Direct Gaze

Watched a neat webinar today by Stefan Kostic about painting realistic faces and thought I'd give it a try. Even though it took me much longer to have something halfway acceptable (what you're seeing above), it came out much better than I would have expected.

He said that he doesn't bother with guidelines but I broke down and outlined the face so I could have some landmarks. The reference for this picture didn't have much deep shadow in strategic areas, so I threw down a few bits here and there and moved almost immediately to midtones. Didn't do the "core shadow" that he discussed. Also set up [ctrl]+[f] to do a horizontal flip as he recommended. That's probably the only reason the eyes are as even as they are... Also tried the liquify brush and level adjustments to bring out contrast.

Oh, used CSP, since it they had sponsored the webinar!