!!Peer Project!! Foundational Activities - Learning, Teaching, and Toast !

[Idiot Apathy]

briggsy@ashtons: Thanks for taking the time to reply, I'm sure you must keep pretty busy. Any insight is greatly appreciated, I'm full of questions and am so eager I could probably sap your strength with a barrage of them; *ahem* which I am about to do... please answer only at your leisure!

Now, are you saying that an object's full light should quit when it can no longer become more intense? Once it actually has to loose intensity to gain in value? (re-reading that it seems a little off; rather the full light is as intense as the object should become? ... no not even that works properly I think) And then the colors above this should be reserved for say highlights? This being said, an objects full-light could of course exist in that area it all just depends on what it reflects - an off-white color if you will, right?

Good way to describe gray; made a lot of sense to me, thank you. But what about a hypothetical enviroment where two lights of complementary hues combine, what would this light look like? The object that would reflect it could only take on the properties of these hues however would it appear gray in some situations?

Lastly, Jaffa's sound tasty. Apparently the name comes from Israel; so perhaps they aren't just Australian... hmm, sweet tooth.

@Diabolic: Yeah, you should have been here earlier! Quit slacking; but seriously exercises are always open; there isn't really an order and you can pick and choose which you would like to do. I think that there are some you should do before others though, did I make note of these... can't remember. Anyways, I think you got the point of the exercise and I can see the effort you put into these; good work mate. Look forward to seeing what you do next .

[Diabolic]

Thank you very much, Idiot Apathy. I'm very glad to be here. I might skip around a bit then, if that's the case.

I decided to do part A of Prject #4 because it looked interesting and because I thought it would go well with the project that I just worked on. I'll do part B of this project when I get the chance.



My main issue with this was getting the reflection to actually look real. I don't even think that my reflections look real with the image that I have posted just because thet colors I chose were a bit too saturated. The ball looks as if it could be made of metal because of the reflection colors that I used. I wanted to go for a more matte look, but eh... maybe I'll try this out again sometime and try to achieve that.

Critiques always appreciated.

[Idiot Apathy]

I think they look pretty good man, your right they do look fairly metallic. Now don't be lazy; if you wanted a matte look you should try and find the time and figure out how to do that. It shouldn't take too long, try and find some references perhaps.

I think you may have gone a little overboard on the yellow one, making the reflected light actually overpower the yellow paper.

Your shadow is where my only complaint comes up, specifically it's shape. Shadows are something I'm trying to figure out right now as well, they can be a bit of a pain. I think yours either go too far back, or blur out on the left side too quickly and too much. Not exactly sure where your lightsource is either, still figuring that out too... might be helpful to do some quick exercises with some simple lighting and get the shadows down pat. Ugh, wish I could help you more on them, maybe someone else can come up to the plate and teach a few things.

Anyways, keep up the good work! See ya next time

[Diabolic]

Hahaha... wow... you're right. My shadows look really discombobulated. I'm definitely going to try this excercise again. It was a pain in the arse, but I suppose that's a good thing. It showed me my weak points. I must learn to shade in a non-metallic way.

You're right about the yellow one as well. I always had a problem with toning down my yellows.

Thank you very much for the input. I appreciate it a lot and I will work on fixing my errors.

[Kitsu]

Diabolic:

Looking really good! The values in your first exercise are very close! Maybe the best so far. You've also done (part of) the exercise I've been avoiding. These are very well executed, and I like the matallic look of them. This also illustrates an important point about radiosity - reflected light really is reflection! Your spheres look like they have a surface just a little too rough for true reflections, so you get the fuzzy refelction shown. Anyway it looks to me like you've nailed this exercise too, I do have a couple of structural comments though. To me the main problem with the shadow is that it is pointing in the wrong direction (I'm inferring the light position based on the reflection of the light source - the specular). Also I think your reflections of the plane are a little off, there should be a reflection of the nearest point on the sphere. I did a paintover to try and illustrate my points, I exagerated a little...

