Emil, you gotta let your shadows have some reflected light in them, and let your halftones come out in your work! When you go only light/dark with that kind of value difference, you lose your forms and things feel heavy, with no air between em. Your concepts are always cool, and i feel you're only held back in your foundationals. Also, watch out for false accents. All the ones on the cupid would be impossible in real life. I'm struggling with this myself, but value studies are helpful.
Thanks man, yeah I probably did go a bit hard on the shadows. It became like a weird amalgama between pure b/w and painting.
Also, what exactly are accents? It's for... a friend, a friend is asking.
False accents are your highlights and darkest darks, made lighter or darker than would be possible. Since the relationship between your lights and darks is constant, these highlights and darks need to relate to your overall light. If you have a super high key highlight on a low key subject or a super dark touch on a relatively high key subject, it can look off. Say you have a subject with lights at 40% grey, shadow/reflected light at 60%%, and core shadow at 70%, and then you hit the highlight with pure white. that highlight would be a false accent! (depending on surface material and specularity)
Nicely done, lamp! I'm drawn to the shine in the forehead, and I like the blue at the temples - I didn't notice it in the original and like how you've made it a bit more apparent.
Hey dude, I know you're just getting started with the digital painting thing, but I hope you don't mind if I toss a couple of ideas your way (and I hope this doesn't come across as overwhelming, which is always a risk when I throw out a wall o' text like this). I put together a bit of paintover to show what I'm on about (and hopefully convince you I'm not just full of it), and the explanation of what I might suggest and why is underneath:
Animated...the first 3 steps are the big ones, the rest is more or less window dressing.
-Toning
Toning is the idea of adding a little bit of a single color into every color used in your piece, to create a sense of color harmony throughout the piece.
See: a James Gurney post on the subject: http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2008/05/toning-palette.html
While not appropriate for every picture, it is an easy way to make your colors feel nice and unified, and it makes a good amount of sense- in most situations the scene is going to be dominated by one major light source or type of light sources (the sun, a single type of lamp or candles throughout a scene, etc.), so the color of those lights will naturally effect the colors of the scene.
In traditional painting, this would be done by physically mixing up a bunch of a single color and mixing bits of it into the other colors on the palette; but since this is digital painting, it's easy to do this way after the fact. So in this case I made a new layer, Paint Bucket filled it with a pale green (you've already got something of an analogous color scheme going on with yellows, greens and blues, so pale green was a safe middleground), and set its blending mode to Color, and it's opacity to 38%. Then I duplicated that layer, set its blend mode to Multiply, and set its opacity to 25%, so there'd be more green in the areas that were before pretty white, like the mask. I know you're new to digital stuff so don't fret too much about the numbers and such here, the take away is that you should play around with layers and blending modes a bit to see what they do, because they're pretty useful when you figure them out. (I'm assuming you're using Photoshop here, but most other paint programs will have similar options).
You may want to try them out on your previous Wildstar pieces as well- adding a bit of blue/purple throughout the pieces to tie the background with the character would probably go a long way to make the colors harmonize better.
-Simplify
A good idea to keep in mind is the importance of working broadly, and addressing the big, simple ideas first. Coming from a color pencil background, you may be more used to working on details or areas in a piecemeal fashion, which can make doing this difficult without first doing preparatory color sketches of the overall color treatment beforehand. A benefit of digital is that you can go back and pull out a huge brush at any time and attack huge areas of a picture at any time without destroying anything, thanks to being able to throw a new layer down whenever you want.
So, what do I mean by the 'addressing the big, simple ideas'? Basically, I mean that if you take away all the details- the cloth folds, the eye sockets, the doors and windows- and just reduced everything down into the simplest possible three dimensional forms- does the picture still hold up? Does the lighting feel coherent and believable? Is the mood and atmosphere working? If you can successfully simplify an image to its core components and still have it read well, it's probably a successful picture, and layering detail on top of it will probably go well. If it feels like things could be working better, or you can't tell where the eye should go in what order when viewed from across the room, it's probably worth going back with some big brushes and working out what you can improve on a broad level.
I put in a very simplified version of the scene in the images up there to make to try to boil it down to just those simple, important elements. The takeaway isn't that actually painting something that looks like that simplified version is a part of the painting process- it's not 'Step 3 of 12' so to speak- I just included it as an illustration of what the important things I'm keeping in my head mentally as I paint- that if something feels off or I go off the rails, those are the things I can go back and rely on to set me straight.
