The Peer Project- OPEN Foundational Exercises for All, A great place to start.

[Jazz]

Hey, Apathy!

I'm back...on the lonely net. -_- (yes, weird but true!) Hee hee! Well, I don't feel quite as lonely with it today.

Thanks for your advice thus far! I have so much trouble with blending too much and how big a brush to use. I'll attempt to fix my blending, but man, it's so hard! As for making an even reflection, what happens if some of the shadow also sort of "reflects" on the sphere? That's what threw me off about reflecting it.

I wanted you to know that I mixed up "link" with "image location" as far as that broken link. I saw your part fine enough. But you also mentioned someone else who was talking about spheres, and I couldn't see that person's image:

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/sho...&postcount=175

(I just mention it cuz I wanted to compare both sets of notes and images. Looks like a very helpful read).

Anyhoo, upon finishing exams for the week, here's my next try!

Challenge 1

Okay...it's wobbly still (I sketch wobbly circles. ), but I think it's a little better than the last one. Just a little! I did try lessening blends, but when I felt like I couldn't do that, I just tried using larger brushes than what I'm used to.

As for the creepy shadow, I suppose it doesn't have to be THAT pink, but sphere shadow is a tough one!! I so want to learn more about cast shadows!

Challenge 2




Again I was close!! And once again, I did try to calm it down with my blending! Per your advice on the saturation and colour change, Apathy, I tried a more subtle saturation using reds. I'm afraid I have this terrible habit of always needing to go over my efforts about 20 times. Hmph. But, practice!! Yay!

[Sidother]

Hi, I've spent alot of time looking through the forums here; and I wanted to pump up my art skills. So I decided to try these Excercises.

Anyways, here my shot at Excercise 1:



Any advice would be appreciated.

Take it Easy.

[BryanYoung]

I've be working through the first few exercises so far. I'm hoping to get a better grasp on color. Thanks Idiot Apathy for putting this together. I've already learned quite a bit just thinking about how color actually works. Here are the first four exercises with notes. I'm sure some of it is wrong. I haven't seen the answer key to exercise four yet.

Exercise One

Notes:
-Made sure I didn’t put highlight exactly in middle of light area

-Used the airbrush for receding/shadow edges softer egdes = farther away

-Maybe should have used a bigger brush when painting

-Softened the egdes of the shadow as it moved farther away from object. Also raised tone.

-Shadow area too dark?

Exercise Two



Notes:
-Decreased saturation in shadows, decreased saturation in light as well. Had to add white to achieve the right tone. (I keep wanting to type value)

-Cheated a bit on colored shadow. Copied other shadow and used preserve transparency. Added desaturated and slightly darker version of shadow area hue.

Exercise Three

Notes:
1. Increased saturation on light value since it’s pure white light. Decreased saturation in shadow.

2. Blue still has a fairly dark tone even in highlights.

3. If it’s absorbing nothing and reflecting everything, it must be white. Right?

4. Then the opposite must be true. Black absorbs everything, reflects nothing.

5. OK. Reflects Red and Yellow. I made the shadow a more desaturated hue towards red since it’s a darker tone. Increased saturation and used more towards Yellow for highlights since it’s a lighter tone. Local color is orange.

6. 50-50. Well, if it’s relflecting half and absorbing half, the hues would cancel each other out. The result being a gray
sphere.

7. Sky Blue. Seems pretty straight forward. Had to add a bit more white to the highlights than the others, since it’s a fairly
light local color.

Exercise Four

Notes:
1. If there’s only a blue light source, then there would only be blue to reflect right? Tried to keep the tone relatively the same. Would probably be a little darkerdue to blue being a darker hue.

2. If there’s only blue light and the object reflects all BUT blue, there wouldn't be any light to reflect, so I guess the object would appear black

3. If the object is pure blue, it will only reflect blue. If there’s only red light, there’s nothing to reflect. It would be black.

4. If it reflects just a little red, and it’s in pure red light, then it would probably at least have an overall red tone to it. I increased the saturation closer to the light. Shadows would be darker since red had a darker tone. If it only reflects some red, then it could never achieve pure hue.

5. Hmm..Only reflects yellow, but red light is present also. Not too sure on this one. While it wouldn’t reflect red, wouldn’t it still be effected by the tone of the red light, making it darker overall possibly?

6. I think the green shpere would absorb the red light and reflect some of the yellow light since yellow is a component of green.

7. I’m taking that to mean all hues are present at 30% saturation. It reflects all colors equally, but not all. OK, I used the darker toned hues for the shadows and worked my way up to yellow for the highlights.

8. Red is at 30% blue is at 100%. Reflects all hues other than red at 80%, meaning hues other than blue and red are now at 24%. Blue would be at 80%. Most colors are on their way to neutral. Blue would be the dominant color, since it's at the highest percentage. I suppose if the red is at 30%, it's going to absorb that much of the blue, so blue would then be at 50% max saturation.

[Jazz]

Hiya!! I thought I'd take some time and try Assignment 3!



I was starting to get into shading the spheres too much. I eventually had to calm myself and just make the things!

So, here's the rundown:

1. Pure red...or so I thought! By the end, I ended up with S and B as 97 and 98 respectively. Errrr...well, I'll just not blend so much. But the shadows are just lessing the brightness, really.

2. It's similar, except I got S and B at 98 and 99. Sheesh! When I picked the colours everything was RED!! BLUE!! Meh. I did the same thing with shadows as in 1.

3. I should give up and just type "100". Well, the white is supposed to be as white as can be. Just I also thought that there might be a little less darkening of the shadows, at least closer to the sides. Of course, being as there's only one lightsource, there's gotta be some shadow, maybe greyish?

(my spheres look more like soft disks.)

