Lauren's Hair

Hair is a mystery as deep as the ocean and perceivably just as complex. When it comes to art, if there's a concept that people make tutorials about, you just know it's something that takes years to master. To that point, I can see quite a few years of experience behind this piece. If hair is a lion, then you've trained it to jump through that flaming hoop. You've captured the natural "flow" of the hair as it goes from one point to the next, and the way you've done it almost tells a story, a story designed to teach people about the flow of hair. Starting from the hairline, we can see the part where the hair is rooted to the head then follows a curve to the right until descending down into the third dimension. As it vanishes into darkness, it suddenly springs back forward, still curling down as it descends off the page. The lone mystery that remains is what force is pulling the hair back in the middle. Is she holding it? Is there a hair clip of some sort? Is it caught in something? Perhaps it has something to do with the headphones? I'm not sure, but I'm very impressed with the way you captured that sense of depth using color, flow, and negative space.

Off the subject of the hair for a moment, the anatomy in the face and neck is phenomenal. The contours that were added really create the sensation of her face projecting forward toward the viewer, with the individual body parts that do so each having the same feel.  I can see this same sense of depth in the neck, which places the entire head on a layer in front of everything else and the individual facial features that project forward at the very front. It's a great illusion that really takes advantage of the brain's tendency to fill in the blanks.

The hair has a certain messiness to it which mostly serves its purpose. There are a few places where it looks more like unnatural scribbled lines rather than hair, such as the stray line unusually sticking out on the top right or the crazy thick angular one that sticks out on the far right. And though these lines could have been more refined, they do still create the illusion of hair, particularly thanks to the general flow of the lines and the layered use of color. It just comes across as a little jarring when contrasted against the super realistic contours in the face.

This is the kind of professional-grade piece I could see on the market in some form. Accomplishing so much with so few colors is a great accomplishment, especially since you really made the most of your green, the only true color that you had at your disposal. Having the hair be the most colorful part definitely draws the attention to it and spices up what would otherwise be a dull yet well-drawn grayscale piece. I suppose I could also mention that the symmetry in the face is contrasted by the lack of symmetry in the hair, and with the character already having green hair and black soulless eyes, it gives the impression of a character that could be described as "unusual" or "counterculture". These subtle bits of character injection add up to tell us everything we know about the character we see, so being able to spot them is highly important for creating that sense of character appeal.  

Great work. I hope you keep on improving. Make the most!

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