I've been doing some still lifes recently, but I suppose I should go back and redo some of these that I had trouble with.

[Cup of Joe]

Fantastic resource Idiot Apathy! I finally got around to trying one of these projects, and I have to say it helped immensely. I decided just to start with project one.

Beginning this I had basically no knowledge of any of this, hence my stupid mistakes in the first one. For the first one, just guessed most of the colors in the grayscale one. Using the color picker, I just increased the intensity to get my red color, keeping the same value as the gray color. After converting it to grayscale, I noticed something was obviously wrong. After mucking about in photoshop for a while, I realized that when intensity increased, value decreased. For the next one, I plotted out a midtone, shadow, and highlight color for both the grayscale and color version, making sure to try and make the value around the same amount for both. The second one turned out much better.

Try 1: color


: grayscale


Try 2: color


: grayscale


I might try it again with more eyeballing for practice. Thanks again!

[purb36]

parabola - can be used to describe the frequency of occurance (or use) in a certain population. in this case, our population is described by the set of colors between two decided colors of our choosing; meaning that no, it doesnt have to encompass everything between pure black and pure white, but rather between the most extreme colors that we choose. the height (or length, if the parabola opens to the side) in this case, describes the saturation, as the closed end of the parabola goes further to the right, the color is more saturated. the closer the closed end is to the left, the less saturation we will use. ill draw something up to help better explain this sometime tomorrow...i shouldve been to sleep like, 4 or 5 hours ago. dang procrastination...

[mir]

I decided to take part in this thread.I hope I'll learn a lot of things about color.
So here is my first try - not very successful.I should do it again with more thinkging.I even didn't match the two spheres in the first version - it seems the are lit from different directions.





So now I will begin to read the posts here from the first page .And I will be back

M.

[Wargoul]

wow, i just got finished reading the first page. I LOVE THIS THREAD.

i gotta stop playing video games and get crackin on these projects. :p

[mir]

I tried again the first excercise.Sorry I didn't put it on the template but this time I tried it traditionally with gouache.I was a little disappointed because I couldn't find how to make the different hues and also what color to add to make the value darker.In the first try I thought the core shadow is darker than the tone but they seem the same in the graysacale version.
I tried to use more intense color for the area next to the core shadow in the way it was suggested here but somehow I didn't do it to look rright.So now I am searching to find how to make the values differ.









M.

[Idiot Apathy]

Wow, sorry for my recent absence guys. School has got me pretty busy right now; got today pretty much off thankfully.

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@Diabolic: My pleasure mate. I hear you on the yellows; yellow is a color that in our minds is always really bright I think. Usually when yellow gets dark and dull we think it's a green.
@Cup of Joe: Thanks mate, really happy to see that it's helped you. I'm glad to see you took your own approach to learning, honestly it's trying to discover and think about things that will help you learn the most I think. In any case your now thinking about values and intensities in color and what causes them, your on the right track. Now, for the shape of your lights please check out this post from briggsy@ashtons. His lighting situation I believe is more theoretical or at least fairly rare but his, hmm, light and shadow areas can teach you a lot; I know they got me thinking. I also recommend you read the posts scattered around as well, some good thoughts in them.
@Purb36: Hey ya bum, still haven't seen any work from you in here
@heartbeat: Nice, I like the scratchy style you've used here. I think your values look good even if you didn't match the shape . On your second attempt: Awesome ! Gouache, you rock. I've never used gouche but I assume the pigments are fairly the same as other mediums yes? What hues were you trying to make but couldn't? Get back to me and I think I can help you out with that, unless of course it's a gouache only technique... :| As for getting darker, usually you can just add black right? haha... usually blue or violet are darker out of the tube than the other colors so that can make things darker however it will also change the hue most often. The orange on your first one looks ok but if you check it's value it's almost 50%V right next to 60%V reds and a 85%V or so highlight, looks a little off I think. But not as much as I would think either. On your second one having the most intense color in the middle (what looks almost like straight from the tube red) doesn't work so well because it doesn't check out in your values. In fact your values stay pretty close from there to the shadows. Yet you've again matched your sphere's really close in value. So, perhaps the red in the middle is just too saturated for this particular example. Again, major kudos to you for doing this with a traditional medium; I should do this haha. Hope to see you around .
@Wargoul: All play and no work make you . . . well lazy; put down the videogames and get cracking mate. Nowadays I only play games to relax after I've been busting my ass ya know. Hope to see some stuff soon mate.

