Stan Winston
(Special Effects & Makeup Artist)

Instead of drawing pictures from little photos in CD booklets, I decided to change over to drawing from big photos on the internet. The image I used to render this comes from IMDb.

Stan Winston is a crafty special effects artist whom I greatly admire, and I was very glad to see IMDb had a photo I could work from (even more glad to see a photo with a completely different facial expression than anything else I’d drawn.) This was an interesting drawing for me since 1 - I rarely draw age, which places more distinctive lines on faces, more distinctive shapes, textures, shading, (etc). In other words: it’s more obvious when I mess up. 2 - I’ve never drawn a person with white hair, and 3 - I’ve never drawn someone who has a gradual beard.

I did try for the distortion effect when you look through someone’s glasses (visible in the photograph); unfortunately, it doesn’t come across as a result of the lens. Oh well. I got a little more dynamic with the shading and started being a little more careful with placement of the image on the frame. Overall, my feelings are “eh” on this picture. I feel it’s more detailed than its predecessors; however, I don’t feel I handled the added details as effectively as I should have (the dark lines around the eyes, for example.) I wanted to get these features seen and in the process wound up exaggerating what in reality is a series of subtle lines. I know I could have done better, but I know I could’ve done much worse too.

As a direct result, I’m more aware of subtleties of the eyes, nose, lips, cheeks, and the respective properties of each—how the elements themselves are arranged, how they work together to form new shapes depending on the expression, and how a barely noticeable shadow (one most people don’t even notice) can change the entire shape of the face. My very next drawing under this style (James Horner) showcases exactly what I picked up here.

Also available: Stan Winston, Take Two