I have been trying to draw/paint human faces from photos (in Painter). To my big surprise the result closely follows the photo but because of the different medium and/or the oily/watery/greasy "material" I get results that just do not capture the essence of the person. The photo does capture what I want to express. And somehow the result is not a painting of the person, it is an image of the person. I do not know if you understand this...
So my questions are (these are three separate questions, please handle them completely unrelated):
- if you were to draw (pencil/ink) a face with the smallest amount of lines/points, what would you draw? I mean, where does it become the representation of the person from just being a sketch? (There are some tiny features which, if you miss drawing it properly, you do not draw the person).
- If you were to paint (oil/Conte/etc.), without sketching or drawing thin lines, what would be the minimum amount of features/shades/areas you would draw? (Imagine blobs of color without too much refining of the shape...)
- If you were to paint, what would be the minimum amount of colors/shades that would be sufficient to paint a picture that closely resembles the person? (I know, you can use one or two colors, but those will give you such a contrast that I find hard to believe that the painting closely match the model).
And I have a bonus question:
- If you painted a painting from a photo, where would you diverge from the reference photo and why?
Thank you all for any help.