I am working on a face for a girl. I am a newbie beyond newbies at svg/art/life. I am doing this for a project to make a kind of Open Source ESL (English as a Second Language) curriculum. [My English ain't so great, but I did teach many Mongolians to say "yall".]

This picture is to be later modified to have tongue, lips, and teeth in position for every sound in the English language. [Basically, you'll see the insides of what is going on for each sound.]

I want to do it with SVG so that I can easily/freely change it and make it better without using costly software.

Please give any advice you want. I like constructive criticism. I want a professional looking picture and am willing to sacrifice pride to get it.

Anyways, here it is:

If you want professional then I would keep it as simple as possible with few colours and no characterisation. I would refer to picture of faces like you see in Airplane safety instructions as examples.

Maybe some earrings, to add a feminine touch?

This picture is to be later modified to have tongue, lips, and teeth in position for every sound in the English language. [Basically, you'll see the insides of what is going on for each sound.]

Out of curiosity, how many sounds are there?

brynn wrote:Maybe some earrings, to add a feminine touch?

This picture is to be later modified to have tongue, lips, and teeth in position for every sound in the English language. [Basically, you'll see the insides of what is going on for each sound.]

Out of curiosity, how many sounds are there?

I thought about the ear, and this being my first work, it might be a bit much for me. I am thinking about microUgly's comment, and think he's right. Maybe keeping a simplified look would help, especially at my point in learning inkscape. However, I might try it, since it would help to give a bit more of a lady-like touch.

As for the sounds, there are about 50 different sounds according to IPA, and around 40 lips/teeth/tongue positions. That's another reason to keep it simple. The book that uses a similar style is the Korean SDA Language School book that I taught out of in Mongolia. It has simple diagrams of the positions, and then simple details on how to make the sounds. Many Asian people groups learn better through this method than just trying to imitate the sounds. (Some sounds we have in English aren't even in Mongolian/Chinese/Korean/Japanese.)

I will try to take both pieces of advice and see what happens. I have lots of free time, so it'll be good for me to get some practice! Thanks for the advice, keep it coming!

Here is an example from the book I taught my students during pronunciation time. I won't be using this exact pic for legal reasons.

Is this more like what you were talking about microUgly?



Note: I do think the lips are a bit too red for my liking, but it was created only in a few minutes.

EDIT: This is the "f" sound, like in Farm.

Yeah. I think keeping it simple works. It helps you focus on what you should be focusing on. Plus if you have to make 40 of these you want to make it as easy as possible

microUgly wrote:Yeah. I think keeping it simple works. It helps you focus on what you should be focusing on. Plus if you have to make 40 of these you want to make it as easy as possible

Yeah, definitely with the numbers needed. I like doing this because it gives me lots of practice in art, since I never had much training as a child. I've always wanted to learn how to do vector art, but never have had any training on it. So, obviously, I am doing lots of reading....

Thanks for your help, I will have another version out soon for everyone to see.

HI!
First of all your English is great
Second - nice pictures!
In general - microugly is right (as always). The key is to simplify your pictures. The thing is that the students must concentrate on lips movement and not on thinking about the color of the skin or thinking about how to make this portrait better...
You don't need to make the portrait 100% realistic, because you just don't need it to show the lips/tongue movement. Just draw the relevant part of the face and all the rest can be super schematic.
In any case - this is my personal opinion...
Good luck!

DenDem wrote:HI!
First of all your English is great
Second - nice pictures!
In general - microugly is right (as always). The key is to simplify your pictures. The thing is that the students must concentrate on lips movement and not on thinking about the color of the skin or thinking about how to make this portrait better...
You don't need to make the portrait 100% realistic, because you just don't need it to show the lips/tongue movement. Just draw the relevant part of the face and all the rest can be super schematic.
In any case - this is my personal opinion...
Good luck!

Thanks for the comment. Sorry, I disappeared for a while. I tried to combine the mouth/lips/teeth/tongue positions with the face, and got some funny results. It reminded me of a person off of a long forgotten show called South Park... The girl with the horrible braces seemed to shine forth!

So, with that thought, I am now totally focusing on simple sketches of facial features important to the sounds. This should be easy enough. However, I want to try to configure them according to IPA (international alphabet for pronunciation). Given that, this should be an interesting project with many different expressions. Not being an artist, it might take some time. (But hey, a computer, some practice, reading a bit of good Internet material, and lots of spare time always seem to add up to success.)

Thanks again everyone! I will try to have something new on *soon* (between now and the end of the world).