First thing that stands out that could be clearer is the lighting. Obviously there's a streetlamp casting a lot of light onto the road, but it doesn't seem to falloff into darkness on the buildings, and the lighting for the rest of the scene is fairly ambiguous- I'm not really sure where it's coming from. So, sorting out these issues would be a decent step one.
In my paintover, I decided to add a light up above the character to account for the mask and the yellow coat standing out, and cast much of the rest of the surroundings into darkness (I'm picking up a 'horror' vibe). I can't say this is a 'right' or 'wrong' decision, but it's what made sense to me as far as my understanding of the intent of the picture went. If I were trying to make it more mysterious feeling, I might not have added that second light and used the single original light as the only illumination, making the majority of the character very dark, with only hints of light to show form.
Another thing that feels could use simplification is a lot of the line and brushwork in the cloth, tentacles, and windows, where there's a fair bit of 'choppiness' in an attempt to get a greater sense of detail. In most cases, addressing things in terms of their simple forms will ensure that there's at least a readable clarity- windows, for example, are generally just flat planes, so noodling in strokes arbitrarily is actually a less effective treatment than just leaving a simple solid color or gradient, unless you're factoring in specific reflections or objects within the building.
If further detail is necessary, look up reference and figuring out how to incorporate that detail in a logical fashion. For example, on the cloth, there's so many lines consistently all over the place and the contrast between lit and shaded areas are so high, it's hard to get a read on what the basic forms are. I looked up references of monks robes- and looked down at my own shirt a bunch of times- to try to simplify it down to a point where it still had detail, but also got across the basic forms a bit more clearly. Using these sources, I observed that in a lot of cases, the fabric will be smoother around the top of the torso and shoulders, where gravity is pushing the cloth down, close to the skin, and will bunch up with creases at bends in the form, like at the elbow. Using that as a basis, I could give the cloth a nice area of rest, where I could keep things more simple, but still have a good amount of detail that felt appropriate, rather than being overwhelming.
A small compositional note as well- you may have noticed I cropped off the streetlamp on the far right edge. The reason for that is that cutting off that light on the edge there kinda makes for a weird and distracting compositional read- unless there's a specific, storytelling reason for doing so, it's probably preferable to either cut it off (as I had) or expand the canvas on the right side so it's placed well within the frame. Also, the light corner bricks on the building next to the lightpost may be good detail to have, but it being so bright next to the surrounding walls makes the eye go right for it, when it's not really all that important for the viewer to pay attention to. Subduing the detail/contrast there might be a more satisfying way of going about things. On the other hand, I tried to make sure I reserved the highest contrast for the face/mask, and the most saturated color for the coat, drawing the eye there straight away- everything else gets pushed back to make sure the character stands out, it being the most important thing in the picture.
Hope some of that helps/(is at least interesting to think about?)!
(Also I hope I didn't screw something up with the character design because I'm not familiar with it at all, I assume it's from something?)
Hey dude, I know you're just getting started with the digital painting thing, but I hope you don't mind if I toss a couple of ideas your way
Thank you. This is exactly what I needed. That was also extremely cool of you to take the time to break down a critique like that; I hope to pay you back by getting up to speed skill-wise in short order, and start posting better work. I'll digest this and see if I can put it into practice with my next piece. Thanks again.
Judas on
Hard pressed on my right. My center is yielding. Impossible to maneuver.
Situation excellent. I am attacking.
- General Ferdinand Foch
I don't know what I want to do with this portrait!
The reference is a black-and-white photo of my grandmother when she was young. This is just the basic underpainting but I don't know how to proceed. Should I paint this in black and white (or brown and white) or make it full colour? If I choose to colour it I have to try and match skin tones to a monochrome photo and there isn't a lot of dark shadows to make it interesting.
Joke doodle arising from a FB convo in which I assert that while this hoodie is cool, I, as an extraordinarily not cool scruffy 30 year old of mediocre shape, would look like an utter d-bag if I tried to pull that shit off.
Joke doodle arising from a FB convo in which I assert that while this hoodie is cool, I, as an extraordinarily not cool scruffy 30 year old of mediocre shape, would look like an utter d-bag if I tried to pull that shit off.
