Les oeuvres numériques de Zigo: Tuto Illustrator : Draw a face

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Introduction

First of all I would like to apologize for my imperfect English, please be indulgent.

I decided to dedicate my blog mainly to the techniques of digital art in order to render a little that the web have given me in this area. But the Anglophone community of internet has also helped me a lot, so I thought that enlarging my audience to this community would be a just reward.

Here is one of many portraits of Rani Mukherjee (photo found on the web), the Indian film actress born in Bengal, and I propose to reproduce her face with the tool Adobe Illustrator (CS5).

Face and nose

To draw the face, I often use the technique of "gradient mesh". But this technique requires some precautions because more the gradient path is simple and more the quality will be better. Instead, more the curve is complex (too many anchor points) and less the gradient will be adequate. That is why I always take the precaution of "simplify" a hand-drawn path with “Object-Path-Simplify…” tool.

This is however not sufficient to obtain a correct result when the path is that of a face as above and I'll show why.

If we draw "freehand" the contour of the face and we simplify the path we get this:

Then, we choose on the picture using the eyedropper tool (I) color of medium brightness (neither too light nor too dark, here RGB = 251, 195, 159) before creating the gradient mesh.

The path may seem simple enough (we went from 16 to 13 pts. after simplification), but here (you probably noticed in the photo), the face is tilted and gradient mesh (net 10 x 10 points = 100 points) not harmoniously matches the shape of the contour of the face (see below):

Then simply use the picture to reproduce colors to each of the points of the net.

If this technique is unfamiliar to you, know that the method is to enable or disable the trace display by Control-click in the eye of the "Layers" window and use the eyedropper tool to color the selected point with the "direct selection" (A) tool.

The first result is often a rough reproduction of the face that we will refine throughout the work by intensifying the mesh as needed with mesh gradient tool (G).

Here, given the orientation of the mesh, the arrows show areas where difficulties will arise...

Difficulties will be identical with the path of the nose.

And we observe that the orientation of the mesh gradient will not facilitate the reproduction of lights and shadows of the nose:

A first result is the gradient colors below:

The main difficulty of a portrait made with gradient meshes is overlaying harmoniously the nose on the face. If we overlay the two gradients (see arrows below), we can see that the integration does not, for the moment, a very satisfactory result:

To remedy this, it is both necessary to increase the density of the points for the 2 gradient meshes at their intersections and select points close to these intersections and color them in agreement with each other. This is a work of patience and then experience especially with practice.

In addition, to facilitate the superposition (little advice), I position the future locations of the mouth, eyes and eyebrows that will come and cover the nose and hide some parts of it.

After a little worked shadows of the nose, a temporarily acceptable result is given below:

But despite the corrective measures, the arrows above show the places that are difficult to make a harmonious overlap even increasing density points of the gradient mesh. And the integration of the eyes and the mouth will not be easy either...

The technique advisable

To work so much more comfortable, I give you two tips:

1. first is, in this case of tilted face, straighten the image vertically before starting work (this recommendation is especially helpful if the face is tilted by a large angle).

2. second is to start the contour of gradient mesh by tracing an ellipse (L Ellipse tool) to secure the oval face, then precise the contour by adding points with the pen tool (P), while ensuring to minimize the number of points in order to maintain a simple form and get a better gradients quality.

To tilt the face photo I use the Object-Transform-Rotate tool, and I find the correct angle by successive adjustments (here I drew a horizontal and vertical guide to facilitate adjustment and the result is an angle - 31 degrees).

Once satisfied, I draw an ellipse around the face (second advice):

Then, I specify the contour (here we go from the initial ellipse 4 points to 15 points for the final path), then, as seen above, I choose on the photo using the eyedropper tool (I) a medium brightness color (neither too bright nor too dark, here RGB = 251, 195, 159) before creating a gradient mesh (10 pts x 10 pts = 100 points) using the dialog box (Object-Create gradient Mesh...):

Notice that the gradient mesh is more in harmony with the contours of the face (compare with the net above).

The result at this stage is more satisfying, but it will be necessary to give more density to the gradient mesh later for a harmonious integration with other objects that make up the face (eyes and mouth).

The next step is to continue by drawing the nose. The nose is, in my opinion, the most difficult to achieve in a portrait and of its success depends the realism of the drawing.

As for the face, I begin the contour of gradient mesh of the nose by drawing an ellipse before specifying the curves of the nose. It may be noted that the shape is simple and that it follows the contours and curves of the nose.

Then I create gradient mesh. The net is also of 10 x 10 points (100 points) and the initial color is the same as the starting face (here RGB = 251, 195, 159). The results below were obtained:

Even if it does not appear flagrantly, gradient mesh is of much higher quality because of the contours more in line with the nose:

As seen above, the main difficulty will be to overlay the new gradient mesh to the face. If we overlay the two gradients (see below), we can see that the integration of the nose to the face does not give a very satisfactory result:

To remedy this it is both necessary to increase the density of the points for the 2 gradient meshes at their intersections and select points close to these intersections and color them in agreement with each other.