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

[Idiot Apathy]

Exercise Five: Light and Color Part C!

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Intro:

The Point: Dealing with different 'colored' objects in the same space that react to the lightsource, well differently.

Ok, bonus round here. I hope you don't mind more of these simple sphere and lightsource exercises, I think they are quick and get you thinking pretty good. If you're sick of them, well - I'm not forcing you to do this exercise or any other exercise for that matter.

Ok, turning it up a notch again - various colored lightsources but this time with two spheres. Keeping it at the theoretical extremes again - objects that are 'pure' so to speak. Not exactly true to life but better for the exercise I think.

Notes: Ok, taking this too much further is going to hurt everyones heads. I think I mentioned somewhere that this becomes more an interest in physics than it is exactly useful/necessary (or efficent) in art. Think of it instead as merely a vessel to communicate the concept and get you thinking.


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Exercise Guidelines
a. The exercise will be set up with a goal in mind, sometimes specific, sometimes fairly loose. Focus on the concept, not on the final product.
b. As you do the project I want everyone to keep notes of their thoughts and reasoning. Why did you do what you did, that sort of thing. If for whatever reason you can't keep notes I still want you to think explicitly about what you are doing and write something down afterwards. In your notes and thoughts I want to take the key ideas and post them here. With this insight into your thought process we all can both learn and teach each other much more effectively.
c. Spend as much or as little time as you need to understand the concept. This is only a race against yourself.
d. All exercises are of course optional, feel free to pick and choose if there are activities you would rather do or rather not do. I will however note in the exercise if they are somewhat concurrent or if I believe it would be best to do a previous exercise before hand.
e. People who are too embarrassed to post their results will be shot on sight, you're here to learn not to show off.
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Starting Step:
Get yourself set up for 4 groups of two spheres each. Keep it simple like before, ignore highlight and shadow unless you want some extra practice. Don't forget to write down any notes and/or thoughts/comments that you have while doing this exercise. This will help me help you and help others who follow (I hope!)

Step One:
Lightsource is pure white, all hues at maximum intensity; Sphere A reflects all blue light and absorbs the rest. Sphere B reflects all blue light and a large amount of all others (rest is of course absorbed). (I've cut out the math jumbo as well - who am I kidding we're artists remember?)

Step Two:
Lightsource is pure blue at maximum intensity and only blue. Sphere A reflects only red light; Sphere B you would call 'pure' violet in a white light situation.

Step Three:
Lightsource is a weak yellow light. Sphere A is white - as white as it gets, (not a mirror). Sphere B is 'pure' yellow.

Step Four:
Lightsource is hot pink! Sphere A is white, Sphere B is 'pure' red.

Optional Bonus/Lunacy Step:
Lightsource is strawberry flavored. Sphere A is actually a strawberry. Sphere B is a banana. (Sorry, look I'm not sure this even makes any sort of sense, I need sleep.)

Final Step:
Prepare your results into an easy to view (web appropriate resolution and file size), and post it up! Don't forget your notes!

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I strongly recommend you read the discussions and analyses within others posts that will occur between these pages and exercises. In the past volume I saw and personally repeated the same advice over and over.

This being said, sometimes advice or critiques will be given that may be incorrect, or misconceptions; I most likely am not innocent of this either. If you spot mistakes be sure and correct them! Don't confuse these with opinions however, which are never wrong only different.
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[EtaCarinae]

Dear Idiot Apathy (and all),
I drew most of these without having thought to much about the purpose of the excersize. The last one I concentrated on getting the best result in the least possible stages also thinking more about the 5 areas of tone. Even so It still took me many strokes cause I kept fiddling around with the reflected light and cast shadow.

For instance if the ball is sitting in a pool of shadow the reflected light would begin hitting the eye at an angle equal to the angle it approached the ball from. Does that make sence? This is as opposed to reflecting light from a section of ground pooled in darkness.

The other thing I kept worrying about was 'how dark should this core shadow be compared to the cast shadow?' Thinking about it logically it would be equal, + or - the value of the surfaces in shadow. Is that right?
Anyway for what it's worth here are my doodles.

BTW I've noticed on a few illo's I've seen about (specifically you can see examples in some of the excersizes on Bumskee's website) a few colour dabs off to the side of the painting. I've often wondered if these are just for colour mixing, but do you think this could be a way of establishing the tonal areas first?

