Dm7 & Sigit: Values and Colors

[Dm7]

Hi everybody,

Welcome to my thread, I will be mentoring Sigit in this course. Feel free to browse and maybe learn too! Unfortunately at the moment, I'm not accepting any more mentees; however, please feel free to contact me through PM anyways, I might change my mind.

What to expect:
For now, we shall start with a basic black and white exercises to encourage you to see how value can play in composition and contrast. Eventually, that will progress to the fun part, coloring with the color theory application!

The colors are just an eyecandy bonus with more mastering required. It is an art within art. Try to see that with everything you do when you draw and paint.

Tip(s):
I'll do one rule to help you change how you view your artwork, preparing yourself further for coloring.

1) There's no 2D forms. If you think it's 2D on the paper/screen, you're fooled... hard. The paper/screen is actually a magical portal to 3rd dimension and represents literal 3D forms. Shift your focus to 3rd dimension!

Assignment:
And to get started, I'll ask you to do one black and white (good sized please) sphere and ground art based on this reference: http://www.williamsclass.com/Electiv...alueSphere.jpg

There you also can see what purpose it is, try to use it to your advantage.

I'll be using your first piece as the base ground and start from there. Do your best with it.

Colorful luck Sigit!

[Sigit]

My work for the assignment
]

[Dm7]

Ah, my apologies, I thought it went dead - that subscripion notification isn't helping much either.

Sorry that I didn't know about it until now. Unfortunately, about your picture, I can't view it due to it being pended for approval. Can you please use photobucket or some image-providing sites such as imageshack for this so there's no waiting time.

Thanks! Sorry about that again. *slaps herself*

[Dm7]

Hi again! Thank you for fixing the picture so I can view it.... it is a very good clean start! I applause for your effort.

...

And now, are you ready for my critique? Hehe, well, before I do, I want to say few things. I'm well aware that it's difficult and next few "assignments"/projects might be very difficult, but I'm hoping that by doing those basic exercises, it'll help you to see the basic foundation that makes the whole art what it is. Values are very important in coloring... otherwise the color part is meaningless. However, I don't consider myself a full mentor, I'd love to have you express your opinion and your feeling on where you are going and I'll try my best to assist you along. Consider it like a open-source learning environment. My only requirement from you is your effort and patience. And I will do the same. Maybe I can learn one or few things from you on the road, who knows. How does that sound to you?

Now to the crit part, I did most crits on the image you did and I would like to ask you to study "why" and redo it again once more and make it more accurate. However, feel free to poke me anytime if you don't understand what I tried to show you. I cannot emphasize that enough, understanding the values accurately in shading is essential. I'm sorry if it's a boring assignment... but it'll be worth your time. Also don't forget, you can always tell me you want something else or whatsoever, I'm open and flexible!



Good luck and let me know what you think and how you feel about it.

P.s. You can redo it at a smaller size if you want, just be sure that it's viewable and big enough for you.

[Sigit]

This is my work for the assignment

[Dm7]

Ok, highlight is much better! I'll talk more on it later because I'm going away on Holiday.

I'll come back to you next week. Merry Christmas!

P.S. How would you feel if, for your next assignment, I ask you to do any piece in black and white (paint/draw whatever you like)? We can start from there with crits and paintovers?

[Sigit]

It's fine with me I'll post right away

[spaztastic]

oooo is this thread still open for more artists.. I really need help in this area.

[Sigit]

Here's my work. Sorry for not posting it for a while because I'm sick.
thanks

[Dm7]

Hi Sigit,

Sorry for the slow reply here as well, flu seems to be around pretty strong lately...

Anyways, I made a overpainted demonstration for you to compare with your own painting. Please notice that it is not created to insult you in any way but to help you to switch your mode into observing mode since art demands so much of that. It IS a form of art after all.

Observe.



Starting from left, you'll see original image along with your image and then my overpainted one on the very right. Also that there are spheres at the top representing the shading tone on skin (notice: those spheres are less contrasted than I would like it to be, but it's irrelevant for now).