[Aequitas]

How do most of you guys attain that 'brushstroke' feel with your work? When I've done mine in photoshop it seems to flatten out.

[Idiot Apathy]

Well, a lot of us use Corel Painter; it's a little easier to get your brushstrokes out in the open with this program.

With photoshop you could probably get close to the same results with some custom brushes with the right settings.

Didn't really answer your question; You might search through here for a little more info in PS
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/sho...892#post717892

[Boogieman]

Here's my try at the two first. I just bought a wacom a few days ago and this is the first day of actually getting to use it. Saw this thread a while ago and thought it be good for getting used to working digital (and for painting in general). I did my best but it didn't come out very pretty... Any comments will be appreciated. Now I'm gonna move on to the other excercises.

P1
Color

Grayscale


P2

[briggsy@ashtons]

Hi Idiot Apathy! Time for some more briggsy colour fun!

Is the guidline just that it shouldn't be less intense than the half light? If I understand it correctly after a color becomes as intense/saturated as it can be ...

Careful there, intensity and saturation are not synonyms. The guideline seems to be: going from the half light to the full light, the saturation stays exactly the SAME, which means of course that the intensity or chroma always becomes GREATER.

Got a headache yet?

Actually, while terminology can make things confusing, the concepts themselves are really simple, and MUCH easier to put into practice in Photoshop than in oil paint. I'll try to explain what I said a bit more fully.

Imagine you have a white light shining onto a bright red jaffa, whose centre light you decide to paint using a nearly maximum-intensity red, say R 240 G 000 B 000. What colours would lie on a shading series down from that red, i.e. would look like the same colour turning into less light?

Well, the colour of the light bouncing (diffusely) off the jaffa is the product of the local colour of the jaffa and the colour balance of the light source. As long as we are turning under the same (white) light source neither of these factors change, so all the colours in the series will have the same balance of wavelengths, and will differ only in brightness or amount of light. We control the balance of wavelengths by the ratio of R to G to B, so all the colours should have the same ratio, in this case 1 to 0 to 0.
So all of the following colours would lie on the series:
R 240 G 000 B 000
R 230 G 000 B 000
...
R 100 G 000 B 000
and so on

Can you see now that if we wanted a brighter colour on the same series then R 255 G 000 B 000 actually is the limit, because there just isn't any colour brighter than R 255 G 000 B 000 with R/G/B equal to 1/0/0?

In Photoshop, all of the colours in this series have the same hue (H = 0) and the SAME saturation (S = 100%). Think of saturation as PURITY of colour of light. All of the colours in this series have the same purity - they are all made by just the red phophors glowing - but they differ in brightness and therefore in chroma (intensity). Think of brightness as the AMOUNT of coloured light and of chroma as the STRENGTH of colour.

R255 G 000 B000 has the maximum chroma of any red in RGB space.
Maximum Saturation (PURITY) x Maximum Brightness (AMOUNT) = Maximum Chroma (STRENGTH).

By the way, if the ball is a desaturated red, say R250 G100 B100 in the full light, the story is still the same. We could make a shading series for this ball using all the colours in which R/G/B were equal to 5/2/2:
R 250 G 100 B 100
R 200 G 080 B 080
R 150 G 060 B 060
etc.
Again, in Photoshop all these colours have the same hue (0) and the same saturation (60%). As I said in my first post, shading series in Photoshop seem to fall along lines of uniform saturation. The brightest possible colour with this hue and saturation (i.e. with R/G/B = 5/2/2) is R255 G102 B102.