Regards,
EtaCarinae

[Idiot Apathy]

EtaCarinae:

No worries bro, the thread is set up with things like this in mind - please feel free to post your thoughts and questions!

Ok, I do think you might get something out of Exercise One; the point of that exercise is simple (yet I believe accurate) sphere construction. I hope it's set up fairly logically and easy to follow, but I guess that remains to be seen haha.

For instance if the ball is sitting in a pool of shadow the reflected light would begin hitting the eye at an angle equal to the angle it approached the ball from. Does that make sence? This is as opposed to reflecting light from a section of ground pooled in darkness.

Yeah good, ever played pool? Same principle, The angle of return is the same as the angle of uhh, the first angle. (Geometry, hmm...). Now, same is true with every 'shape' on your sphere, probably most noticable with specular highlights. Find something shiny and walk around it while looking at the specular. Or or, here is a fun one - find something really shiny, a metal bowl perhaps and get another person to help you out. Have them stay at one spot and you move to a position to where you can see their face as a reflection, now have them take a pointer of some sort (finger, pen whatever works) and point to where they see your head. Hehe, it's the same point. It makes perfect sense of course, but imagining a different reflection on a surface you are looking at is a bit spacey.

The other thing I kept worrying about was 'how dark should this core shadow be compared to the cast shadow?' Thinking about it logically it would be equal, + or - the value of the surfaces in shadow. Is that right?

Hmm, well you would have to factor in what the 'resting surface' is made of - what light does it reflect and absorb? If it was exactly the same as the sphere I think it is safe to say it would more than likely be at least a little higher in tone than the core shadow - depending of course on ambient and reflected light. In the case of the sphere it will get darker as it has 'less and less access' to the light. I think I've heard it called trapped light perhaps.

Here, read this I think it will help:
http://www.anticz.com/drawing1.htm
A tut by Ron Lemen, oh Ron - where have you gone?

BTW I've noticed on a few illo's I've seen about (specifically you can see examples in some of the excersizes on Bumskee's website) a few colour dabs off to the side of the painting. I've often wondered if these are just for colour mixing, but do you think this could be a way of establishing the tonal areas first?

I call these paint swatches - things that people set up in order to paint quicker. I've never really liked usuing them - requires you to pick your colors in advance which doesn't seem very uhm - wise or efficent to me. It is of course completely viable to do if you understand color well enough, but I'd recommend you work one color at a time and build from there as your reference point. If you are looking for something to speed up your process in learning anything but color - work in grayscale; tone is vital, I'm working a lot in grayscale or monochrome these days too.

If you are looking to establish your tonal areas, do just that - a quick sketch in grayscale. It would really be good for you. If you were talking about establishing large masses of color, you should do that too - but I'd also recommend at least a quick thumbnail of the values.

Cheers dude, glad to see you participating and hope to see more of you.

[HunterKiller_]

I don't think i've ever attempted to render realistic colours without reference in the past, so here are my attempts.

I'm surprised at how they turned out, especially when i placed the sphere in an environment. It looks quite decent to me and is better than what i expected.

Look forward to your critiques!

Colour


Greyscale


Little sphere in the big bad world


EDIT: Ew, i just noticed that the shadow is making the sphere appear levitated slightly... =\

[purb36]

Yeah good, ever played pool? Same principle, The angle of return is the same as the angle of uhh...

peer project vocabulary, lesson 1.
"incidence".

remember it; itll be on the test...

[Idiot Apathy]

Purb:
Hehehe, right incidence - How you been dude? How was your B-day? Ack, I mean; Genki? Tanjyobi wa dou? Ano ne, atarashi kotoba wo narata, kusotare da. Emi wa akarui hito da na? (shinpai shinaide, jodan data)

Hunterkiller:
Great, glad to have you in here. I hope that learning some of the underpinnings of color will help you even with reference and from life work.

------ExTwo:
Good, looks like you got the values well. The point of this exercise was to think of color in terms of value. Now, if you really want to challenge yourself go bold and saturated, keep your highlight very colorful and see what happens.

My only concern is your construction. I might recommend using a softer edged brush to blend with and working with less shapes. Check out ExOne and the example I'm going to post below.

