Great stuff man. I wished I could do something like that.

Good luck,

Crash

Bret,

Nice work.  Is this for "personal fun" or are you doing this for some educational project?

Beautiful capture of the reflection on the glass on the goggles on the left lens (right side of page).  That is really hard to do well and you seem to have mastered that nicely.

You might want to "soften" the hard edge quality of the shadows on the wrinkles at the left side of the face near the eyes (on right side of page)....since the light source is clearly coming from high from that side.  On the part of the face closest to the light you'd get a much les distinct shadowing quality when compared to what would happen with the wrinkles on the other side of the face.  At the moment, the tonality of the two areas is a bit too similar.

Also relating to the effects of the lighting of 3D form, the shadows created by the earpiece on the "helmet" fall at an angle that is markedly different from the shadows that are indicated by other parts of the face.  This tends to distract from the overall effect.  it is particularly noticable between the nose shadow and the earpiece shadow due to their compositional locations.  

The perceived visual mass of the earpiece on the right side of the page due to it's heavy dark tone tends to weight the composuition a bit in that direction and draws the eye off the face a bit.  Maybe just lighten the tonality of the gray there just a hair in order to move the focal point more onto the facial features.  At the moment there is a dynamic balance between the facial features like the nose (and shadow), the right eye side goggle element, and the earpiece that causes the eye to move through the composition in that direction.  But maybe the ear piece part is just a tad too prominent.

You have captured the aviator's asymmetrical "squint" from the sun angle very nicely with the positioning of the eyebrows; shows good attention to details.

Keep posting your ongoing work.


best,

....................john

OK...I just found the original photo that you were working from.  I understand a bit more of the lighting from that.

First facial study, huh?  Well..... NICE JOB!

Seeing that photo, the earpiece shadow is not the "issue"....you've got that close to the appropriate location/weight.......  it is the depth and tone of the shadow on the nose area and upper lip, under the right eye, and on the forehead under the edge of the helmet that tends to make the earpiece shadow direction and intensity look just a bit "wrong".  

And still the earpiece mass is a bit too "heavy".  You might lighten them all up a tad.

best,

................john

PS:  This is the kind of stuff I do... I'm a professor at an art college.  Mainly in 3-d work.

Bret,

I was focusing on some "first things first" type issues.  

Take a good look at the shape of his chin and the width of the face at the mouth level relative to the forehead area on the photo and on your drawing.  He has aq much more "round" face than the triangular one that your's currently shows.

best,

....................john