4. Well, assume there's nothing shiny or..."textury" on the surface, I'm letting the black take everything! But even my black has a B of 1. -_-;

5. Red + yellow. I basically looked at what was in the middle. Probably could use more red. Now, I almost started putting more red in the shadows. That was a bit much. It's not like my hand or anything. But...maybe I could've added more red to the hue.

6. Pretty close!! B is about 51! I thought that (actually half, not 51) would be as close as the highlight would get, and the shadow would just go gradually to black. I actually darkened the background so I could make out the grey sphere as well.

7. My sky blue includes a bit of cyan. But the sky blues vary so much, I thought more blue wouldn't hurt! It's pretty much the same as the other colours, except that the brightness is higher. Again, though, I was starting to add more blue to the shadow. I guess I'm not supposed to do that unless maybe the inside of the sphere is blue, and you can see it...or something?

That was fun to try!! I still have much work to do on spheres anyway!

[Idiot Apathy]

yoitisi: Awesome man, teaching is such a great thing to do. I don't have much in the way of questions - well, hey perhaps you have some useful perspective methods? But if you'd like you have free reign to set up anything you'd like in here, I've found it's a pretty nice way to test out some "teaching theory".

n0ireclipse: Haha, didn't mean to give you a reality check
Sphere looks pretty good, believable shadow. I'd like to see your shadow on the sphere contrast the light side a little more. If you are having trouble with color work in black and white, value is the most important aspect to color. Keep it up, try some of the other exercises

Koto Stomp: Nice looking spheres man! I'm a little confused as to the cast shadow and what direction the lightsource is facing on the second but then again, I usually am. I myself need to practice shadows so very much.

To answer your question on the white sphere - yup, you'd have to reserve some of your brightest white to make it appear glossy. Or rely on reflected lighting.

Here is the key for ex3:
Using Photoshop terms for this so you can visualize it on the color picker better perhaps,
S = Saturation B = Brightness

3: Pure red, since our lightsource has the 'maximum' amount of red and our object reflects the 'maximum' I think 100s and 100b (PS) is appropriate. Shadows, if you chose to include them, would be less B but same S. Highlights if there were any would technically be 100s 100b so perhaps you would leave some room in the full light for them.
4: Same as above, only replace the hue with 'blue'. Trying to get the idea across here.
5: Technically speaking I suppose this should be a mirror :|. But a white sphere is good too! Shadows still be grayscale, highlights even whiter if possible (probably not in this situation).
6: Ok, this I suppose would be akin to a blackhole - technically we wouldn't actually 'see' it - we'd see nothing. Remember, if you can see it it is either emitting light or reflecting light, don't forget that even shadows are visibile.
7: Should be orange right? And the shadows? Less B same sat. Not too different from steps 3 or 4.
8: This one is a bit tricky, it should of course be a shade/tint of gray - I would think 50% percent gray, but I need to think about that.
9/Optional: Oh noes, so? What is the sphere doing with sky blue? Well, that's a little bit of a vague name for a color - open for interpretation however generally I see a mix of blue and a little cyan as the hue - the saturation is fairly low and the tone very high. Very close to white, so if we are close to white that should mean we have a mixture of all colors, however we should also have more of this sky blue (blue with a lil' cyan in my case). How much more? How saturated is the sky blue you envisioned?

Notes: If it isn't at 100 s I think it is safe to say you have other hues mixed into your light. So, more hues less saturation, more of the same hue more saturation.

If it isn't at 100b I think it is safe to say you either have a weak lightsource or your object is absorbing the remainder. More tone more light, b for brightness isn't exactly the same.

Cheers man! Keep it up!



More later! Back to work I go!

[n0ireclipse]

Firstly, sorry, I forgot to change the paper color to gray >__> and..yeah..didn't realize until I was almost done.. But I'll try it again and ..uhm..change the paper color this time.

Anyways, here's what I have from the second study.



Thoughts: More color equals..better look? Messier look? A little of both? Grayscale is clearly much better than co--oh shoot..I forgot to change the background color to gray. Now to convert to grayscale :3
((yeah, that was my thought process xD not much going on there))


Thoughts: o____o whoops. Not enough change in color at the top, and too drastic a shadow at the bottom. I'd better redo this.

So in conclusion..this post is..pointless? :/ not sure..I guess I like giving I.Apathy more work.

[yoitisi]

Idiot Apathy: I would like to, I have no idea where to start though. Any suggestions? I noticed that this project is focused on color, but I'm better at constructing shapes and stuff (cubes, cilinders, up to very complex forms. -they may sound simple but each of them have their own little rules believe me) I could say something about 1, 2 or 3 point perspective if you like (but maybe you all know that already of course) Also, shadow constuction could be usefull. The basic of it is very simple but I know an exercise or two which are quite fun.

[Duq]

Eya, I would love to join, I have always done coloring stuff with gambling values and going by gutfeeling, so I hope following the excercises will change that

excercise 1

the sphere. At the end I'm left with 2 questions really.

How do you determine the reflected light value, just going for what feels good?

And for the highlight, the highlight is created by the light that bounces of the surface towared the viewers eye, right. But I dont really have a clue how to determine the place for the highlight

Thats it, thanks for running this project Idiot

[pennington]

finally got around to doin some assignments :o
wow so many great studies!!
this thread is amazing. thanks a ton Idiot Apathy and every one else for sharing your knowledge.


things i was thinking about here: edges. the edge between the ball and the ground plane is in the shade and has a lost edge, at least part of it. blended it with only hard brushes. realized later it is so easy just to take a large soft brush and blend it. oh and i used full saturated red so ther was no hue shift? is that right. or is it because the environment is white is because there's no hue shift?


this one. i took a less saturated green (closer to grey) for the full light and shadow. and brought the saturation up as the form turns away from the center light. not sure if that makes sense correctly. anyways, YARR!!

assignment two:

for this one i just thought about what color is light like the grey and yellow is pretty light in value.

assignment three:

this was so easy. i missed the absorbing all color emitting nothing. oh well. it really started to get easy at sphere 5. orange is nice. sky bleu, uhh not 100saturation because it is a lighter value. therefore other hues are mixed? not sure if i understand that. is that like mixing paint on a pallet?

