Mentor Experiment: Silhouettes: Barry’s Critique!

I’m a bit behind on the crits and new assignment this week, so apologies for that. Let’s jump into this week’s critique, shall we?

Here’s the assignment description, once again:

Your assignment this week is to collect references and create at least 3 silhouettes for a Victorian era woman, mid-20’s who is sassy, slender and smart – but also a tomboy at heart. Good luck!

Each of Barry’s silhouettes show a woman in a long dress – which is good. There’s even the use of a prop (candles) and clothing accessories (hats) that help establish the time period of the character. What needs further clarification within the silhouettes are age, intelligence and attitude. Instead of a frontal view of the character, it may be more advantageous to approach the design from a 3/4 front or profile view. Props that suggest the “tom boy” aspect could be weapons or other typical “male” accessories from the period. Intelligence could be conveyed by accessories or props (books, eyeglasses, etc.). Attitude is almost always conveyed through posing the character. Remember that line of action; bend your character to make them more dynamic. Conversely, it’s important to avoid drawing the character straight up and down.

I hope the silhouette exercise was useful to those of you who are following the weekly exercises. If you need more practice, I would suggest checking out Seventh Sanctum, which features (among other things) several text-based character generators that you can use to practice creating silhouettes.

-Krishna