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Previous post is about a known person that has influenced me in music industry and now, a great footballer that I admire from the start watching him play on the pitch, Steven Gerrard who had play for Liverpool Football Club and not surprisingly, he was so good that he captained the team for years.

How strong was his influence in me? I captained my team in secondary school under 14 category when we joined football scheme in 2010. All the scores we had were mostly from me as shooting from distance was my habit and of course, influenced by Gerrard that in football he is known for his leadership and the shot power he had.

The portrait done by referring to a picture from his own book on the cover page as I downloaded the cover page only, the picture is quite acceptable to work on digital portrait.

The photo taken when we git older that the book tells about the story of his footballing career. That is why he got beard kept because during his shining career it is hard to look at him keeping his beard when in action on the pitch. Same way as I did on previous posts, the beard and the hair are actually the same but I adjusted the opacity on his beard to make it visibly lighter and thinner. 

I should have set the outline of the nose into dark brown since making it black outline looks distracting, I guess?

Same as Zayn’s first post I posted, the highlighted hair part is only the quiff but instead of filling it up with lighter color, I set it as outlines which appears better. The neck color is slightly darker from the skin color on the face.

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A great guitarist that has influenced so many talents and youngsters to become great like him. He is the lead guitarist from a hard rock band called Avenged Sevenfold from California. To be honest, I am one of the young people that have been influenced by him and made me grab my first guitar back in 2010 and shared so many sessions with my friends during my secondary school as a guitarist. In 2011 I’ve had been invited to a band to become their rhythm guitarist and the next year in 2012 I became a lead guitarist in another band and  I have won talent shows on those two years with different band.

Digital portrait wise, this does look new in my feed, isn’t it?

The first thing I love is the monochromic color. I just referred back to my work on Keanu reeves because I wanted to make another just like that, and it became like this. The strong exposure on one side and dark on the other. It is just the picture I referred to is not overexposed as one with Keanu Reeves has.

i have no reason in choosing the brown color as the main, it just has a certain feel while I was applying the colors so i stopped and decided on this one. Same as Keane Reeves, this portrait has no lower eyelid and one thing that I should have done on Keanu is not making the black outline between the lips like this portrait does and it would have been better!

One more thing that I did not sure on deciding is whether make highlight in the eyes or not to. Keanu Reeves has and now here I decided not to. If doing it is making the portrait become lively then not doing it must be making it flat, so I decided not to on this one.

The highlight on his hair now is the same shade with the exposed part of the face and that is enough highlight because the hair is dark that already make strong contrast on the hair.

Mentioning contrast, this portrait has the strongest contrast compared to the other portraits I have done before, do you agree?

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It is another hollywood celebrity, Brad Pitt. I admit that here it does not look like him but from the photo that I was referring to does look like this. Here he has shorter hair which is quite unusual but known. The photo taken is for GQ magazine and all the photos of him from the magazine are so cool and he is still good at modeling while being at around this age he has now.

The color is a little bit cooler and not as I usually use on skin tone but it is actually on that shade from the photo taken. I believe it is caused by the environment of the place of the photo taken which is at winter weather. That may cause the skin color turned to red-ish instead of purely light cream. That seems to affect the red colored lips too.

The blue colored eyes are also the highlight of the picture that is very suitable with the environment that where the picture is taken.

The style I did here is back to the style I have done on Zayn’s portraits and sel portrait (first post) on previous posts. It is the digital portrait not having outlines and having shade on the face that are referring to the posts I mentioned.

i add some white hair on the side part of his hair which might be confusing that may appear as highlights as I did on the previous posts.

The sharp shade on his left side of the chin really helps to show that he in the picture slightly making face that makes the chin slightly go to the (his) right side.

His beard here appear as white hair as I set the color white and reduced the opacity to 50% to make the skin or edges visible because his beard is not thick enough to cover up the chin and thus the white beards he has.

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He is the young Keanu Reeves you probably miss to see! This guy completely can act from his young age until now. His long hair might be his style from his young age and not every guy can actually have it done and look so cool like he does. 

The photo of him that I chose really helps to make one as the best I have done from the first time I tried digital portrait. The photo is taken with very high exposure on the right side of his face and there is no fill light source from other direction that made it dark on the left side on his face.

I love the shades on his face, the color pallete is just making it into a warm temperature photo as a whole; cream, brown, orange with darker shades. On his face we can see three different main shades of the skin color and we have more on the details. 