[Duq]

I started with eyeballing the colors after I did the grey one based on brightness. I figured that every color should reduce to the same values if I picked them right.

first layed in the shadow, midtone and light. Then tried to blend them together, since the thing is round after all. But the blend had less saturation so I upped the saturation higher and I think it came out better.

In the colored one I got a bit confused about the reflective light, still am. I just layed over a stroke of the background color, but not sure if it should be more saturated.

also still not sure about the placement for highlights.



and the second. I'm slightly off with the values for the lighted area I think :>

[Duq]

Excercise 3 already

not much to say really

about the first 2:
Since the balls color is already the brighest red, and the brighest blue. It is impossible for the light to make it more bright, except for a highlight effect. I think

the white ball: if the entire spectrum is reflected we get white. Meaning we wont see any lighting or highlights. Making it a very 2 dimensiol sphere

the 4th ball: All the light is absorbed so we see nothing, thus ending with a black sillhouet

the 5th ball: red and yellow is ofcourse orange. I went for the fullest satuaration, I think it might have been prettier if I lowered the saturation a tad. And raised it for the transitions from shadow to light.

the 6th ball: all the colors reflected for 50% and absorbed gives us ye olde 50% gray I think

the 7th ball: A color you cant get when fully saturated I think. first I just blended from shadow to light with the values used. Ended kinda boring so I added some saturation in the transition spots and looks more happy now



in overall, the most important things I learned so far: The importance of creating a pallete, and not just guess colors but think about how it relates to each other.

[Idiot Apathy]

Really pleased with the amount of people in here lately

JazzW: Welcome back dood. How big a brush to use? As big as you can Just keep practicing and experimenting; you'll figure it out. What do you mean if some of the shadow reflects on the sphere? There is light in a shadow true, otherwise you couldn't see it - and yes it does reflect into the sphere but I don't think it's going to be very noticable; so - don't worry about it too much #1: Hehe, just keep at it You doing a line sketch first? Sphere is looking much better, good job! Something else to consider are the exterior edges, here they are very sharp - giving it the appearance perhaps of a cardboard cut out. With a sphere we are actually seeing a lot more than you think, parts that wrap around contained in a very small visual area. So rounded objects usually appear a little bit "fuzzy" or softer around the exterior edges. About the shadow - that's fine, I don't think it would nearly as pink as the sphere itself as it's "lightsource" (reflected off the sphere) Isn't nearly as powerful as what is actually shinging on the sphere you know? #2: Great! Real close! Don't worry about doing things 20 times, that's pretty natural I'd say - normally it's called practice hehe. Your specular on this one should be lower I think, remember it's not going to be in the center of the full light - it's the spot where the light bounces off most direct and right into your eye (err basically). Cheers!

Sidother: Welcome to the forums man! Glad you've decided to post! Keep it up, keep drawing and painting - that's all it takes (+time etc etc ) Sphere is a little wobbly but that's ok. I think you've blending too much - start with 2 values and blend those, that's all you really need - one is full light and one is shadow. For the purposes of this exercise we are using sunlight so they should each take up 1/2 of the sphere. The blend that is created is the halflight - imagine this as dawn or dusk Keep it up! Hope to see more from you soon!

BryanYoung: Good lord! Haha, you've been busy!
#1 looks great! Mayyyyybe you've made it hard on yourself - seems like a lot of time spent blending? Think of blending as between shapes and not shapes themselves. With a sphere in sunlight you've got equal parts full light and shadow, the only blend you really need is halflight akin to dusk or dawn. After that you can play with highlight and reflected light. Shadow I think is fine in tone, though maybe it disappates a little quick - that is comparing the strong directional light on the sphere; who knows I think your exterior edges could be just a little softer perhaps?
#2 Nice! prettttty close. A little brighter than your grayscale though . I think the halflight would perhaps curve a little more. Specular highlight could maybe come a little more towards the center and should distort a little more I think (here it's too round, think how it would look if you stretched it over the sphere).
#3: Using Photoshop terms for this so you can visualize it on the color picker better perhaps,
S = Saturation B = Brightness

3: Pure red, since our lightsource has the 'maximum' amount of red and our object reflects the 'maximum' I think 100s and 100b (PS) is appropriate. Shadows, if you chose to include them, would be less B but same S. Highlights if there were any would technically be 100s 100b so perhaps you would leave some room in the full light for them.
4: Same as above, only replace the hue with 'blue'. Trying to get the idea across here.
5: Technically speaking I suppose this should be a mirror :|. But a white sphere is good too! Shadows still be grayscale, highlights even whiter if possible (probably not in this situation).
6: Ok, this I suppose would be akin to a blackhole - technically we wouldn't actually 'see' it - we'd see nothing. Remember, if you can see it it is either emitting light or reflecting light, don't forget that even shadows are visibile.
7: Should be orange right? And the shadows? Less B same sat. Not too different from steps 3 or 4.
8: This one is a bit tricky, it should of course be a shade/tint of gray - I would think 50% percent gray, but I need to think about that.
9/Optional: Oh noes, so? What is the sphere doing with sky blue? Well, that's a little bit of a vague name for a color - open for interpretation however generally I see a mix of blue and a little cyan as the hue - the saturation is fairly low and the tone very high. Very close to white, so if we are close to white that should mean we have a mixture of all colors, however we should also have more of this sky blue (blue with a lil' cyan in my case). How much more? How saturated is the sky blue you envisioned?

