Cooking with Idiot: Episode 4, Agelaos and Jtho

[agelaos]

whats up man. So from now on I should just post anything Im havin trouble with? Aiiight cool, Ill have some paintings up soon, no doubt, and i'm sure i'm gonna have troubles. Be ready man, for you will see so many problems you shall be a startled young man.

[Idiot Apathy]

Moo.


?

[Jtho]

eee, sorry Tom.

Okay, I hope "any problems in your work" means any work is okay, so here's another painting that I've been poking at, to give you something to chew on. I was trying to hold off until I was satisfied with the progress of the jungle chase painting to post another update--I'll put it up soon.




I'm almost at a wall with it. Aside from another step of cleaning up and sculpting out a few areas, I'm not sure what I can do to improve it and I'm not sure I can spot problems in it any more. My biggest concern right now is that there is kind of a central "swath" of shapes made up by the characters and the tank that are all kind of running together and are very busy with similar values. I think the upper third or so of the composition is working out well, but the rest seems a little "weak".

[Idiot Apathy]

Okay Joe, some thoughts:

I've tried to distinguish your different subjects with value patterning. The idea is to compose your lighting and surfaces in order to give each subject a contrasting value. This is easier to do with background versus foreground elements and et cetera. Keep in mind too much contrast and not enough relativity will be detrimental to the image. Put the highest contrast where you want the viewer to look and lower the contrast where you don't want the viewer to look.

I've moved the banner around a bit. Not sure if it was meant to be attached to him or not but where it was originally made it seem to be growing out of the back of his head. I've also changed the angle of it to bring the eye towards the focal point and I've put 2 more in the background for depth created by similar objects at varying distances as well as to make it feel less out of place by repetition. I've also scribbled in another jetpack solider or two for the same reason.

I've popped some rimlights in and extended your value range, blah blah blah - other junk.

I'm not too keen on the shape of his wrist armor nor whatever he is holding in the hand on the left. Tank seems a bit small perhaps? Especially if it's as close to him as it appears. poop.

Anyhow, hope this helps. If there is anything specific please let me know as well as anything else you need help on - post it up.

Cheers! I'm off to Dallas for a week.

[Idiot Apathy]

I'm back - what up my ninja's?

[Jtho]

Hey Tom, I hope Reverie was awesome. Maybe one of these days I'll work up the gumption(and money) to go to a workshop.

Alright, kind of an aggregate post here, I decided to save up my response to your awesome paintover(s) for this update.

One piece at a time-
-----------------
Space Marine Paintover
Wow, it's ridiculous how much better you made this painting, I can't stop looking at it. I seriously can't believe how much of a difference it made just rethinking the value patterning, and hardly even doing anything to the actual sculpting work, and you probably did this with a big fat soft brush on one or two layers

I thought I was being bold already with the sky against the silhouette of the commander, but I see that I was being too conservative and should have gone for the gusto. Pushing the eyes away from the less gingerly tended legs and ground worked wonderfully. The sort of hazy 'fog' you put in with the soft brushes to fill in the space between the foreground and background, and spilling around the silhouette of the commander figure does wonders for the sense of atmosphere and light. I feel like I should be nodding sagely and mumbling something to myself about how important edges are. The bit of rim lighting helps it read and, if I'm learning anything, serves a secret purpose to further attract the eye.

Regarding the tank, I thought it might be small but I hoped I made enough of a sense of it being far away that perspective would take care of it and I could lean back and call it a day. Wrooong. I should have redrawn it, but I got precious with it.

Regarded the 'other' arm, he's supposed to be holding a Bolter Pistol in a more normal sized gauntlet, but for some reason I decided to have the gun at an odd top-down angle and ended up obscuring a lot of the detail of the hand and gun, compounding the problem with the lazy drawing of it. Should have redone this too.
----------
Chase Update
This thing is starting to get tricky to work on. I can poke around a bit and play with a few things still, but most of the rest of the work I can see is just cleaning a few areas up and tending to some details (at least I hope there's nothing huge I need to fix)

Since the last update I've hacked into the rendering some more all around, pushing values near where I want them and working on the sculpting in general.