With your image and my overpainted image, notice that there are three main tones on the right side. Comparing to yours to mine, your highlight is too weak -- the deep quality then suffers.

*take a deep breath*

Lemme try help you to see it in a more simplified way by giving you a challenge.

I challenge you to only use THREE tones as I have shown on the presentation. Yup, you have heard me right, only THREE (3) tones!

Divide that into three categories.

1) Shadow - the darkest value representing the areas the light can't reach.
2) Midtone - ambient light.. often representing all the lights including ambient... i.e. the skylight
3) Highlight - the brightest value, often representing the reflected light known as specular value. It can be tricky and is used sparingly, but it is also another essential key of giving the painting the complete depth feeling.

Determine the value keys for all three categories and set it from darkest to lightest. Feel free to use "between" values to make the transition more smoother between shadow and midtone, and not only for that, but also from midtone to highlight.

TIP: Brush with opacity or fade option can do this function well!

Also keep this in mind, shadow and highlight tones tell the story where light source(s) is. So, use this to your advantage.

In order to make it even more simple, I'll create a basic guideline for you to learn how to observe and analyze your image better.

1) Determine the light source(s).
2) Squeeze your eyes until the reference image you're looking at is blurred, try to determine its value and compare that with your image. Be critical of your own critiques.
3) Set only three tones of your material (for example, skin). Tip:Be sure that all of them have enough contrast from each other... for example, your highlight was nearly the same with your midtone tone so it was too weak. With that in mind, you also can control the strength of the contrast. It doesn't hurt to experiment.
4) Use midtone to define your form (in other words, fill it in).
5) While paying attention to the light source(s), apply shadow then highlight. Might need to re-use midtone value to refine the forms further. That's also ok.
6) Constantly compare your image to the original reference!!! Don't let your brain fill in what it THINKS it sees. It's going to fool ya man!

Every different materials have their own tones and shineness. So obviously, for hair, it's different. Follow the recently mentioned guideline and make new tones for it. Repeat. You get the idea.

Suppose you want to acquire an idea of the material with three tones better, I'll make some more presentations on that in more details. I might have you do more spheres (thumbnail sized) exercise.

If you feel you have something you need to work on more or want to try something else, please let me know.

In the meaning time, we can take a short break while you digest this information... feel free to work on that face further if you want to by try using three tones... experimenting never hurts and practicing make perfect! Or, rather, you can start with any new stuff and post it here - I'll try to help you there. You're the one who's studying. All I am saying is that you can always take over the steering wheel and steer this course if you want to. I'll try to provide you the understanding and also exercises along with it.

Have a great artistic inspiring day!

P.S. For spaztastic... I'm not sure yet about this.. I've been pretty slow/busy lately. You might have to wait on this one 'til things are more settled down over here. You can always watch/ask questions though... I'll try my best.

[spaztastic]

Alrighty I look forward to participating in this.

[surfandsnow]

The specular highlight is supposed to in between the brightest spot on the sphere and the visual center of the sphere. see link here http://www.huevaluechroma.com/021.php

I also think that might be a good idea to use 4 tones somtimes to better separate light and shadow.

light
light mid tone
-----
shadow mid tone
shadow

just a thought

[Sigit]

My update


Can you give me some hint on coloring hair??
Mid tones is the color of the object right??

[George Abraham]

Excuse me for budding in, I am currently into the paradigm of facial planes and it seems to be the way to go for shading complex surfaces. Drawing faces it seems to be a good idea to study the classic planes of the face. Loomis has good stuff on it.

Sometimes as in the picture just looking at it is not enough to grasp the planes, those plane fundamental structures that you can memorize really helps when you need to state the forms that are not always obvious from a picture or it trains the eyes what planes to look for, and trains the mind that you are busy creating a form and not just a contour of a darker tone.

But that does not mean you can't get some coaching on coloring and shading in the mean time.