Little Sphere in Big Bad World:
Great to see you thinking hard! . Little concerned about the structure again, basically you should have half in light and half in shadow. I like the colors and the set up, good thoughts in the reflected light. I think you might be right about it levitating hehe.

Cheers dude, hope to see you continue on!

[Idiot Apathy]

Exercise One Example:


1. I drew a circle! It's lumpy!
2. This is how I decided to determine my lightsource. Some people use those wierd '3d' arrows, but I uhh don't get those. So, simple enough here just to place an indicator of my full-light and my shadow.


3. Yup, that's a shadow - yesshir.
4. Something I just figured out to figure out my cast shadow. Looks familar... hmm. hmmmmm.... not sure how to explain this yet. Shadows are tricky business.


5: "Defined" my edges, well the one between the full light and shadow at least. I think this only works with grayscale perhaps, as the blend wouldn't be too flattering to color maybe? So you'd probably have to put in the right colors 'manually'. Ugh, lil' messy.
6: Added some reflected light and played with my core shadows edges.


7: Oh wow, I'm so fancy! Uhh, long story short: Multiply layer with CA.org sepia - highlight above that - same hue (monochrome I suppose). Cheap background, some tweaks.
8.Animated Gif! (Hell why not!?)

[HunterKiller_]

Here's my result for excersise four.
I really enjoyed it. I never knew colour could be so fun.
EDIT: Oh yeah, thanks for the previous critiques. I didn't actually notice them until now. =S
I didn't really know a technical approach to determine the placement of the meeting of light-side to dark-side. I will use your technique next time.



Great thread, keep up the awesome work!

[Idiot Apathy]

Uhmumum, you mean Exercise Three right?
Glad you enjoyed it, I'm going to send you a PM in a minute with the 'key' and a more specific response as well. I'd post it but I still want others to be able to do the exercise 'blindfolded'.

Cheers.

[Prometheus|ANJ]

Very generally: Saturation in the edge to light and light, less saturation in the shadow. The shadow can often be dark-cold-desaturated whilst the light is warm and more saturated. If you do the shadow more saturated than the light it might look strange. I'm mentioning this because I saw it in a few of the pics above.

Excercise idea. Come up with a simple shape figure based on primitives.
Render it in greyscale (let's not involve color yet). First make a Dull one. Then copy it 2 times and try to make these version look gloss and metallic.
In this case, I used a butt shape because it's a very 'grateful' shape for adding little neat speculars on, then killing them off near the cleavage for contrast as the next shape/gradient starts. I kinda fessed up with the chrome guy but I hope it conveys what's going on with the values atleast. Sorta jumpy. Not as much transitions.


Then, maybe using the same design, go ahead and render it in color using different materials for different parts.

Slightly related, here's a way of thinking in layers and render passes. I normally do this in my head, but I made some illustrations of some of the layers I imagine when painting. Fog (towards distance to convey depth). Specularity map (dull or gloss). Illumination/lightsourcing. Top planes for adding sky reflections.

[HunterKiller_]

Prometheus|ANJ: I love the buttocks, haha.

[Idiot Apathy]

Prom, you're such a stud man. I'm going to get that exercise up asap. Thank you so much for this.

[crdf]

[B][COLOR=Red][SIZE=3]

"Additive Color Theory can only be done with actual light, for example a movie projector or your monitor. If you've ever gotten a drop of water on your monitor you've probably seen large spots of Red Green and Blue.

Combining one of these additive primary colors with another in equal amounts produces the additive secondary colors cyan, magenta, and yellow. Combining all three primary lights (colors) in equal intensities produces white. Varying the luminosity of each light (color) eventually reveals the full gamut of those three lights (colors)."

Ok, First Hello. I want to ask a stupid quiestion. I am still in the begining of reading "peer projcet vol.1" thread, so maybe i mised somewhere some important info. I don't know. I just do not understand why i cant make this white color whit photoshop by mixing those three main colours. What i have to adjust? Hue, Saturation? Couse not white is what i get, but something .... dark.

Uuum ok. i do not see the atachment manager? Where is it. It was here?!

oooo ok, here is a link.



edit: Is it becouse the colours do not mix and when i add a new color it does not change the one below, but only put new pixels above it, which number (of the pixels) depend on the translucent value of the brush? If it is correct, it there a way of mixing the colours .. actually that is quite pointless, ha? Weeeell stupid me. Always asking ....

