My first ever portrait

[Baldrick]

Ok this is my first ever portrait - its not finished as you can see and I can see areas that need work, the shop owner couldn't take more than 2 hours under his arm haha.
I'd like pointers or advice on this one from better portrait artist than me - which is everyone.
Hair is my bug bare !!!

[Baldrick]

Just realised that's an Instagram pic with a filter on.
This is plain pic.

[Sekt]

I think that is excellent, and thank God you haven't worked in white, as its a colour so easy to overdo. Regarding hair, hair tends to clump together try not to think of it as individual strands, but as black or brown waves, swirls, and points. Remember to reflect the light on the tops of the waves. You could work in some grey to the beard, as this would give the character (i presume shakespear) an experienced look. Indicate maybe some strands of hair, and the rest more or less solid. The eye will compensate after that. Don't do what I do, and that is to keep "fixing" until I ruin something ! But the portrait is really excellent =]

[Gunwin]

Just a little tip I like to do with hair and beards, I use the mag on its edge and build up using different tones. With beards I use a slightly choppy motion again using the edge of the mag, for me this tends to give a good hair like texture avoiding a chiselled out of stone look. :-)

[Baldrick]

Thanks for the tips guys - always happy to take advice. I've got a guy in our studio that's good at portraits so I got him to tattoo me so I could watch close up.
This is my wife in DOD style.

[Alie K]

I like the softness of the portrait you are working on as opposed to the linear style of portrait you got of the DOD. Yours is coming along really nicely. There may be a few spots here or there where you might be able to use a liner to crisp up some edges here and there, but that's all I might suggest. The DOD one has a lot of outlining in it (which makes it look a lot more cartooney - which isn't a bad thing, but if it's not what you're going for, I wouldn't outline everything like that).

[Baldrick]

I like the softness of the portrait you are working on as opposed to the linear style of portrait you got of the DOD. Yours is coming along really nicely. There may be a few spots here or there where you might be able to use a liner to crisp up some edges here and there, but that's all I might suggest. The DOD one has a lot of outlining in it (which makes it look a lot more cartooney - which isn't a bad thing, but if it's not what you're going for, I wouldn't outline everything like that).

Thanks for that Alie - taken on board