The highlights in his eyes are making it immersing and that really helps the artwork to become more lively. Here I purposely skip making the lower eyelid to make it a simpler portrait and that really came out better than I expected. Unlike before, I did not do the eyebrows as I personally think that by making the eyebrows supposed to make the artwork become better but I decided not to because I intended to make this simpler and make it like effortless artwork. The neck part has three shades that show where the light is coming from. 

I made the hair part just like how I did on the previous ones, just one base color (that is mostly black) and put some highlights. This time I think the details and whole artwork is just coming out better than the previous styles I have tried and as mentioned, the overexposed lighting really helps me to make this artwork and be satisfied. I personally think that this is the best post I have made since I started.

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It is Zayn Malik once more! This photo was taken in 2014 when he was attending for AMAs alongside his band mates Harry Styles, Liam Payne, Niall Horan and Louis Tomlinson in One Direction. I chose his photo because of course he is one of the biggest icon for having so many hairstyles he’s had been rocking and even invented some! For your information, his fans were all going crazy of his single hair strand as you can see from this photo saying that it is prettier than their entire life! That is of course made it another icon for his hairstyles he’s had been having.

Now we go back to studying the portrait I made digitally for the eighth time. The style is quite similar with the previous one with the same person, Zayn. Although it was the same person and similar style, this time I changed the shade color of the neck and the face to make it different. 

The face is all flat, no shades, no highlights, just a flat color of skin tone. This is because I was comparing one with the one with tones, and eventually this version is a bit better than the other for this and previous post. It is hard not to apply some highlights on his lower lip since that would really affect the whole art into a better piece.

It is still the same as the previous one that the beard, mustache and eyebrows are originally black but I reduced the opacity so that the parts blend in with the skin and it is a fact that those parts are hardly to be seen as black in real life.

The hair is again exceptional from the whole art work. I applied highlights on the hair as I wanted it the be polished and slick as the fact that the photo taken was him attending an occasion and became the highlight of the event as a person.

The second artwork is again him without the beard and now it does not look like him back in 2010 but still he reduces a few years younger. The entire artwork is totally different than the other when I just removed the beard, highlights and the collar of his shirt he was dressing from the first photo.

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I personally think that making continuous line drawing is not really suitable with illustrator using mouse as it will ruin the flow of the line that may not go smooth as using the actual pen and pad device for digital arts.

Therefore, I quit making continuous line as I have no convinient tools or device to make more because I think that would be much more better!

Now it is Zayn! ignore the second picture for now let’s just focus on the first picture that has beard. So this is another style that I believe is different from the others posted before. There might be some similar style but this time the portrait is more flatten and soft look. It is because I add no shades or volume that needs highlight and shadow. The second thing ks that it has no outlines that makes it more soft and no sharp edges look since the edges are just light that has no juxtapose with the background.

The hair part is done as simple as just adding highlights at the quiff part of the hair by coloring it grey. The eyebrows and beard are actually black colored but I adjusted them by reducing the opacity to make them look thinner or the skin surface.

After that we go to the second picture, it looks funny because of the seamless chin due to the same color applied on the face and the neck and that appears without the beard. And that honestly brings up the look of Zayn back to 2010 to his debut to X Factor!

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Virgil Van Dijk! He has been at his top form with his defensive skills and his calmness of football. He is now currently out the pitch due to his injury on his ACL after being tackled by the offensive goalkeeper on his knee. He is probably out for 7 to 8 months! This is such a worrisome news for the fans.

This portrait is a contribution of his absence and as a great player that has changed the football team into much better in the defensive side. The portrait is alongside the previous two last portraits which are Trent Alexander Arnold and Thiago Alcantara, this now makes it a complete three for my post.

Now we go back to the drawing itself. It is still the same style as the two players I made last time, which is a continuous line drawing but this time is with different effect unlike Thiago that has brush strokes on the line and Trent has thinner line. The line is an effect of a pen that has thick and thin side that when the line goes vertical, it appears thin and when the line goes horizontal way, the line becomes thicker. The other difference that shows is the hatches on the beard and the side part of his hair. I honestly do not know the reason why I did that but that is what I would do if I draw it on paper when I sketch. That is maybe to show the different texture of the hair and the skin. Imagine that if I did not do the hatching on the beard, the chin would look very pointy and that would ruin the handsome face of the footballer.

One other thing is that I like the line on the cheek that shows that the face is well structured, and that would make you remind of the mask of the Ironman. 

I honestly tried to make this kind of artwork to become simpler as before but I could not achieve the minimalism, I still go for the details a little bit. This is the third time doing it and I still could not adapt to this kind of artwork yet so I think I am going to look for other style and give it a try and of course will post it and look how it will look like.