I changed the design on the tree in the central background pretty substantially, and am playing a bit with some direct light hitting parts of the tree. I definitely agree about how the rifleman looked goofy and have re-adjusted his grip on the gun. I was having a bitch of a time getting the head on the fleeing figure looking right, but I think I've finally got the drawing on it decent. I shamelessly stole from your paintover the shaggy jungle foliage hanging down from the top to create a sort of vignetting effect, because it just seems to work well. I've also added some sort of misty soft atmospheric light in the mid-ground, which seemed to work nicely to help separate the planes of the painting a bit.

The thing I'm waffle-ing the most about is how to handle the forest floor of the midground area. I've abstracted in some grass or something for the moment but I'm not quite sure how I'm going to clean it up. It almost seems like the sort of job for a texture or fancy brush, but that's probably the coward's way out.

Whew! Thanks for reading, Sensei.

[agelaos]

currently sortin out some problems of my own at the moment, I'll have some stuff up by sunday hopefully.

[Idiot Apathy]

Dennis: Hope things go well for you.
Joe: Working on a PO, trying to get back to you within a week but my PS and tablet decided to crap out right in the middle of a PO tonight. Anyhow, bedtime I guess. Tomorrow or wednesday or something.

[Idiot Apathy]

Joe: Yeah man, you really need to make it to the workshops. I've learned so much and been inspired so much from them as well as had tons of fun.

Ok, I'm trying not to let more than a week go by for feedback. Hope that's legit. Glad the P.O. helped. You seem to be very introspective with your art and process and that will serve you very well. I think you know what to do to take this image further.

In reply to the Chase Update, using textures or fancy brushes is not the cowards way out nor is it really a crutch when used properly (not that crutches are necessairly bad either). Use absolutely every tool you possiblely can to make the most successful image; we aren't in the business of technical craftsmanship - we are in the business of selling an idea and the faster and more effective you are the more successful you will be. All this said, outside of production art - crutches are meant to help you walk but you can't learn to run with them. Use them at first to aid you in your learning, then wean yourself off of them so you can truly understand how to achieve the effect you are after and then use them at your lesiure once you have learned what was necessary. (A bit vague I know, just keep in mind your weaknesses and make sure they don't hold you back.)

The image;
At this point I'm not sure everything here is an improvement, some of it is just different and up to you to pick and choose what you feel helps the image in how you see fit. If there is anything more specific I can try and help you there. First off I flipped it horizontally; again this is just different - better or worse depends on what you are going for. Flipped I think it gives the creature more motion, the way you have it I think gives more action to the shooter. I've played with your values and moved some shapes around - fleshed out a plane or two on the ground etc. etc. I also felt the figure in the foreground could stand to be a little bigger but not sure I like the value changes I made. Hmm, that's about it I suppose.




Oh, still not too sure about the pose of the shooter;
http://www.hunter-ed.com/images/grap...techniques.jpg
This maybe?

Let me know how you'd like to proceed - if you've got other images or this one or if I should cook up an exercise for something you are having trouble with. Cheers!

[laurghita]

Oh, still not too sure about the pose of the shooter;
http://www.hunter-ed.com/images/grap...techniques.jpg
This maybe?

Any pose who dont involve zoom aiming is good... scope is unusable so close to the targeth... best delete the scope and use just the length of the barrel for aim it will look more appropiate...

[2100]

Hi, is this thread private or may I comment here? Just as practice for myself, I've been looking at your works and imagining a paintover in my head and then comparing my own solutions to Tom's paintovers. You guys are really lucky, Tom comes up with some elegant solutions!

[Idiot Apathy]

Comments and Critiques are more than welcome however at the moment I've only enough time for the two mentees. Thanks for the kind words!

[agelaos]

heres my edge control and value practice that me and you talked about idiot apathy, hope you can help me out when you got time. Ill keep doin and posting them here.

the original on the left and mine on the right. Started off by blocking in the shapes, laying in basic tones and then detailing it, while also making sure to line up all the features correctly.

Any paintovers or crits are sure to help so whenever you got time.

[Idiot Apathy]

Hey man, this exercise is about perfection. You really need to match the subtleties, there are no shortcuts, shorthand or translation here.