Notes: If it isn't at 100 s I think it is safe to say you have other hues mixed into your light. So, more hues less saturation, more of the same hue more saturation.

If it isn't at 100b I think it is safe to say you either have a weak lightsource or your object is absorbing the remainder. More tone more light, b for brightness isn't exactly the same.

On the last one; sky blue I wanted people to switch it up a little bit - basically write the instructions you dig?
These spheres look awesome by the way

#4
1: Well, it should be a blue sphere of course - the 'white' sphere isn't going to absorb much of any color so all you have in the source is blue - you get blue! Highlight? Blue! You can't make it white as the source isn't white If you wanted to 'cheat' a little perhaps you might go a little to cyan.
2: Lightsource only has blue - sphere eats all blue, sphere isn't visible - pure black! Probably not all that likely to see this in the real world though.
3: Hrm hrm, red light? Object only reflects blue? It's pure black again! Woo! I keep hearing that if you shine say a blue light on a banana you'll get a black banana, I need to try that.
4: Reflects just a little bit of the source light and nothing else - which is red, so the value will be pretty 'weak' - now, saturation? Is there any 'interference' from other hues? Nope, this should be 100% saturation I do believe.
5: Hrm hrm, it's like a math problem! Eep. If the object is going to eat everything but yellow then your red is gone, we are left with only yellow and thus we see a yellow sphere.
6: Ok, like a story problem or something; red is out of the equation - green will eat that right up. Now, depending on the purity of the green - let's say it's a pure green it should reflect all yellow as green can be made up of yellow and blue. So I do believe you'll get yourself a yellow sphere this time around; nice and vibrant like.
7: Not too sure if it's as simple/exact as this - but I would think this would be about a 30% gray (0 being black).
8/Bonus: Let's see, it's written like a nasty story problem so I decided to solve it like one.
Lightsource has just for easy talking perposes - 30 of each hue except blue of which it has 100.
Object reflects 80% of all hues except red, of which it reflects 100%.
So, what's being reflected is composed of 80 Blue 30 Red and 30 of all others.
So, I think it's safe to say the 30 percent of all other hues is really only going to weaken the purity of our main hue - which is 80 blue 30 red. I suck at math, so lets just say it's going to be just under a third red mixed with blue - so kind of close to blue-violet. Blue-violet, dulled down by the amount of blue, blue vs red, and dulled by the 30% of the other hues. So I dunno, uhh uhh... 40sat and uh 90b? Ok, let's just say it's going to be a very light and dull blue violet? Math is dumb...
Yeah, not exactly the best way of doing things. Just a generalization.

So small corrections-
#1: Should be nice and blue, I did say what amount of reflectance was up to you - but I think if it was less reflective you'd see a lot lower tone. Also, should be 100 Saturation no matter what. There is nothing to interfere here, nor can it get past 100s100b as you need more than one color to move towards white
#4; sat should be full! no interference Even in the shadows there in no interference just less light!
#6: Been so long since I wrote these, let me re-read this one: Uhh, yeah I think this should be just yellow! So reading below - your thinking was right - but there was no green light to be found so no green in the sphere!
#7: Should be gray! Ah I see you wrote about hue shifting - that's fine I suppose but it's not technically the case in many situations. (Though it sure looks better most of the time )
#8: Hahah, yeah close enough I think
Awesome awesome job on these man!



More later! Work to dooo...

[Duq]

My tries for excercise 4

1: White reflects everything of the pure blue light, so we get a pure blue sphere I think :>

2: If it doesnt reflect we dont see anything, so a black one.

3: Blue doesnt reflect red, so we get a black hole

4: Just a little bit of red translated for to less bright red. So I went for a not so bright red at 100% saturation.

5: I think red will go bye bye, and the sphere will be all yellow. But I'm a bit confused, also tried to set it up in 3D max and the result was an orange sphere with a yellow highlight, what am I missing?

6 I figured that the green would absorb all the reds, and fully relflect the yellow. So I got a yellow sphere again, but with greenish shadow.

7 I think the sphere should be 30% gray, so ehm there it is

8 This one was a hard one. I know two things for certain. Blue will be there for 80%, red for 30%, and all the others for less. I remember reading somewhere to keep thinking simple so I just dumped all the remaining hues. And the result is a violet sphere.

[Cavematty]

Hey Idiot,
First up, thanks heaps for running a thread like this, and taking the time to reply so thoroughly to all the posts. Thats a big commitment and Im sure all appreciate it (he says trying to get in on the learning action). Hehe.
I must say I saw this thread a while ago and thought it looked boring. Then I stumbled across your blog, evenetually spotted the same stuff in your sketchbook and went..
So here I am dutifully doing the excercises.
I did number 2 first because I was reading your PP1 thread by mistake. But here are the results anyways.

I was basically trying to eyeball it, and trying to ignore changing the saturation with the lighting.
I noticed when I first "finished" the red ball that it wasnt as bright, even tho the red Id used was at the bright end of the red spectrum. Then i went in to my colour picker menu and slid the eye dropper back and ford across the bright end of the selection square. Wow, theres a huge tone difference as you add color. And red isnt the worst. Try it with a ultramarine blue - HUGE tonal difference. So I went back into my red sphere (havnt colourpicked or compared the two Ive painted yet) and added some whiter light to the highlight. It affects saturation, but because of the way Id painted the greyscale sphere its the only way I could match tone.
I guess the lesson there is:
Full saturated colour cannot match the tonal range/brightest bright of a pure white without colour.
Which matches reality, and the way light works, in that to get colour you are subtracting some light waves, and reflecting only a portion, whereas white is the lot.
Hope that is not too much of what everyone else has said.
As for the green sphere - after being happy with my red one (which i think turned out quite close tonally) I went at this one with confidence. Maybe with the same compensation I used for the red sphere. Regardless it is significantly darker than the first two... Humbling. Must practise

[Jazz]

Whoooo!! I'm back again! Apathy, your advice is just beautiful stuff! I know that's a sorta strange description, but I LOVED it! So thorough!! I'm only lost with speculars. I keep forgetting where on the sphere you see the specular part. And...what specular is.