I know that many authors use the terms saturation and intensity interchangeably as you apparently did, but hopefully you can see that this masks an important logical distinction.

Idiot Apathy, you would do me a huge favour if you could let me know the sources where you got the idea that the full-light should be less saturated than the half-light. I am aware of the passages in Loomis' "Creative Illustration" to that effect, but if there are others please let me know the references, or even better, post some quotes or page scans. I've decided to try to write up some of this stuff as a tutorial and it would be great to be able to refer to them (in the section on "colour myths", that is ).

[Idiot Apathy]

Sweet, always up for some more briggsy color fun! Look forward to it actually

Since your last post I've been playing with these new ideas you have given me and am very pleased with the results.

The intensity and saturation thing has gotten a bit confusing I think; Intensity is just what has become sort of standardized around my area; certainly a need for standardization especially after things my "revelation further down". No mention of Chroma and only brief mention of saturation, usually in computer related courses.

After reading this post I've gone back and re-examined Painter's color picker, it's actually set up by chroma I believe, smart of them . This is where my thinking and wording have gone muggy.

The yellow bar shows maximum saturation, Blue is Value and Green is what I believe would be chroma. The Circle in the middle is 50% Value and 50% Saturation, the value will stay parallel however the saturation will not.

This, this! - was actually a breakthrough to me haha! I should have guessed that converting a triangle to a square and vice versa isn't a really good idea. Thanks very much, this has opened up some doors for me; I've got a lot of pondering ahead .

As for my sources of where I got the idea that full lights should/could be less saturated than the half light, I couldn't tell you. Sorry I can't help with your tutorial; the sum of my color and light knowledge comes mostly through my own thoughts and tidbits I've picked up here and there. Perhaps the idea would be better stated as "Which is higher in chroma, the half or full light? Or are they equal?" I think, in hindsight I was visualizing a very diffused highlight; that would create the illusion of a less saturated full light perhaps? Adding to that is the confusion of vocabulary; I'll have to correct that on the main page.

I know you must be sparse on time, I know how long it has taken me to write and think this post out properly, over an hour now ... However I have a few questions and requests if you ever have the time and patience

"Which is higher in chroma, the half or full light? Or are they equal?" This one is up above as well.

When could say a sphere become less saturated in the light? When could it become more saturated? Could this only happen with either multiple lightsources or colored lightsources?

What could produce a series that went up only in saturation and not in value? Or rather what determines the slope between value and saturation?

Painter has what I believe to be the highest Chroma at 100% Saturation and 50% Value (100%S and 100%V in Photoshop), I can't place exactly why but I think Painter's makes a little more sense, what are your thoughts?

Could you come and teach in Utah , we could use you out here!

Thanks Mr. Briggs, you've shown me the light (Horrible pun intended!). There's no telling how long I'd be wandering in the dark (oh, ouch didn't actually intend that horrible pun) without your help.
- - - - - - - - - - - - -

@Boogieman: Welcome to the thread! I like your enthusiasm. Keep using your tablet you'll get used to it. Now, are you using Painter or PS? Hopefully we can give you some tips on achieving the results you want. I think you've done a great job matching the values. As for the colors, saturation etc I'll have to give you a rain check. On my next day off I'm going to research this a bit further, try to get the right answers and examples and will post my results; so stay tuned. Your blocks are certainly believable, still working on the exact specifications the colors should take like I said above, I'll get back to you on that. The shadows however don't coincide with the position I read from your lightsource. I see the lightsource as high behind and a little to the left so the lines from the shadows could be seen as running directly away from the light. (Ha, kind of a neat thing to visualize!) Keep up the good work mate!

[Idiot Apathy]

New Shard of the Project:
Open Forum
- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Until I've got more free time and some of the latest exercises start to see some use the thread should head into an open discussion; meaning -

If you have a question/topic/problem/looking for specific advice post your question in the format supplied below and our "brain trust" will get to the bottom of it. This isn't a critique section, there are better sections for that. It's more of a hypothesis/theory section, a help desk if you will. Feel free to post whatever you want whenever, even if you think you know the answer post and lets see what we can learn.