I want you to reduce your scope and match this section perfectly before moving on. Do it on a separate canvas if you have to.

[agelaos]

ok that sounds good. I'll go and do that section tomorrow, should have it posted by then. Here's another one I did, but I already know what you're gonna say. This one is way off. I should go and look at each section carefully and get it perfect. Ill just start by doing the section you posted for me to do, and we will go from there.

[Idiot Apathy]

Yeah man. Values are real nice in both of these. Drawing and edges are what needs the most work.

If your brush isn't doing what it needs to, experiment. You should be able to do this with just a round. Play with pressure sensitive opacity and flow, minimum size and manual flow as well as hardness.

[agelaos]

wow, I didn't realize just how hard it is trying to copy the image completely perfect. I drove myself insane, and its just the shoulder, and I still probably got it wrong. I see now why you said this image was going to be tough. My head is pounding in paiin. Im not gonna give up though.

Im pretty sure I know where this is going, you probably want me to do the entire image perfectly now. Ok, ill get on it. If you see anything off on the shoulder tell me and I'll fix it up.

[agelaos]

I'm so exhausted with this piece, and I still didn't even get it perfect. I think I wanna move on and do a new one, unless you think I should stay on this one more and get it even more perrfeccct. The hair was so damn hard, was bashing my head in. I definitely need to improve my drawing skills. I see that's a huge weakness along with edge control.

[Jtho]

The new version looks much better agelaos. Those meticulous photo studies can be exhausting but I bet you learned a lot.

---

I just finished this and thought I could use some feedback. The prompt was simply "Fancy hats". I'm pretty pleased with it, which is all the more reason I need some feedback, as I have absolutely no idea what I could do better.

I tried to employ some of the stuff that we have been talking about(and maybe some stuff that I learned in my gut but don't necessarily know how to describe) with these bigger illustration type scenes and apply it to a portrait-- mostly paying more attention to value composition and contrast, and trying to not treat all my edges the same.

I feel a bit cheap for using the little bits of color in there. I tried it out on a whim to see how it looked and liked it, but I fear others might not.

Anyhow, thoughts and comments from either of you would be great.


I am currently also working up some thumbnails and roughs for some enviros, which I hope we can use a vehicle for injecting color into the discussion, and to help improve my environments in general.

[agelaos]

hey jtho, I tried to help out by trying to do a paintover, but I learned that I don't really have enough knowledge to really do one well, or to really give you high quality critiques. You should probably wait for Idiot Apathy to help you out, I just did what I could.

I think the biggest issues I see in your painting is probably some structure issues with the form and the face. Maybe flip the canvas once in a while to see where you might have gone wrong. Get some reference when you can, it really does help out, you don't have to constantly look at the reference, maybe just a quick peek or two to get an image in your mind.

The design of the hat seemed kind of weird to me, it didn't really balance well as a design, so I would equal it out so that the weight is even on both sides. I felt it was leaning too much to the right and seemed kind of awkward.

Also by adding subtle details like the bone structure of the clavicle(which doesn't look good at all in my paintover) or just any of those bone structures you would see protruding, will really give your painting a good sense of form.

One quick thing about coloring, I wouldn't be too worried about coloring over a grayscale, just put a color layer and color away. It doesn't matter which colors you use or how saturated they look, you can always adjust the saturation or the color later on with image adjustments to get it exactly how you envisioned it. If the grayscale is correct the colors will always look good over it, its really only quick adjustments after that. You just have to experiment and don't be too scared to totally mess up, you'll learn something in the process and eventually come up with your own process on coloring grayscales.

Keep up the good work Jtho


Also to idiot Apathy, I graduate on friday, so I'll probably be gone for a week or so, I'll try to have some stuff up by next sat or sund.

[agelaos]

here's one I'm working on at the moment, not done yet of course. Just thought I'd post a wip, while I go work on something else for a few hours. I should get this one done today or tomorrow.

[agelaos]

I feel like im going to puke. Had this one farther along but photoshop crashed, yaa, so fun. I think I'm going to move on to another piece thats less complex. If you think I should study something else tell me.

[Idiot Apathy]

Sorry gents, I've not had much time lately. Soon, I promisssssssse.