languages. And eventually, my island's title was shortened and corrupted until it was just simply…

"Port Cascada".

That name found you. And you found me. How?

... You're not even listening. Are you?

Ah, this was awesome! Thank you!

Aww Fiddleford is such a sweetheart, you completely nailed both their voices when they talk to eachother. And I love how you wrote Stan, the poor guy is trying so so hard and he's so stubborn but things still just aren't going his way. It was very nice to read him still having someone to lean on when everything else is going south, and it sounds like him being there and trying to get revenge for all of them has helped Fidds too.

This was so sweet and we'll written, thank you so much!!

finally got around to this @gobblewanker !!! sorry it took so long!!! it's not quiet at the beginning but it's all I could get to work 😅

Drawing of @gobblewanker s Reverse Pirate Ford. I love his looks in this au.