Multiple questions will and should be running at once, so to keep it simple and direct use a header for each question.
Format:

[B][SIZE="3"]Topic:[/SIZE][/B] "Insert Question Here"
[SIZE="3"][B]Briefing:[/B][/SIZE] "Describe the question in further detail, give us a little back story if relevant as well"

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Ok, a topic to get us rolling; it's a bit odd I know but I'd like to hear your thoughts.

Topic: "Blue and Yellow Make Green, But in PS Yellow is the Complement of What Appears to be Blue, What Gives?!"
Briefing: Yellow is 60 Degrees under the PS color picker. Mix Red and Green to any amount on the RGB slider and this is where you will end up. So Yellow is an equal amount of Red and Green two of our digital primary colors; we need the last one in order to find it's complement - blue. Blue is the complement of Yellow. Yet... every kid with crayons knows blue and yellow makes green! This could only happen if this blue was actually less than the 240 Degrees it should be in PS and Yellow was more than the 60 it should be... are our definitions of Blue and Yellow incorrect? Is there a new color that should be after what we think of as "Blue"? Or is my logic/math faulty? What color is indigo by the way?

[Kronos]

So many questions!!! i guess i'll just ask one to begin with.......

Topic: "RGB vs CMYK"
Briefing: "i'm most definitely a colour n00b, but i would really like to get a definite answer about the difference between rgb and cmyk, i think i understand where they are derived from, but why do colours change when you convert between the two? is this just a process the computer has to go through to change the information? did the concept of RGB and CMYK exist before programs like PS, or is it just a way for the computer to understand colour through numbers? what do people use to paint in? are there any advantages to either?"

please give as much elaboration on this, as i feel it is a relatively un-specific question.... requiring quite a large answer....

and to add to your question Idiot Apathy, why is RGB not RYB? (yellow instead of green)...... the primary colours are still red, yellow and blue right? so why do all these other ways of describing colour have to be created..... does this mean the red, yellow, blue system isn't perfect?


btw, Idiot Apathy, this is a really great idea, your really making this and awesome place to learn !!!!!!!!




EDIT: hmmmm, i think i've discovered a piece of the top of the iceberg to both of these questions.....
rgb is actually the way colour works with light, with the idea, red, green and blue light can create all different coloured lights.... red and green produce yellow!!?! as weird as that sounds....and all three colours combined create white....

its explained here (heh,one of your own links Apathy)(a minder that the guy on this link is talking about web design, not digital painting). this is used in programs like PS because we are working on a computer screen.... RGB is how the colours you seen on your screen are actually made.

but i find this to be pretty strange. when you are "painting" you are thinking as if you really were painting practically (at least i do), not adding coloured light to create an image....So.....why should we use RGB!?!?!?!....well, from what i gather, we shouldn't? RGB, is "additive", and the traditional RYB is "subtractive", meaning the the paint does not emit light, but absorbs light and reflects the colour that we see. its described much more eloquently in that link...

anyone else, got some insight, that would be awesome!

[briggsy@ashtons]

"Which is higher in chroma, the half or full light? Or are they equal?" This one is up above as well.

I think I've already answered that one:
"going from the half light to the full light, the saturation stays exactly the SAME, which means of course that the intensity or chroma always becomes GREATER."

When could say a sphere become less saturated in the light? When could it become more saturated? Could this only happen with either multiple lightsources or colored lightsources?.

You mean more saturated in the light compared to the shadow? Definitely: you get boosted saturation in the light when the hue of the of the light source is similar to the hue of the ball, diminished saturation in the light when the hue of the light source is complementary to the hue of the ball. But within the light the saturation should be constant in both cases: the change in saturation occurs at the terminator (shadow boundary).
Multiple reflection between similarly coloured surfaces will also boost the saturation, most noticeably in the shadow areas.

What could produce a series that went up only in saturation and not in value?