[Lieblos]

CRDF, to answer your question... I'm not quite sure but I don't believe that that is supposed to actually work in Photoshop. The theory that was posted works with light, like if you were to actually shine red, green, and blue lights together then you should be able to produce a white light. Photoshop's colors work more like ink. If you were to put red, green, and blue ink together on paper you definitely would not get white out of that, hence why it does not work in Photoshop.


Anyway... here's my take on exercise number three.

I encountered many problems with this exercise although I really did enjoy doing the ball that reflects only yellow and red light, and the sky blue ball. I tried to make the sky blue ball look like it was made of glass, although I think I failed miserably at doing so. Also, on the ball that absorbs all color, I added a slight glow around the edges hoping that that would make it look a bit more true to life, but I'm not sure if that's what would even happen to it in real life. Lol. This was a really great practice exercise and I will definitely work on some more stuff when I get time. I'm also quite interested in doing some of the older activiteis from the first peer project thread. Hope you guys don't mind.

Critiques always appreciated.

[Idiot Apathy]

crdf:
Hey man, thanks for joining us. No such thing as a stupid question, indeed it would be stupid to not ask.

Ok, the reason you can not mix white or get any mixture to increase in overall tone and saturation is because photoshop is not additive color. You need to have actual lights to do that. You ever seen those old projecters with red green and blue lamps? No?, try this - put a drop of water on your monitor screen; what do you see?

I'm not sure that photoshop (or even painter etc. for that matter) mixes 'paint' with subtractive color either. Subtractive is like actual paint, based on what the current paint mixture will reflect, when you mix paint you are mixing their properties of reflection and absorbtion, but reflection can never be increased overall so your mixture can only overall go down in value and saturation. I say overall because you might mix an intense color with a dull color and think you have increased the value and sat but really you have only increased the dull colors value and sat.

Photoshop acts like a bit of a cousin to this I think, combined with something else - optical mixing I dunno. Maybe I'm just thinking too much. I should do some research.

Now it's entirely possible to have a program with additive mixing built in and our monitors can handle it, I believe I've even seen a program with it. However it's not of much use on a computer as we have 'every available' color well, available. It would be pretty nice if oil paints had it though

Hope that has answered your question, feel free to ask any follow ups - or any other questions you may have. Cheers!

Liebos:
Glad you could join us! First post even? Welcome to CA! Or is it a new screenname? Thanks for answering crdf's question, you are right of course - you need light.

---- Exercise 3:
I'm going to send you a PM with the 'key' and a more specific response as well. To get a PM click either the Private message link in the top right or the User CP link in the top left. I'm sending this as a PM to allow others to be able to still have a 'blindfolded' approach. Cheers!

[Idiot Apathy]

Project One (Beta): Simple Shape Rendering, emphasis on different materials!

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(Oh, what's that? It's a project and it's in beta? Yup, it's a bit more intensive than an exercise and it is in need of some refinement; that's uh - that's where you come in!)


Based upon concept of my personal hero Prometheus|ANJ! Thanks Prom!

Intro:
Wow, how's that for a title. I swear the language center of my brain is in rehab.

I asked Prom for a little advice on the Project, and he thought it would be important to distinquish the differences in surface materials. Specifically we talked about the use/misuse of highlights and a way to remedy that. I think it's easy to over-exaggerate the shape of the highlight as well as the intensity. The purpose of this exercise is a simple introduction to some of the terms and reasons for how different materials 'react' to light.

Forgive me for over-simplifying here but let this stand only as a foundation to build upon. Keep in mind it's not quite so black and white, but nothing really is anyways

Diffuse Highlight: You would probably think of this as matte, dull. Clay, rough paper that sort of thing. Generally what is happening is when light hits an object it is scattered in many directions. Think perhaps a bouncy ball on a cobblestone path. No area really reflects a high enough concentration of light to stand out; this would probably create a larger yet subtle highlight. Now, can you think of the reason(s) why the light would be scattered once it hits an object?

Specular (Gloss?) Highlight: You would probably think of this as shiny, and who doesn't love shiny things? Communists - that's who. Anyways, Generally what is happening here is when light hits an object it is reflected without interference - 'cleanly'. A bouncy ball on a basketball court. For example, a lightbulb might retain it's general shape, warped only by an objects surface. Ok, technically specular reflections are 'perfect', an extreme. So, what would the causes of a concentrated highlight be perhaps?