I tried with the sphere again one day! I wanted to attempt to make it shiny, but I should probably do without the funky reflective shadow. Looks like I pasted it on. Dang! Got it somewhat "fluffy" on the edges, but I kept messing up the circular look! It was pretty close though, so I'm happy with that! Grrr...stupid reflective shadow. >_<



I tried Exercise 4!


I didn't number them...left-> right and top->bottom!! These were the thoughts I had while I did the spheres! I could be way off! I was rushing, I admit. These are ugly spheres! XD

1. Since the sphere reflects all colours, and the only colour in the light is blue, I just made it look blue!

2. Since the sphere doesn't even TOUCH blue, all it would have is black.

3. Since the sphere is pure blue with no hint of red, it won't pick up on the red light here! So again, it should be black!

4. I could've made the red darker, but the red would definitely be darker. I'm not sure about less saturation. Whatever red is on the ball will really love that light!

5. This one was crazy for me! But that sphere should only reflect yellow! I actually assumed that the yellow would be rather bright, too, since the light has "pure" yellow.

6. This one got me! I actually assumed that there was equal blue and yellow in the sphere. So the only thing that would reflect is the yellow. It should be about half as bright.

7. 30&#37; for all hues in the light? Then I'm thinking that sphere would reflect a 30% grey. Well, whatever you'd call it. That's all it has! ;_;

8. Yay, I tried bonus! This one was rather tough!! Well, I did a bit of calculating in my head. Just a bit! The sphere gets 80% of the 100% blue light. So it'll be darker anyway. Also, the sphere will get 30% of red light, or 100% red reflection. So I thought it would be a sort of blue-purple, but more blue!

----

Just did the exercise 6...a!!



A couple times I was right on at the first! I desaturated the colours and used Curves to see if anything stood out. Well!! Some things did!! The top third, and bottom first, third and fifth! Man, they were pretty close!

Oh yeah, and I didn't touch the eyedropper! That's good practice for me!

[Idiot Apathy]

JazzW: What up man! Glad to see you back and in action again, and again down below!
Ex3:
Using Photoshop terms for this so you can visualize it on the color picker better perhaps,
S = Saturation B = Brightness

1: Pure red, since our lightsource has the 'maximum' amount of red and our object reflects the 'maximum' I think 100s and 100b (PS) is appropriate. Shadows, if you chose to include them, would be less B but same S. Highlights if there were any would technically be 100s 100b so perhaps you would leave some room in the full light for them.
2: Same as above, only replace the hue with 'blue'. Trying to get the idea across here.
3: Technically speaking I suppose this should be a mirror :|. But a white sphere is good too! Shadows still be grayscale, highlights even whiter if possible (probably not in this situation).
4: Ok, this I suppose would be akin to a blackhole - technically we wouldn't actually 'see' it - we'd see nothing. Remember, if you can see it it is either emitting light or reflecting light, don't forget that even shadows are visibile.
5: Should be orange right? And the shadows? Less B same sat. Not too different from steps 3 or 4.
6: This one is a bit tricky, it should of course be a shade/tint of gray - I would think 50% percent gray, but I need to think about that.
7/Optional: Oh noes, so? What is the sphere doing with sky blue? Well, that's a little bit of a vague name for a color - open for interpretation however generally I see a mix of blue and a little cyan as the hue - the saturation is fairly low and the tone very high. Very close to white, so if we are close to white that should mean we have a mixture of all colors, however we should also have more of this sky blue (blue with a lil' cyan in my case). How much more? How saturated is the sky blue you envisioned?

Notes: If it isn't at 100 s I think it is safe to say you have other hues mixed into your light. So, more hues less saturation, more of the same hue more saturation.

If it isn't at 100b I think it is safe to say you either have a weak lightsource or your object is absorbing the remainder. More tone more light, b for brightness isn't exactly the same.

Looks like you did a great job Let's go over your notes now;
1. hehe just keep in mind that technically it should have been full sat, but who's counting anyways? In fact if you wanted to leave room for a specular you could have fudged it and just lowered sat and tone for effect anyways you know?
2. Haha, why did it loose sat?
3. Yup, good call. Less light is less tone
4. Haha, looks pretty black to me 1 and 0 is a hard thing to distinguish.
5. Nope! Should be a nice perfect orange Right in the middle of red and yellow So you're good.
6. good.
7. Hehe I'm not sure why no one does this, maybe I need to reread what I wrote but you are supposed to write the instructions for this sphere!

n0ireclipse: Haha, okay doke.
#1. Getting there man. Still too much blending I think. Start with two shapes, light and shadow and blend those - that's all blending is, the mixture of two shapes. From there you can add your specular and reflected light. Don't sweat not getting the tones perfect, just give it another go when you are ready Everything is a process and practice.
Post was not pointless! And I am glad you posted.

yoitisi: Color has sort of been my thing yeah I would love anything on shape construction, anything on perspective - especially ways to use them in practical painting etc and shadow construction I would die to know more about. Would be great man!

Duq: Hiya! Nice avatar haha. Glad you could join us!
Sphere looks pretty good. I think your half light could be a little more blended to help the sphere turn it's form like you'd expect. I like your values though, very good sense of lighting.