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Thiago Alcantara on previous post, now it is time to draw Trent Alexander Arnold! The young player from Liverpool fc that was born in 1996 and this football player is from England. This young player is now being admired by a lot of people with his outstanding performances and records that he has been broken at his current young age! How impressive! There are a lot of players that play on the same position as him that he is competing with from other clubs but that fact is they are years apart by the age. Masterclass, his passes are like the most trustable delivery to whomever he wants to deliver to.

Enough with the subjects’ background and now we go back to discuss about the art work! Well it is good to know his background a little though so we know why he is picked for today’s post.

So the artwork here is basically the same as the previous post, the portrait of Thiago. However, there are some details to learn that are different.

First, this artwork has no thick thick line as previous one because this time it has no brush strokes effect, just plain line that is thin at the starting and at the ending which is the line on the forehead that shows the line of the shadow from the photo and it ended at the thin line below his eye. Now unlike the previous post, the shadow or the dark part is on the right side of his face and the bright part is the side of his face that faces the camera. It is slightly visible from the thickness of the line isn’t it? 

While thinking of where to connect the line from the beard to the lower lip is actually the line of the shadow but it is also my way to make it parallel with the 45 degree line on his upper nose to his left eyebrow.

The hair part is way different from the previous one not because the previous one is bald and now is afro, but the technique of drawing is intentionally to show the volume and the quality of the hair while the inner line is the part where it has gone darker and the fringe are light at the outlines.

The ear hole is seen connected from the hair line of the part where it divides the thick and short of the hair.

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As I tried to minimize the art work from my second post, I like how it looked like especially on the hoodie part of that work that only outlines create the hoodie and now I try it into this work for the whole part of this art work.

This is known as continuous line art work. I have learned continuous line drawing few years ago by using pencil and it is the most challenging art portrait I have ever tried. 

The subject that I chose here is a football player that I admire so much named Thiago Alcantara that has just joined and signed for Liverpool Football Club recently. If you ever wonder why that line is red, well it is the main color of the football club! Once a red, always a red.

The definition of continuous line art is basically there is only one line that keep on going once the pencil (or any mediums) is in contact with the surface of the paper from the beginning and only lift it up until it finish. The line has to be unbroken and to connect the line together at the end, is not a must.

I admit that what I have done here is not as difficult as doing it by hand, digitally or in hard copy. I made this art work by using pen tool with mouse, unlike other artist that have done this by pencil or digital tablet. But there is still some challenges on doing this art work.

One of the challenges or the thing that I have to learn about more is to know where to connect the details for example; when I finish the eyes part, where do I go to next? and how? In this art work you can see the vertical line on the forehead and the side part of the eye is going through. Those lines I refer to the shadow line from the actual picture, and still it does not ruin the art work. 

One more thing about this particular art work is that it is drawn with brush strokes. I like how the brush strokes are seen. The quality of the mark is visible and that what makes it thick and gives the lines the effect of some double lines and some parts of the line are scattered.

The outline of the right side of the face is another quality to be shown. It shows that the particular part has the most light on it that the outline is not visible as the other parts. Same thing appears on the eyes, the thick outline shows that the part has dark tone on the subject that tells the depth of that part. This is to show the value of the portrait that shows the dimension of the subject.

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It is now in a video form! I’ve got inspired by technology nowadays and found out there are so many ways to make digital artwork like this, and fortunately one of the ways is what I think I am capable of doing so I made one. It is actually the same artwork from the first post that I’ve posted but it moves and gets older! It is actually me preparing to post on my birthday showing I am getting older as I got addicted making this kind of artwork and of course lowkey to impress and entertain my followers as they view my story on my personal instagram account and it did!

The parts that move is only the eyes, I set it opened, half closed and completely closed while the it gets the white hair and wrinkles on some parts to show I am actually getting older in the frames.

I have made so many frames that it took me hours to finish this artwork, which is around 24 pictures or frames altogether (it is honestly not as many as others’ frames) to make it 7 seconds video. It is a motion graphic art for my other module I made and I thought I could just post and make it one of my feed as well and I thought it is quite cool, isn’t it? 

Look through some of the photos that I picked on every 5 frames, it shows the difference between those. The tones, shadow and highlight, the hair volume, face structure, I only could make it stay as I could not think of how I would actually look around those ages.

The hair looks getting thinner but it is not, it is just the thick outline disappeared as it goes white. This is because I personally do not like the look of the hair to keep the thick black outline as it gets older as you can see the outline is actually thick as the outline around the face and the neck.

