When doing my stick figure training series, I did a set of skateboarders. One of the references really jumped out at me as a dynamic pose, and I decided I wanted to paint it. I’m trying to reduce detail, focus on simpler shapes, along with the usual goals of good representation, improving at the tools, and pushing my color picking sense.
I got hung up here on the face. The unusual perspective foiled any of my usual tools for figuring out feature placement, and she was a horrid monster for a long time. I got obsessed and pushed, pulled, scrubbed, and tried again until I got it looking like the reference. I then realized it was completely out of step with the rest of the painting — one region of high precision in a sea of simplified shapes. I ended up going back over it, scrubbing out most of the detail and softening the colors. That was a challenge in itself. How much detail is too much or too little for such a crucial feature as the face? I’m pretty happy with where I landed, but it’s hard to say if I learned anything from it.