I think it might be important to note it is of course possible to have a very bright object with a diffuse surface and a very dark object with a specular highlight. It's not so much the lightsource as it is the reflecting material.

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Exercise Guidelines
a. The exercise will be set up with a goal in mind, sometimes specific, sometimes fairly loose. Focus on the concept, not on the final product.
b. As you do the project I want everyone to keep notes of their thoughts and reasoning. Why did you do what you did, that sort of thing. If for whatever reason you can't keep notes I still want you to think explicitly about what you are doing and write something down afterwards. In your notes and thoughts I want to take the key ideas and post them here. With this insight into your thought process we all can both learn and teach each other much more effectively.
c. Spend as much or as little time as you need to understand the concept. This is only a race against yourself.
d. All exercises are of course optional, feel free to pick and choose if there are activities you would rather do or rather not do. I will however note in the exercise if they are somewhat concurrent or if I believe it would be best to do a previous exercise before hand.
e. People who are too embarrassed to post their results will be shot on sight, you're here to learn not to show off.
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Reference Image Courtesy of Prometheus|ANJ: Click to go to his Website!


Preperation Step:
Get yourself prepared to draw three simple objects, the shape will remain the same however the 'material' will change. Don't forget to take notes/observations and/or any comments you have on this project during or after this exercise.

Beginning Step:
Read the Intro! I want you to list and post three things that you would consider as being diffuse/matte/dull, and three things you would consider that has concentrated highlights/is shiny.

Step One:
Decide upon the shape of the object you wish to paint. I would recommend keeping it fairly simple as you will be painting it three times and as this exercise is not an exercise in shape creation . Your object does not have to be representation of course, however I would like to see some 'perpendicular' shapes, I don't know - think more like 'buttboy' posted above than a sphere or an apple. If you don't feel comfortable or don't have the time for a more complex shape that's fine too

Step Two:
After you have designed your object I now want you to paint it as if it were made of of clay - rough clay, no glaze or anything. Think of how this material would affect how light is reflected - specifically the highlights.

Step Three:
Your object is now made of plastic. You might consider this specific plastic to be the 'middle' ground. How would this affect how light is reflected? And the highlights?

Step Four:
Render your object now as if it was made of metal. What is happening now and how is it affecting what we see?

Finishing Step:
Save your project at a resolution and file size appropriate for web viewing. I suggest a JPEG using PS's save for web function. Post here along with your thoughts/notes. Pat yourself on the back and buy that pet monkey you've always wanted.

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I strongly recommend you read the discussions and analyses within others posts that will occur between these pages and exercises. In the past volume I saw and personally repeated the same advice over and over.

This being said, sometimes advice or critiques will be given that may be incorrect, or misconceptions; I most likely am not innocent of this either. If you spot mistakes be sure and correct them! Don't confuse these with opinions however, which are never wrong only different.
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[ChrisMayernik]

going to post some stuff later but for now I reccomend everyone use this photoshop set up.


concept art member Red alert first brought to my attention the idea of mapping the F keys to switch brushes. He made a fantastic tutorial but I can't find it, so if you have the link please post it.


first off you need photoshop cs or higher. Go to actions and you can record a action then assign a key to play that action. here are the steps

1. Actions- create new action
2. click on Brush icon. Very important so no errors come up
3. select custom brush.
4. stop recording and assign F key.

now I have F4 as a erasor, F5 is Sharp brush, f6 is Soft, F7 is textured, and F8 is undo. this is a great set up and you can still use the middle alt for color picking and then use the number 0 9 to change opacity when needed. I also use o for smudge tool ( set to O ) which I use as a brush and L for lasso to quickly pick out shapes. photoshop does not allow you to rotate the canvas and to solve this problem I assigned F9 the horizontal flip to help in drawing accurate lines.

Now, go to control panel and click the wacom icon. change the function of the intous pen buttons from down and up to {{{ }}} Remember to put 3 {{{ . Now in photoshop instead of having to keep clicking the button to change size it will go in steps of 3 brush sizes and this is all you need. Any special size brush can be adjusted 1 step at a time by press { or } .





Use the hard for putting down your base value then the soft for form shadows. Remember form shadows are always soft ( gradual ) while cast shadows are always hard compared to form shadows.

