Michelle Yeoh

Digital portrait of actress Michelle Yeoh, from a publicity still for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Yeoh is riding high right now on the wave of positive buzz from her latest project, the reportedly wonderful Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. I look forward to seeing that one. Yeoh is a wonderful actor who lends gravity to everything she is in, even those Star Trek: Discovery shows.

No process video this time. I have decided to start applying the self-checking technique I use on the figure studies to my portrait work. That involves doing my freehand sketches, then when those are fixed up to my satisfaction, importing the original reference and seeing how I did. In this case, I had her left eye a touch low and had shortened her left arm by a fair bit. Checking it this way I get clear feedback showing where I’m at with my reference skills. Ideally at some point, I am generally good enough I’m not making mistakes. That may be years away, though. I was resisting this self-checking step because putting the reference in the tableau would show up in the process video.

I’m pretty happy with the results here. My color choices look solid. The likeness is there. After a couple bad passes, I got the hair into good shape. And I pulled off something interesting. Her left hand, in the foreground, genuinely looks out of focus, as it was in the reference.