Well, if you really mean saturation, when we follow each of the light zones (full light, half light, shadow) from the receding planes around the edges of the sphere to the place where it more or less faces us, the saturation tends to increase accompanied by a small darkening of value, as we move away from the influence of specular reflection of the background.

Or rather what determines the slope between value and saturation?

Not sure I follow this one or its connection to the preceding. Saturation is the slope of the line relating tone to chroma; it is a characteristic of the local colour of the surface. The more perfectly the surface reflects one or two of the primaries of light and absorbs the other two/one, the higher its saturation.

Painter has what I believe to be the highest Chroma at 100% Saturation and 50% Value (100%S and 100%V in Photoshop), I can't place exactly why but I think Painter's makes a little more sense, what are your thoughts?

Well, I don't have the latest versions of either, or a huge amount of experience - everything I say is based on literally playing with Photoshop 7 and Painter 8. But I can say that "L" and "S" in Photoshop 7 seem to correspond well to important concepts in painting, while the equivalent parameters in Painter 8 do not.
In Photoshop, the paramater "L" as seen in the colour picker is intended to be a measure of perceived luminance, and corresponds closely to "tone" as the oil painter understands it. Not so "Lum." in the colour picker or "V" in the "Colors" window of Painter 8; both of these are by definition 50% for all pure colours. So a pure yellow and a pure violet-blue are both placed on the same level, despite being wildly different in tone.
Also in Photoshop 7, "S" as seen in the HSB section of the colour picker seems to correspond exactly to the vital concept of the lines of uniform saturation that define the path of shading series; this makes it dead simple to generate shading series for any colour you want. "S" or "Sat" in Painter 8 is a different and, to me, useless parameter, corresponding to saturation up to a Lum./V of 50%, then changing direction and heading off to white.

Could you come and teach in Utah , we could use you out here!.

Utah, hmmm...Why not? Send plane ticket, I'm there!

You flatterer!

I'm tempted to work on answers to the topics but I'm supposed to checking links for the Wiki. (I promised sciboy I'd post a few hundred Art History links). I'll look in again soon and see how you're doing.

[Kitsu]

Very cool Idea Apathy! This should make it a lot easier to keep this thread going.

RGB vs RYB: Yeah it just has to do with whether your using light as your medium, or light absorbing pigments -> additive vs subtractive. Mixing a blue pigment with a yellow pigment means you have bits reflecting yellow light and bits reflecting blue light mixed together, our eyes then see that as green. That doesn't mean there is any green light involved. Actually I'm thinking maybe compliments don't work the same with light? I took two seconds to try this out:

They do all look like compliments on the screen... BTW arn't CMY the secondary colors on the RGB color wheel? I think CMYK is just something made for printing because those colors are easier to make?

Great, now I am more confused! Anyway, I think when your painting digitally it is a lot safer to worry about HSV rather than how light or pigments would mix. I would love to know what a pro or a teacher has to say about it though.

[naav]

Actually I'm thinking maybe compliments don't work the same with light?

True. Even the primary colours in the additive system are different. They're red, blue and green. Secondary colours are yellow, cyan and magenta.

Lots of info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_theory

[Idiot Apathy]

I haven't got much time right now, headed off to work in a minute. Just wanted to say a few things.

@Mr. Briggs: Thanks again for helping me out with these things, so much to think about; it's exciting really. Thanks for dropping in from time to time as well, it's great to have someone who knows what they are talking about and can back that up helping us out. I meant to say this in my last post; Do let us know when you've got this tutorial ready; as well as these links for the Wiki. I'm very interested in seeing what you produce. Also, let me know if you need help of any kind; it would be a pleasure. Oh and unfortunately I don't have the 1000$USD-2000$USD to get you a flight out here; perhaps I'll become a flight attendant temporarily... hmm.

@Everyone else: Great! I'm happy to see the enthusiasm for this new addition to the project. Unless someone bets me to it I'll try and get something written up for your question later this week Kronos. In the mean time, keep the questions (and answers!) coming guys!