One Super important rule to remember is that you don't paint a object the same way at different distances. Your eyes opticaly mix colors ( Value, Sat, Hue ) and naturally things get blurry farther away. Learn to group planes as things get farther away. To paint well and fast you must learn to think according to the distance you are painting at. So study a lot of things close and far and build your own understanding.

Get a object and look at it from five feet away and write down how many main values it has. There probaly are four including highlight. now view that object at twenty feet and you will see that alot of the planes become one plane and now the values are just three or two. Anything not in direct light is very simple. Think 10% difference in value from light to shadow. then you add 20 30 40 and so on as the light becomes stronger.


ok I am going to post a process of a simple object soon so you can see the process of painting something out of your head.

[Idiot Apathy]

Thanks a bundle Chris, that's really great; I'm going to make use of that right away even - and map things to my intuos as well hehe. Like I said before, please make yourself at home here, I want your brain.

---
Added a link to Chris's 'demo' and this link to the header post:

Detailed Lighting Tutorial (You will read this or die!)
http://www.itchy-animation.co.uk/ (Click Tutorials>Light)

[Cup of Joe]

Ugggghhhh. I feel like crap. Not enough brain power to do an exercize today, so I tried out some ideas I had.

Shadow-Disclaimer- These are all assumptions.

1. Okay, Shadow. Draw line from the light source’s point when dropped to the ground through the bottom of the object. Draw a line from the light source itself through the top of the object. The intersection of these two lines is the edge of the shadow.

2. If the shadow is being cast on the object, would the shadow go up to the corresponding point on the diagonal line? (Since that made no sense, the cast shadow would be the black line on the white block. Hopefully you can see what I’m getting at.)

3. More rendered diagram.




Notes-Spheres-
1- Greyscale
2- Value only
3- Saturation decrease in shadow, increase at terminator.
4- Added a teeny bit of blue to the shadow. Added highlight.



Comments later.

[EtaCarinae]

Dear Idiot Apathy and all,
Wow, this thread is really going off. I already feel like there is enough material here to contemplate for sometime. Thanks for the Ron Lemen link. I've seen it before and it's timely that I revisit it.

Here is my excersize 2.
I spent probably way to long on it fiddling around with core shadow and reflected light again.
Felt like I was cheating a bit with having such a low saturation (especially after seeing Joe's great results with his red sphere in excersize 3) but I just couldn't see any other way to get to the light values I'd already created in my Grey.
Resorted to making some swatches so I could directly compare the values.
Was a bit suprised to see how closely the lit sides matched, but disappointed in the shadow side. I should have spotted it when I couldn't get the reflected light to pop like on the grey. I guess it's all about comparing regions.
Also spent lots of time squinting hard to 'block' the colour and concentrate on tone and even made a little telescope with my fist in order to see small sections at a time. Also put a touch of green in my cast shadow... not sure if that's how it works tho'.
Still need a lot of practice.

Btw Hats off to all you guys for sharing your knowledge, it's really great!

Regards,
EtaCarinae

[Lieblos]

Sorry, guys... I'm in a bit of a rush so I'm gonna have to make this quick.

I decided to try the latest project because it looked like a lot of fun. It actually was. I enjoyed it very much.

Ok, first of all...
3 matte materials: wood, drywall, paper
3 high-gloss materials: chrome, alluminum, and glass/mirrors

I found the very first and last items in this project the most difficult. Matte items are always hard for me to paint because I always get bored while painting these types of items. Don't ask why, but I just do.

I found the middle duck the easiest to paint. I guess this shiny style comes a bit easier to me. I also thought it was the funnest to paint and enjoyed it very much.

Finally, the chrome looking duck was hard for me to paint mostly because of the sharp transitions between light and dark. It was still fun to paint and I found that it entertained me the most out of all three ducks.

Anyway, here is my image. Constructive crits, of course, are always appreciated.

[EDIT] Oh yeah, and I think I want to try this project again but next time in color. I hope you don't mind. Working in color is very difficult for me when it comes to making objects appear to be made out of different materials so I think this would benefit me a lot. Please let me know if this is all right, and as a note to Idiot Apathy... perhaps you should make that a new activity?

[Idiot Apathy]

Cup of Joe:
Mm, I can relate. Nice disclaimer, I'm thinking of tattooing that on my forehead. Ah, P.S. Added your post to the 'front' page.

