u/PhanThom-art

Let me know if I made him too baby-faced or something, sometimes I get sorta snowblind after staring at a drawing for a long time and don't notice if some proportion or other is off.

His lips especially have a unique shape that was hard to recreate, plus that interview video is very low-res to add to the challenge

I've been doing portraits for a long time and feel like I get good results most of the time, but it still seems like I'm re-inventing my process for each one, and have hit a wall in my learning process.

I want to be looser and more expressive with my portraits, relying less on the reference while still nailing the likeness.

Instead at the moment I'm too obsessed with getting all proportions and outlines exactly correct that I feel like I'm copying too much from reference instead of using my knowledge of anatomy and proportion.

James Gurney says there are two types of artists; those who think in lines, and those who think in shapes. I'm definitely a line thinker, but I'm jealous of the peoplewho can so expressively draw the shadow areas only. I don't know how they do that without checking the angles and position of the nose compared to the eyes and the mouth to the eyes etc.

I'd also like to do more painted portraits, but find it so difficult to get the likeness without a good underdrawing, but if I use an underdrawing it almost becomes a type of paint-by-numbers which sucks the enjoyment out of it for me.

TL;DR: How do I simplify and streamline my process without overly obsessing over proportions, and while still getting a good likeness