[Azrael]

I decided to give this ago. I feel that I have much to learn, especially with color.
I definetly agree that the color picker in photoshop is a bit difficult to use when defining value. Painting a sphere was little tougher that I thought it might be and yet I suprised myself. Here is my color version;



and here is my desaturated greyscale version.;

[Kitsu]

Azrael:

Your values are matching very well and your spheres look spherey. The only problem I see is that you didn't get a full range of value (no dark darks).

color: Did anybody else notice on the wiki page that CMY are the narrowest bands on their color wheel? Does that mean it is easier to color-match pigments in those ranges?

[ChrisMayernik]

Everyone do not forget that everything is reflective to some degree. Some things like dry wood are not that reflective, but they still are ( place log underneath sun and see ). Reflections are not the same as lighted planes because they are controlled by the location of the light source, the angle of the plane you are viewing, and the location of ones eyes. Lighted planes are controlled by the location of the lightsource and the angle of the plane. Reflections allow a lighted plane to drop in saturation because the reflection effects the base color ( hue,saturation, value ) in light. A good example is my desk where it is picking up the reflection of the wall which is "white" so the area with the reflection is less saturated, therefore higher in value then the area that does not recieve the reflection.

Black is 0% white is 100%

Do not think that 80% red at 50% saturation is the same value as 80% gray ( no saturation). converted to grayscale the first one is 60% (value) while the other is still 80%. Saturation and hue both effect the percieved color and this is why 10% purple at 100% saturation becomes 5% value when converted to gray scale. The same 10 percent but of yellow at 100% saturation is not 5% value but 9% or 10%.

Enough food for now.

[FlyingMilton]

I just started coloring with photoshop this week so go easy.

[Boogieman]

Hey. Did project 4 and 7. Also got a revised project 1 to show.

4:



7 - finished:

7 - ref:


1 color:

1 gray:

[Kitsu]

ChrisMayernik

Thanks! Those are all very good points. Great explanation of how color+saturation effects value. I love all the little light studies/notes/sketches in your sketchbook. I think it would be great if you could explain some of that stuff a little in here...

FlyingMilton:
Good start, looks like you need to go a bit darker on your color.

Boogieman:

Good job, looks like you're doing a lot of work. Proj. 4: leaving the lines on the spheres really cuts things up and flattens things out. From what I can see the light bouncing onto the spheres looks good, but the shadows don't look right. Also as stated earlier in the thread speculars arn't on straight line from the light to the object, they are refected off the objects surface to the vewer.

The Building looks good, The roof and the face of the small building on the left side are both too dark though. Also I would spend a little more time putting in the smaller elements (lots of value changes).

The spheres match well, the area around the core shadow on the color version is too dark though.

[uRiDiAN]

Well... here i am with a very VERY late start. heh...

i have a class this semester in which i'll be painting with Painter and i really have never touched the program other than opening it, trying to paint, getting frustrated, closing it. i could really use the practice with the program and one's understanding of light and color is never quite enough, is it?

anyway... here's exercise number 1. i understand it pretty well, i just spent a long time fighting with program to get what i wanted out of the stylus. if anyone has any websites with painter 9 technical tutorials i'd appreciate it.





i'll be trying to plow through the exercises to catch up. thanks for getting this started idiot apathy, this is going to help me a lot.

-uridian

[Idiot Apathy]

I made this for Pennington but I was hoping it would be somewhat useful for others so I'll post it here.

A quickie on blending/painting in Painter:

I hope this makes some sense and explains a few things, I wasn't sure exactly how to illustrate some of these things; most of the information will be in what I write down here anyways. It's a bit free-flowing thought so I hope there is some good stuff...

Ways to Blend in Painter:

Opacity - It's a lot different than in Photoshop, it's more like flow from an airbrush I believe. It will layer up until you hit 100% Opacity. I usually don't use 100% unless I'm working on extreme details, etc. I find that 80-90% percent combined with the right settings is perfect for blocking things in and blending smoothly. Opacity by itself doesn't make a very good blender, takes too long and is kind of ugly.