On the Diagrams:
Great, I'm pretty sure that's how it works. I think perhaps you might be better off drawing the lines from the corners of the block then connecting the pairs. Oh and believe it or not, this has helped me think about some things too

On the Spheres:
Neat. I think I might be cautious with accentuating the saturation near the terminator however. I can think of a few situations where this is certainly applicable - most of which would be due to really strong light and exposure, over-exposure I imagine. Well, anyways - I'm not positive on this, but I think it's safe to say it's not always applicable you know? Keep thinking about it though of course.

Get some rest dude, I'm headed to bed early today; sheesh.

EtaCarinae:
My pleasure dude, you're making it worthwhile. I'd like to propose that 'spending too much time' is only too much and only a problem if you didn't learn anything.

----Ex2:
Great dude! Don't worry about going 'too light', you matched the values you saw and in truth there isn't really a way to get around that with the color you chose. Perhaps with a 'brighter' color such as yellow. If you want a challenge create a darker ball, or do this exercise backwards and start with a colored ball and match it in grayscale.

Good analysis about not matching up the reflected light, that sort of thing is key.

Green in cast shadow? I can think of a few reasons why something like that would occur - one there is some green light being cast there, two perhaps you are thinking about mixing paints traditionally, mixing green with red to dull it down. (technically speaking, removing saturation).

Cheers man, great to see you kicking ass!

Lieblos:
Kudos on being the first to tackle this, thanks a bunch for the feedback - I'll put it to good use. 'And yes! By all means, please do this again in color; I'd love to see it. If you ever want to take anything further in here, please do! Ah P.S. you should start up a sketchbook.

----Project One:
Great results man! I'm impressed.
I hear you on rendering matte objects, it's true they are boring! Nothing to look at, however this could be a great tool to accent something nice to look at.

The high-gloss, chrome duck doesn't read quite as shiny as I think you could go. Right now it looks a bit like rougher metal, like it's been sanded or something. I might expect to see some more concentrated highlights and more powerful reflected light. Go extreeeeeeeeme! Also, did you forget to render the eyes? Anyways, I love the irony that is a metal duck.

Cheers dude, thanks for joining us.


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Will post a new exercise in the early evening tomorrow.

[Idiot Apathy]

Exercise Six: Color Recognition Part A: Hue

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Intro:
This is probably of more use if you are painting from reference or life, however I also think it is a good way to become familar with color. This is going to be a fairly simple 4 part exercise - the first three will seperate Hue, Tone and Saturation and the last will be a combination.

Ok, this is pretty simple so let's get to it.
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Exercise Guidelines
a. The exercise will be set up with a goal in mind, sometimes specific, sometimes fairly loose. Focus on the concept, not on the final product.
b. As you do the project I want everyone to keep notes of their thoughts and reasoning. Why did you do what you did, that sort of thing. If for whatever reason you can't keep notes I still want you to think explicitly about what you are doing and write something down afterwards. In your notes and thoughts I want to take the key ideas and post them here. With this insight into your thought process we all can both learn and teach each other much more effectively.
c. Spend as much or as little time as you need to understand the concept. This is only a race against yourself.
d. All exercises are of course optional, feel free to pick and choose if there are activities you would rather do or rather not do. I will however note in the exercise if they are somewhat concurrent or if I believe it would be best to do a previous exercise before hand.
e. People who are too embarrassed to post their results will be shot on sight, you're here to learn not to show off.
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Preperation Step:
Download the template below. You will use the empty spots next to the color swatches in an attempt to match the color. Brightness and Saturation will be given all you need to do is determine the correct hue. This is going to work best with Photoshop, I don't think it matches up with Painter's scheme but you are welcome to try haha.

Step One:
Guess at the hue! A good method of determining the hue is to ask - is this hue say, more yellow or more orange? If you truly are unable to discern between yellow and orange then it just might be a perfect yellow orange! If you use the color picker (eyedropper) at any point during this exercise I'm going to cry (but seriously you're only cheating yourself, oh but it's ok to use it to check when you are absolutely sure you are done/completely confused)

Step Two:
Is it right?! If not, correct yourself the same way - compare to the swatch, have you gone say, too yellow? Too orange? You didn't just cheat and use the eyedropper did you? Don't make me come over there.

