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[Enrichment]- Simple Shapes, Light, and Form
Iruka
Registered User, Moderator mod
Registered User, Moderator mod
Simple Shapes, Light, and Form
>>Enrichment Directory<<
So, I'm stealing a lot from @Eyecager for this one. and Conceptart.org
Spheres, cubes, cones, and cylinders, Learn to render these, and you can render anything. Simple forms should not be overlooked as they are the basic building blocks that you need to build up anything. For this enrichment, the goal is to strive for strait forward exercises that test your ability to render accurately.
You may choose to work on some, or all of the following:
Creating and lighting forms from your imagination
Still life of balls, bottles, boxes, and other low detail objects
Breaking down anatomy into simple forms
Rendering forms with different reflective qualities
Try to focus on simple things, without complicated textures or extraneous details. Your aim is to make it as convincing as possible, 3D and tangible. Reducing the amount of frills means you are focusing at the task at hand. It also will make the exercise less frustrating for people who are in the early stage of learning (And frustrating for those who should already know how to render a cube)
Inspiration and Resources
Use these to get an idea of whats up. Feel free to post more resources. If you are working from a still life, a quick cell phone pic of your set up will help with critiques.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3WmrWUEIJo
^^^Watch This Video^^^^^
For Basic structure, check out the Draw a box lessons.
http://drawabox.com/lesson/1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mxQxWdLo9Y
http://artsammich.blogspot.com/2010/02/form-changes-preview.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPOzCFwHEFI
>>Enrichment Directory<<
So, I'm stealing a lot from @Eyecager for this one. and Conceptart.org
Spheres, cubes, cones, and cylinders, Learn to render these, and you can render anything. Simple forms should not be overlooked as they are the basic building blocks that you need to build up anything. For this enrichment, the goal is to strive for strait forward exercises that test your ability to render accurately.
You may choose to work on some, or all of the following:
Creating and lighting forms from your imagination
Still life of balls, bottles, boxes, and other low detail objects
Breaking down anatomy into simple forms
Rendering forms with different reflective qualities
Try to focus on simple things, without complicated textures or extraneous details. Your aim is to make it as convincing as possible, 3D and tangible. Reducing the amount of frills means you are focusing at the task at hand. It also will make the exercise less frustrating for people who are in the early stage of learning (And frustrating for those who should already know how to render a cube)
Inspiration and Resources
Use these to get an idea of whats up. Feel free to post more resources. If you are working from a still life, a quick cell phone pic of your set up will help with critiques.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3WmrWUEIJo^^^Watch This Video^^^^^
For Basic structure, check out the Draw a box lessons.
http://drawabox.com/lesson/1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mxQxWdLo9Yhttp://artsammich.blogspot.com/2010/02/form-changes-preview.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPOzCFwHEFIIruka on
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What are those gray blocks called? I'm trying to find a set to purchase, but cannot track them down at Blick.
I would just hit up a hobby store and buy a really small set of wood building blocks. Something like this:
http://www.amazon.com/Ryans-Room-Wooden-Blocks-Natural/dp/B003Y9ZUHM/ref=sr_1_2?s=toys-and-games&ie=UTF8&qid=1359428216&sr=1-2&keywords=wood+blocks+white
but smaller and not 20 bucks? Personally, I would gather some stuff around the house. If you want to be able to do this sort of study more often, grab some building blocks and paint them white. Or leave them colored and use it as a mental exercise to represent them in gray-scale.
I am the best
Ok, here was what I was drawing. From a slightly different angle.
And here's my attempt.
I know, I've messed up the right hand shape's... shape. I tried, but just couldn't get it right. I also should have done this in a room with better lighting.
Basically, this has made me feel like a terrible artist. Ho hum. Yay enrichment!
--
Made up a little platform thingy for warmup, then tried a still life of a little usb charger thing I have. I think I'm going to focus this week on form and do a couple more studies for this thread.
A brightly illuminated surface next to a shadowed area is going to have some of that light spill into the shadow and interact with those surfaces as if it were itself a weak light source.
The angle of incidence to the direction that the light is coming from will have an impact on how strongly those surfaces are illuminated-- the surfaces more directly facing the light will be more strongly lit. Distance from the light source is also important to consider, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse-square_law (which basically says illumination becomes exponentially weaker as the distance from the source increases). I learned probably more useful information about light in my high school physics class than I ever did in any drawing or painting instruction I've received.
I know this was just a little sketch for you, so I don't want to belabor this too much, but I highlighted the edges that would have a lot of light spillage and really quickly brightened up the areas that would be receiving more reflected light.
Things can get a bit more complicated when you start factoring in fun stuff like occlusion, specularity, multiple major light sources (such as the sky itself), and of course shit gets exponentially more complex when you start thinking about this in color, but the very basics of understanding that light keeps bouncing after it hits a surface is easy enough.
Thanks Iruka
Everyone's studies are looking so awesome so far ;w;b
I did another imaginary platform/space chess table thingy. I tried to include proper bounce lighting from the floor even!
Basically I'm just bitter I'm not @lyrium :-)
Thanks!
Did this in one session. Maybe an hour and a little bit. Tried helping the shading with a tissue for a little bit.
Another session, spent shorter on each piece.
Still some issues with form, especially with non 90 degree angles but overall I'm happy with where these are compared to my first shot. Thinking of tackling the infamous egg next.
Probably try a simple shape with some regular black lead next.
I was shocked how much faster this was than my previous approach
Qualification: I know nothing.
I've been drawing little spheres in my class notes all week, trying to find that spot where they actually look three dimensional. I'm not sure if I'm making progress or not. My running theory is that i need to work on smoothly blending the changes in value, but I'm not sure if that's it or not.
I actually meant to ask about that, is it bad practice to use the selection tool/masks to create the shapes of the sphere and the shadow, or should I be drawing them by hand? I've tried drawing the sphere by eye before, but the edge always ends up too blurry and wobbly. In this case it seems to have gone too far in the opposite direction and it's fallen in to the uncanny valley of spheres.
I don't want to wind up leaning on Photoshop as a crutch.
I think that another factor is working from a reference rather than a still life, as you aren't getting the same amount of detailed observation.
For now I'm going to work traditionally and come back to digital when I (hopefully) get that Yiynova tablet.
This is a photo of my set up for ref.
The reflective material rendering is amazing.
Obviously, this is alot of technical zbrush stuff, but ride it out for 10 minutes and you'll see a sculpters way of building anatomy that is really interesting to watch, and may give some of you a better idea of how simple shapes become anatomy.
I did a few basic forms studies this week. Built them in Blender and then attempted to replicate them in Photoshop.
I forgot how tricky getting a properly rendered sphere can be.