Resaturation:
I think you can basically think of this as how much pure paint you have on your brush. So if you take a stroke of black onto a white canvas a 100%Resaturation setting will be like thick black neverending ink and you won't see much of a mixture. With a lower setting you'll see more of a mixture, less resaturation more mixing of paint. On my Textured Brush I like to have two settings, one around 50-60% for some sharper strokes and one closer to 15-25% for smooth color blending. A low resaturation brush can make a very good blender. Note: Turning the resaturation to 0% means no paint is applyed, it's almost like a dry brush. Use this to make any brush into a blender brush.

Bleed:
Well, some of what can be said for resaturation can be said for bleed. The two are somewhat inseperable. Bleed is the amount of paint that is smeared, perhaps you can think of it as what consistancy the paint is; watery or thick. I like a fairly high bleed (70-80% maybe?), it helps mask a little bit of fake digital strokes.

Blender Brushes:
I'm not a real big fan of these. Most of the default brushes that come with the program are a bit chunky and look too digital. I do however use some of my favorite brushes at 0%Resaturation as blender brushes. The blender I use the most, which isn't very often, is a very soft edged brush at very low opacity (10-20%). Blenders at low opacity have their uses.

Optical Mixing:
This is kind of a bigger topic than just painter. But basically optical mixing is a combination of seperate colors that mix into one when they hit your eye. Think... like stippling? I use a lot of this with my textured brush, but as you can imagine it makes well textures if you over do it. I don't know, this isn't something I can really cover. Just keep it in mind.

Soft Edged Brushes:
With a brush that has a soft edge a little bit of blending happens around well the edges. Its usually a mix of opacity and optical mixing depending on the hardness and texture of the brush. The key here is to eye drop the mixture and then paint with that, rinse and repeat. Try a soft edged brush at different opacities and resaturation settings, lots of uses here.

Grainy Brushes:
Usually these use a bit of everything, optical mixing, soft edges, opacity and so on. Make sure and use the grain setting and the Papers Panel!
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Pressure Settings:
I personally like to have a little bit of everything set to pressure; a little bit of size to get into those hard to reach areas. Some opacity to emulate lifting or grinding the brush into the canvas. Some Resaturation for the same effect as well. Mess around with this! You can even check the box next to the settings to reverse it.
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A little illustration:

Left to Right: Custom Texture Brush, Custom Soft Edged Brush, Custom Blender Brush.

I know, all custom how lame?! They aren't really anything special, the settings are the key. Anyways:

Part One: The Textured Brush
This was made to have a harder crisper center with a softer less opaque and grainy outer edge. That helps it blend a little better I think, as well as put some paint down. Usually I use to block things in at about 50%Resaturation 80% Bleed and 90% Opacity. I have a variant set up with the same settings except about 15% Resaturation that blends very very smoothly. Even still it can create some decent textures, especially if you vary the size a lot (sometimes really huge!). I like to drop either of these down and use them at 10% Opacity as well. When this is done it becomes very scratchy and rough, see the right most side of the first square. A key technique for a textured brush is what I'll dub umm... "stamping?"; using the brush as more of a stamp, you can see this in the middle of the first square. Don't ask me why I did this in 100% opacity.. just seemed to make sense for the demonstration at the time...

Part Two: The Soft Edged Brush
Currently at 50%Resat 50%Bleed, I vary the opacity wildly depending on what I want. I usually use this for either simple shading projects or details on others. Again the key to using a soft edged brush is to eye drop the mixture it creates on its fringes. Usually you'll want to use something else or a really "pure" setting on this to clean up/sharpen key edges.

Part Three: Ze Blender
Basically... my soft Edged brush at 0% Resaturation. I use this vary rarely and at very low opacity. Did I mention I don't like blenders?
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I don't know, hopefully there is something useful in there... ugh I'm tired now; try to get to some questions and replys later.