Question One: Basically what feels good yes, without a ref of course! The "rule" that gets thrown about a lot however is that the reflected light should be no brighter in tone than the weakest light in the full light. Basically reflected light comes from the same lightsource as what hits the full light, so it has to bounce off of a surface or multiple surfaces before reaching it's destination. It loses a lot of energy as it does this, some is absorbed and I believe some just wears out - a bit like sound waves you know? so it literally can not be as powerful. However sometimes a secondary lightsource can camouflage itself as reflected light, so make sure you know what you are looking at!

Question Two: I've seen only one method of precisely determining where the specular highlight is supposed to go and it's insanely complex. It's over here somewhere, I can't find it at the moment http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/wmap.html Plenty of great information to keep you busy though!

Concerning your notes; "a medium dark value surrounded by a dark value looks very bright." You've stumbled into Simultaneous Contrast! Dundundun. I should do an exercise on that...



Ok More later, man am I ever going to get caught up?!

[Idiot Apathy]

Duq asked;

#1: How do you determine the reflected light value, just going for what feels good?

#2: And for the highlight, the highlight is created by the light that bounces of the surface towared the viewers eye, right. But I dont really have a clue how to determine the place for the highlight

---

Question One: Basically what feels good yes, without a ref of course! The "rule" that gets thrown about a lot however is that the reflected light should be no brighter in tone than the weakest light in the full light. Basically reflected light comes from the same lightsource as what hits the full light, so it has to bounce off of a surface or multiple surfaces before reaching it's destination. It loses a lot of energy as it does this, some is absorbed and I believe some just wears out - a bit like sound waves you know? so it literally can not be as powerful. However sometimes a secondary lightsource can camouflage itself as reflected light, so make sure you know what you are looking at!

Question Two: I've seen only one method of precisely determining where the specular highlight is supposed to go and it's insanely complex. It's over here somewhere, I can't find it at the moment http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/wmap.html Plenty of great information to keep you busy though!

[n0ireclipse]

I.Apathy, you put a lot of work into this, you deserve a BAJILLION GOLD STARS, or a paycheck or something...

Thankyouuu~! 3333 We all appreciate it.

[Idiot Apathy]

Pennington: What up Scott! Glad to finally see you in here
Def use more soft brushes I use a wide combo of hard and soft, very easy to do in PS. Painter, I can't remember if it's possible on the same brush. Sphere looks great, especially the color. The halflight could be a bit smoother or really just blend more (smooth can simply be about style). There is no hue shift as there is no interference, only one lightsource and a pure hue object - you are also right in thinking that the white background wouldn't produce a shift either. Second sphere is a blind pirate! Eyepatch but no eye on the left?! Sphere is looking much better than the last as far as blending goes. For the color to change in saturation there has to be a sort of imbalance between the color of the lightsource and the color of the sphere I think. So it wouldn't be a white light, it would have to have more light of a hue other than this particular green. Not sure if you hue shifted or not but that would happen as well.
Ex2: Heheh, interesting way to go about it. Try it with another color and try it backwards. The objective is to trust your eye more than your mind, your mind is a great trickster
Ex3: Glad it was easy Here are the answers but first to get to your question; if something is not 100&#37; saturation then it is receiving interfering hues. Even shadows that have less light will be 100% sat without interference. On the last one, the sky blue - I wanted people to switch gears and write the instructions!
Using Photoshop terms for this so you can visualize it on the color picker better perhaps,
S = Saturation B = Brightness

1: Pure red, since our lightsource has the 'maximum' amount of red and our object reflects the 'maximum' I think 100s and 100b (PS) is appropriate. Shadows, if you chose to include them, would be less B but same S. Highlights if there were any would technically be 100s 100b so perhaps you would leave some room in the full light for them.
2: Same as above, only replace the hue with 'blue'. Trying to get the idea across here.
3: Technically speaking I suppose this should be a mirror :|. But a white sphere is good too! Shadows still be grayscale, highlights even whiter if possible (probably not in this situation).
4: Ok, this I suppose would be akin to a blackhole - technically we wouldn't actually 'see' it - we'd see nothing. Remember, if you can see it it is either emitting light or reflecting light, don't forget that even shadows are visibile.
5: Should be orange right? And the shadows? Less B same sat. Not too different from steps 3 or 4.
6: This one is a bit tricky, it should of course be a shade/tint of gray - I would think 50% percent gray, but I need to think about that.
7/Optional: Oh noes, so? What is the sphere doing with sky blue? Well, that's a little bit of a vague name for a color - open for interpretation however generally I see a mix of blue and a little cyan as the hue - the saturation is fairly low and the tone very high. Very close to white, so if we are close to white that should mean we have a mixture of all colors, however we should also have more of this sky blue (blue with a lil' cyan in my case). How much more? How saturated is the sky blue you envisioned?

Notes: If it isn't at 100 s I think it is safe to say you have other hues mixed into your light. So, more hues less saturation, more of the same hue more saturation.

If it isn't at 100b I think it is safe to say you either have a weak lightsource or your object is absorbing the remainder. More tone more light, b for brightness isn't exactly the same.


Duq: Glad to see you back!
Are you saying that if you pick the same brightness that every color should "reduce" to the same value? This is not right, brightness is a digital measurement of your monitors intensity - value is very different and actually quite hard to measure on a computer apparently. Look at the same brightness and saturation yellow and compare it to the same brightness and saturation violet and tell me which is lighter. Your question about reflected light; in this case since there is no interference the saturation should stay the same (hopefully it's at 100); only the brightness would go up. Adding grey paint from the background should have reduced the saturation so it technically isn't proper, but looks fine to me.
Good job on the spheres, pretty close in value and the colored one has really nice form.