Step Three:
Is it right? If not keep trying!

Step Four:
Rinse and repeat for each color swatch.

Notes: I did my best to try and trick you towards the end there... and uh, the one with 0 sat is to check if you've been paying attention

A Hint: This is easier if you also compare the tone when you are off, perhaps you have a 'yellowish' hue that is too dark, try 'adding' more yellow.

Template: File is a PNG so you should be able to open it, create a new layer underneath and paint freely in the open space. I wanted to make a layered .tiff but couldn't host it properly.

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I strongly recommend you read the discussions and analyses within others posts that will occur between these pages and exercises. In the past volume I saw and personally repeated the same advice over and over.

This being said, sometimes advice or critiques will be given that may be incorrect, or misconceptions; I most likely am not innocent of this either. If you spot mistakes be sure and correct them! Don't confuse these with opinions however, which are never wrong only different.
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[Lieblos]

Thank you, Idiot Apathy. I plan on starting a sketchbook but only in the future. I feel a bit timid to just jump in and have one right now, so after some more drawing practice I will hopefully feel better about that. (Plus, my scanner doesn't seem to be working at the moment.)

After reading some of your commentary I decided to fix the high-gloss duck. Hopefully this is shiny enough to your liking. The wings gave me problems. Hope they look ok.



Oh yeah, and I redid exercise number three because I was unhappy with my results. Hopefully these are better. I tried to make the sky blue ball a glass orb once again, and I failed miserably once again so off to the side I just drew and colored in a small sky blue ball. Hahaha, I'm so weird.



I'm going to start a colored version of Project 1 (with a different object as well) tonight and hopefully I'll be able to finish that tonight as well. Wish me luck!

Crits always appreciated.

[ChrisMayernik]

Here's a little example piece to help some people understand things. I'm not saying this is perfect but these are the basics.

Think of objects having " base" values. Usually you are going to paint the shadow part of your object because the color is not as effected as it is in the light. For whatever base value you paint in the shadow you will know exactly what color to pick to paint the lighted part of that materal. Think of how strong the light is and the color of it because these two things will effect both the shadow and the lighted areas.
Think about how light might bounce off different materials. Remember that light travels in a straight line and that it leaves at the same angle it hit. The structure of a object is important because it is what you are painting light overtop of. Angles are Very Important. The most important thing you could possible study is reflections. You don't want to guess where a highlight goes on a ball you want to Know exactly where it is depending on where the light is. That Is power. And with that kind of information you are going to paint much better and much faster.

[young paddy1]

Chris made a good point but you must also remember the final reflection, the one to your eye, the light can bounce all over the place spreading the colours around but if that light wont reach your eye you wont see the reflected colours.

[ChrisMayernik]

young paddy: Your right about reflections. I thought we went over this enough that everyone knows the difference between a lighted plane and a reflection. Reflections are all about the relationship of your eye, the object's planes that are reflecting, and the lightsource or source of reflection. While a lighted plane is just angle at which light hits.

[Cup of Joe]

Hot damn! I did a demonstration and didn't even know it!

Very tired, just scribbled basic ideas on the latest one without worrying about rendering much. I'll be back tomorrow as by then I should be out of my virus-induced haze.

Also just want to give a huge thank you to Prom and Chris. Fantastic stuff.

Project one beta- scribble, no notes this time.
If you can't tell waht my shape is, I scribbled a top-down version. It was supposed to be sort of a half-donut, but ended up looking like boobs.

[Onir]

gaah I'm stepping into this one a little late, so I apologize for only having exercise one done; I'll try to (do and) get the rest up asap!

I had peeked in the thread before I actually did this and I remembered the way your little demo went Apathy so I did some of the steps you did. I sketched out the circle, put an arc around where I wanted the form shadow to be, picked a point and drew two lines hitting the edge of the circle where the form shadows edges were, and then drew out the cast shadow from those lines. I also put a little ball I have under my lamp just to observe how the form shadow and cast shadow actually looked; wasn't the same point or color or anything, mostly was just a visual reference of sorts.

[Master 25 Days]

I probably should have read some mroe after doing this because I still can't determine the exact value of the reflected light and the position of the highlight which I know isn't the point closest to the light source anymore. Also did everything freehand so its all wobbly.

Exercise 1