Here we go. Last year (and for a very short period of time in 2007) I created a good few pieces of Heroes fan art. Some range from "Okay" to "Pretty good" (or so I'm told).

I thought I would post them here (they're all on my Deviantart page along with several other random drawings based on other things such as Slayers, Earthbound, etc).

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First up is my first ever attempt at a Photoshop airbrush project. I began by sketching the picture with a mechanical pencil, scanned the outline, and then did all of the grayscale painting with Photoshop and my trackball (I didn't have a drawing tablet yet).

I'm aware that Matt's face isn't as chubby as it should be, but this was mostly a practice drawing.



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The next character drawn was Hiro. I had just purchased my drawing tablet and decided to spend a couple of hours going to town with it (so to speak). This was the result.

I think this one turned out a lot better than Matt did.



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Next up is Nathan. This one didn't turn out nearly as well as I wanted it to. For some reason the expression was hard to capture, and I don't think it translated well into my digi-painting.

I suppose practice is practice though.



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Now we have Angela. This was my first ever attempt at drawing a portrait of a woman via airbrush (I had drawn one by hand in an art class once long ago) and I think it turned out okay.



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Sylar. That's pretty much all that needs to be said for introduction.

That said, I think it turned out okay overall. There are a few things that I'd change, but I'd honestly rather draw a whole new picture instead of changing an older one.



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Here is Niki. I had put this one off for a while but eventually came back and finished it. It took forever to work on the hair.

I feel that this one wasn't quite complete (her hoop earrings are missing) but I was mostly satisfied with the result.



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Here is the picture that seems to garner the most "Favorites" in my gallery (rivaling the one of Pokey Minch from Earthbound). I drew this some time before I began the airbrush projects.

Ignore Claire's feet. This was my first ever attempt at drawing someone in a position like that.



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So... whadoyathink?

Hiya! Nice work there. I hope you don't mind a few tips.

Greyscale painting is a good idea - it helps you pay attention to values without having to worry about colour; that's definitely a good way to go.

Portraits are beastly difficult. Most difficult if you draw people others will recognize - and see all the mistakes. A lot of your pictures look "warped" - that is mainly due to the fact that you worked on them for a long time and lost touch with your reference in the process. This happens to the best of us. A trick I use is: look back and forth between your reference and your own picture rapidly, switching back and forth in a matter of one second at most. Your brain will perfom a sort of "Animation" telling you what to fix.

Do you work with construction lines? To find an alignment for eyes, nose, mouth, and for the proportions? If not, that would help too.

Lastly, the most important trick when drawing faces: mirror! In Photoshop, it's simple. Do "flip horizontal" every 30 minutes while working. And don't get a heart attack when you do it for the first time. Your eye gets used to your mistakes while you work, so you don't see them after a while - when you mirror a pic, they're thrown into your face, in an exaggerated way. It's tremendously helpful for getting facial proportions right.

Keep on drawin'!

I honestly have never considered construction lines or flipping the image to make the mistakes more obvious. Those are great ideas!

I did have the original references pictures handy, but I didn't go back and forth as often as you are suggesting. I do see how that could make a difference.

All of your comments and pointers are very much appreciated!

Of all of them, I like the Sylar one the most.

I'm no artist, but the proportions look a bit "off" in the other ones (which I guess is what G7 was saying).