Ok, more later

[n0ireclipse]

Gave it another try! Whoooo..Different brush...makes things more interesting. Anyhow, still not enough variation with that stupid BLUE BALL D:<<<

GRAYSCALE'D.
freaking blue..


Ehm..Obviously..different light source for these two cylinders ...hum~

[indigoe]

Here are my attempts at the first 3 excercises. I'm still working on #4.

[Asatira]

This summer I am going to work on getting familiar with digital painting (along side general practice), so I'm going to be checking this thread out a lot. Below are my first two attempts at exercise 1. They're both rather wonky, IMO, and not as smooth as I would like. The first one I did a lot of the gradation by using the eyedropper and painting at 50% opacity, with a softer brush; the second was done the same way, but with probably a hard brush. It's hard to draw something like this without a good ref.



Advise away!

[Idiot Apathy]

Duq: You're a machine, good job on these.
Ex3
Awesome, great job on these spheres. Here is the answerkey if you'd like to see a little more info; oh and on the last one it was my intention to have you all write the instructions for this one. Sort of switch gears and make sure you had a complete understanding you know?
Using Photoshop terms for this so you can visualize it on the color picker better perhaps,
S = Saturation B = Brightness

1: Pure red, since our lightsource has the 'maximum' amount of red and our object reflects the 'maximum' I think 100s and 100b (PS) is appropriate. Shadows, if you chose to include them, would be less B but same S. Highlights if there were any would technically be 100s 100b so perhaps you would leave some room in the full light for them.
2: Same as above, only replace the hue with 'blue'. Trying to get the idea across here.
3: Technically speaking I suppose this should be a mirror :|. But a white sphere is good too! Shadows still be grayscale, highlights even whiter if possible (probably not in this situation).
4: Ok, this I suppose would be akin to a blackhole - technically we wouldn't actually 'see' it - we'd see nothing. Remember, if you can see it it is either emitting light or reflecting light, don't forget that even shadows are visibile.
5: Should be orange right? And the shadows? Less B same sat. Not too different from steps 3 or 4.
6: This one is a bit tricky, it should of course be a shade/tint of gray - I would think 50% percent gray, but I need to think about that.
7/Optional: Oh noes, so? What is the sphere doing with sky blue? Well, that's a little bit of a vague name for a color - open for interpretation however generally I see a mix of blue and a little cyan as the hue - the saturation is fairly low and the tone very high. Very close to white, so if we are close to white that should mean we have a mixture of all colors, however we should also have more of this sky blue (blue with a lil' cyan in my case). How much more? How saturated is the sky blue you envisioned?

Notes: If it isn't at 100 s I think it is safe to say you have other hues mixed into your light. So, more hues less saturation, more of the same hue more saturation.

If it isn't at 100b I think it is safe to say you either have a weak lightsource or your object is absorbing the remainder. More tone more light, b for brightness isn't exactly the same.

Ex4: Again, fantastic job. Only qualm is with the 6th sphere and your green shadow. Here it reads as a local color - a two toned sphere. Your shadows will not differ so much without either a secondary lightsource or reflected light ok? Here is the key for a closer look
1: Well, it should be a blue sphere of course - the 'white' sphere isn't going to absorb much of any color so all you have in the source is blue - you get blue! Highlight? Blue! You can't make it white as the source isn't white If you wanted to 'cheat' a little perhaps you might go a little to cyan.
2: Lightsource only has blue - sphere eats all blue, sphere isn't visible - pure black! Probably not all that likely to see this in the real world though.
3: Hrm hrm, red light? Object only reflects blue? It's pure black again! Woo! I keep hearing that if you shine say a blue light on a banana you'll get a black banana, I need to try that.
4: Reflects just a little bit of the source light and nothing else - which is red, so the value will be pretty 'weak' - now, saturation? Is there any 'interference' from other hues? Nope, this should be 100% saturation I do believe.
5: Hrm hrm, it's like a math problem! Eep. If the object is going to eat everything but yellow then your red is gone, we are left with only yellow and thus we see a yellow sphere.
6: Ok, like a story problem or something; red is out of the equation - green will eat that right up. Now, depending on the purity of the green - let's say it's a pure green it should reflect all yellow as green can be made up of yellow and blue. So I do believe you'll get yourself a yellow sphere this time around; nice and vibrant like.
7: Not too sure if it's as simple/exact as this - but I would think this would be about a 30% gray (0 being black).
8/Bonus: Let's see, it's written like a nasty story problem so I decided to solve it like one.
Lightsource has just for easy talking perposes - 30 of each hue except blue of which it has 100.
Object reflects 80% of all hues except red, of which it reflects 100%.
So, what's being reflected is composed of 80 Blue 30 Red and 30 of all others.
So, I think it's safe to say the 30 percent of all other hues is really only going to weaken the purity of our main hue - which is 80 blue 30 red. I suck at math, so lets just say it's going to be just under a third red mixed with blue - so kind of close to blue-violet. Blue-violet, dulled down by the amount of blue, blue vs red, and dulled by the 30% of the other hues. So I dunno, uhh uhh... 40sat and uh 90b? Ok, let's just say it's going to be a very light and dull blue violet? Math is dumb...
Yeah, not exactly the best way of doing things. Just a generalization.

Cavematty: My pleasure man, glad you could join us. Hahaha about it being boring I know it's some thick stuff, heavy wording and all. But I really do hope it can help some people learn - and to me learning is about as fun as it gets; sounds corny... but it's true. The exercise from ppv1 is much the same as v2 - but read over the new instructions just in case
Ex.1; Great idea trying it with two balls on the same grey sphere. I like that a lot. Good job noticing that different hues have different tonal differences. Somethings to consider; saturation also affects tone. Ways to avoid using white to brighten things without losing intensity involve hue shifting. Warms becoming warmer, cools cooler. A red to orange, a blue to cyan. That sort of thing. Great job on these. I do think you are blending a bit too much. See the sphere instructions on this volume to help with that, (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/sho...41&postcount=2) but basically you should create two shapes - full light and shadow and blend in between those. With color you will probably want to create a middlestep to keep your color vibrant. Cheers!