The wrinkles, it appears around the seventh or eighth frame at lowest opacity to make it not too visible. As it goes on, I darken the wrinkles frame by frame as the fact that wrinkles are to be seen clearly visible as we get older. 

On the hair part, I started with black on the first frame and around the early middle I started to color it dark grey to grey to light grey and finally to white. It is not the only thing that I had to work on, in order to make it crisp, I had to lighten up the highlight as well, to avoid the highlight from blending into the hair. The volume does not change, hopefully I do not get hair loss!

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The second try is not a bad attempt though. It is quite similar to the first one but in controlled saturation and of course it is different different person. First I want to share the struggles of making this person’s digital portrait. Honestly this is the second photo of him I’ve tried. The first photo I gave up half way because I failed to achieve the style that I attempted to get due to the bad lighting of the photo and it is pixelated. 

The color as I mentioned is that it is less saturated compared to the first one I posted. I tried to apply natural skin color but unfortunately it became pale instead. I tried to reduce the usage of color from the shade of the skin as well, that makes it look simpler and neat. We can see that only the lips color tone that is saturated a little bit because he looked older as I tried to make it darker in the progress of coloring. 

The eyes, it is not as detailed as the first one as I stated that I tend to make it similar but simpler as the first one. Still I am struggling with working on the eye bags and had to reduce the size to avoid from making it look too baggy. One of the ways is that I had to lighten up the darkness of the tone on the eye bag as well. The lines between the eyes and the eyebrows I’ve learned that it is must! It looked awkward while I tried to skip doing it. well maybe it is only for this photo because the subject is lifting up the head and the eyes up so that is to show what he is actually doing. 

The highlights are only seen on the 6 parts that is necessary to appear on; eyes, nose, forehead, lips, hair and ears. The highlight on the hair and the eyes are seemed quite brighter than on the other parts because of the darker background. This helps to show the dimension as works the same as the shade of the shadow, that when these two work together, its shows the balance of the tone as a whole. The three little stripes on the hair part at the right side is to show the parting of the hair, which seems not important but it actually is.

One of the things that I personally like is the line of the cloth that appears just by a line is enough to tell that it is a hoodie! Maybe I can try outline drawing for the whole art?

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First Digital Artwork Ever; Self Portrait

Here is my very first try making digital art on portrait in my entire life. It is a self portrait work as a starting. I enjoyed every second of making it. I played around on the details and colors. It is quite fun as I could just simply click the undo button when I made a mistake, unlike drawing with pencils on paper, it might ruin the paper when I erase it off. The shadow and the highlights, I could just make it effortlessly by making certain shapes with different shades of the skin colors.

First, the similarity of making portraits is of course the composition of the details such as eys, nose, lips, ears, just all the measurements in between the subject details. Therefore, it is quite easy by using digital compared to mediums by pencils or other mediums that have to manually adjust all the measurements.

Secondly, the details on the eyes is a lot easier by digital. Here I can just zoom it in to make little details as I wish! I could even add some details that is not even there actually. This helps to add up the beauty to the portrait as long as the pixel is not blurred out.

The thing that I like the most of doing this artwork is the fact that I can do thick outline along the edges of the subject unlike doing portraits by pencils on paper that I had to avoid doing outlines in order to make it realistic.

The shades in this artwork have about 5 different shades of brown that show the depth and the highlight of the subject. The lines on the hair is as important as the face. The purpose is to visualize the flow of the hair's direction and also to make it sort of alive that it helps to polish the artwork as a whole.

Now I could only finish my artwork within 2 hours (not a bad duration for a first timer) which saves so much time compared to what I usually did before by using pencils, I took at least 6 hours to finish an artwork with all the details, shadings, tonings, values and more.

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Introduction

This is my very first try on making digital portrait in my entire life. I have been doing portraits by using pencils as the medium since years so I just want to go to the next level due to current trends around media, which is digital artwork that has been everywhere now.

Here I am going to use Adobe Illustrator software by using pen tool as the main tool through out the making of each artwork.

There are so many good things in making digital artwork nowadays. It saves our time a lot, in my situation, doing portraits. I can add up some qualities to the artwork, I can exaggerate the details, add some beauties on the details and more. To compare both drawings and digital artwork is undebatable. Both have the values and qualities respectively. Here I am just stepping up the game to start making digital arts from drawings by using pencils as medium.

While making each artwork, I will try to find my own style to make it as my own profile, so there could be some different styles in each posts to see the better ones and which I am comfortable at. This might be the hardest part; to look for own style, rather than just finishing it without thinking. I will have to find some inspirations through out the period and try every style and adapt it to the artwork.