JazzW: Welcome back man Speculars ... think of speculars as a more complete and direct reflection of the lightsource. Indeed in many cases it's quite like a mirror. Go grab some shiny metal cookware. Want a cool experiment? You need two people for this. Put the shiny metal pan or whatever you have down and then find the other persons face reflected on the surface. Now, without moving put your finger there and what the other person saw previously was your face in the same spot Imagine that your are still the viewer in the situation of this sphere - but the other person was the lightsource. Does that help? The sphere is pretty good, shadow is especially nice though the edges could be a little softer. There isn't such a thing as a reflective shadow, only reflective light. It would get darker where you have it but it would blend much more into the sphere. As far as construction, go over this exercise; http://www.conceptart.org/forums/sho...41&postcount=2 .
Ex4: Real good, pretty much right on. Check the key for a little more info
1: Well, it should be a blue sphere of course - the 'white' sphere isn't going to absorb much of any color so all you have in the source is blue - you get blue! Highlight? Blue! You can't make it white as the source isn't white If you wanted to 'cheat' a little perhaps you might go a little to cyan.
2: Lightsource only has blue - sphere eats all blue, sphere isn't visible - pure black! Probably not all that likely to see this in the real world though.
3: Hrm hrm, red light? Object only reflects blue? It's pure black again! Woo! I keep hearing that if you shine say a blue light on a banana you'll get a black banana, I need to try that.
4: Reflects just a little bit of the source light and nothing else - which is red, so the value will be pretty 'weak' - now, saturation? Is there any 'interference' from other hues? Nope, this should be 100% saturation I do believe.
5: Hrm hrm, it's like a math problem! Eep. If the object is going to eat everything but yellow then your red is gone, we are left with only yellow and thus we see a yellow sphere.
6: Ok, like a story problem or something; red is out of the equation - green will eat that right up. Now, depending on the purity of the green - let's say it's a pure green it should reflect all yellow as green can be made up of yellow and blue. So I do believe you'll get yourself a yellow sphere this time around; nice and vibrant like.
7: Not too sure if it's as simple/exact as this - but I would think this would be about a 30% gray (0 being black).
8/Bonus: Let's see, it's written like a nasty story problem so I decided to solve it like one.
Lightsource has just for easy talking perposes - 30 of each hue except blue of which it has 100.
Object reflects 80% of all hues except red, of which it reflects 100%.
So, what's being reflected is composed of 80 Blue 30 Red and 30 of all others.
So, I think it's safe to say the 30 percent of all other hues is really only going to weaken the purity of our main hue - which is 80 blue 30 red. I suck at math, so lets just say it's going to be just under a third red mixed with blue - so kind of close to blue-violet. Blue-violet, dulled down by the amount of blue, blue vs red, and dulled by the 30% of the other hues. So I dunno, uhh uhh... 40sat and uh 90b? Ok, let's just say it's going to be a very light and dull blue violet? Math is dumb...
Yeah, not exactly the best way of doing things. Just a generalization.

ex.6: Good man, looks pretty good. I'm not sure using curves is the way to check, that can change colors as well I believe. If you just use the eyedropper to check the swatch against what you painted that should be perfect. Anyways- looks great Cheers!

n0irclipse: It's my pleasure man. Art in a lot of ways is kind of a selfish life persuit I think, it's important to me to be able to help out in some way and I hope I am Cheers!




Ok! Almost caught up!

Added a new link to the mainpage:
Dr. David Briggs: Further Reading
http://djcbriggs.googlepages.com/
Fantastic collection of knowledge, go here and learn.

[Smarty]

Wow i just discovered these and started them from the last peer project. Im gonna try and catch up to the lastest batch pretty soon. heres the first 2


1st attempt has a too intense highlight, far bigger range than my greyscale. 2nd attempt, looks duller but is closer in value, specular not as bright though.


had hard time messing about with different coloured shadows andended up with some kinda boring simply darker tones. Is this right? Blue shadow is too warm aswell i tihnk. tried adding cyan light from scene.

[Smarty]

prject 3


I really enjoyed doing this. The first is my favorite and probably the simplest to do. The second i used the lighting conditions from my photo as referance, which i actually found harder. The last one I was starting to ruh like most people who did this, I found it really hard to describe form when a cast shadow is being cast over half of the object, sort of just looks like a wierd sillouhette.

[Nquyet]

Hope I'm not too late...
Ok! Here's exercise 1(used sepia instead of gray):

[Nquyet]

Aaand exercise 2:


Dunno why I used all those girly colors...

Comparison (used previous exercise's sphere):

[dischord]

I have been doing lots of perspective studies lately and thought it would be fun to try to see if I can figure out the specular highlight position on a sphere. I am pretty sure I have gotten it right....



I hope someone finds it useful. Personally I think I'd rather just guess. I'm sure you quickly learn how to do it correctly with enough practice.

I need to participate in this thing again soon. Maybe after I'm done with a CV and when I stop being such a lazy arse.

[vANON]

i had a few hours to kill and.. aww.. wrong thread.

hope i'm not intruding by posting the images here anyways. would love some critique even though it's not part of the current projects.



edit: oh, forgot to add. this thread is fantastic!
keep posting Everyone

[vANON]

here it is, exercise #3
this was kinda fun, challenging

anywho, my notes are in the image. is it readable?