That is a pretty awesome looking hoodie. I kind of want it now.
I'm also 30 but I think I could actually pull it off. Hopefully.
CommunistCow on
No, I am not really communist. Yes, it is weird that I use this name.
Joke doodle arising from a FB convo in which I assert that while this hoodie is cool, I, as an extraordinarily not cool scruffy 30 year old of mediocre shape, would look like an utter d-bag if I tried to pull that shit off.
That is a pretty awesome looking hoodie. I kind of want it now.
I'm also 30 but I think I could actually pull it off. Hopefully.
I feel like, for their level of fashion-forwardness, there's no way those jackets could be that cheap without being made out of straight up construction paper.
The_Glad_HatterOne Sly FoxUnderneath a Groovy HatRegistered Userregular
After doing some research i've been trying to do the whole "paint black and then colour it in"-thingy, and it doesn't seem to agree with me.
The BG and wall etc were a bit of an afterthough. This just started out as a little exersize. #360noref
Well I bought one in blue so I might post a picture of it to the chat thread when it comes in. (I wanted the grey one with white accents but I already have infinity grey jackets.)
I could also draw a REALLY shitty version of it for this thread.
>_>
<_<
No, I am not really communist. Yes, it is weird that I use this name.
I don't have that particular hoodie but I have a short-sleeve shirt-hoodie which I think is from the same dudes. It's pretty sturdily made. But definitely designed for korean boys with no hips. I had to renovate somewhat.
I feel like, for their level of fashion-forwardness, there's no way those jackets could be that cheap without being made out of straight up construction paper.
Well I bought one in blue so I might post a picture of it to the chat thread when it comes in. (I wanted the grey one with white accents but I already have infinity grey jackets.)
I could also draw a REALLY shitty version of it for this thread.
>_>
<_<
I actually have a wool version that's all black (this one is the newer version), I've had it for 2.5 years now and it's held up incredibly well. Just had the zipper break on me about a month ago, but that's it and that was my fault - don't hulk out in your favorite hoody people. Breathes surprisingly well for when it's not really cold, and is really warm when it is cold. I think they're so cheap because it's from a korean retailer warehouse thingymabob. I got mine for $20 back then and these used to be $20 as well until a few months ago.
Posts
doodle time:
Also, what exactly are accents? It's for... a friend, a friend is asking.
False accents are your highlights and darkest darks, made lighter or darker than would be possible. Since the relationship between your lights and darks is constant, these highlights and darks need to relate to your overall light. If you have a super high key highlight on a low key subject or a super dark touch on a relatively high key subject, it can look off. Say you have a subject with lights at 40% grey, shadow/reflected light at 60%%, and core shadow at 70%, and then you hit the highlight with pure white. that highlight would be a false accent! (depending on surface material and specularity)
3DS : 2165-5535-6036
I'm planning to do a 3 piece music themed drawings this being the first of the three. Done mostly being stuck at airports!
Situation excellent. I am attacking.
- General Ferdinand Foch
Hey dude, I know you're just getting started with the digital painting thing, but I hope you don't mind if I toss a couple of ideas your way (and I hope this doesn't come across as overwhelming, which is always a risk when I throw out a wall o' text like this). I put together a bit of paintover to show what I'm on about (and hopefully convince you I'm not just full of it), and the explanation of what I might suggest and why is underneath:
Animated...the first 3 steps are the big ones, the rest is more or less window dressing.
-Toning
Toning is the idea of adding a little bit of a single color into every color used in your piece, to create a sense of color harmony throughout the piece.
See: a James Gurney post on the subject: http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2008/05/toning-palette.html
While not appropriate for every picture, it is an easy way to make your colors feel nice and unified, and it makes a good amount of sense- in most situations the scene is going to be dominated by one major light source or type of light sources (the sun, a single type of lamp or candles throughout a scene, etc.), so the color of those lights will naturally effect the colors of the scene.
In traditional painting, this would be done by physically mixing up a bunch of a single color and mixing bits of it into the other colors on the palette; but since this is digital painting, it's easy to do this way after the fact. So in this case I made a new layer, Paint Bucket filled it with a pale green (you've already got something of an analogous color scheme going on with yellows, greens and blues, so pale green was a safe middleground), and set its blending mode to Color, and it's opacity to 38%. Then I duplicated that layer, set its blend mode to Multiply, and set its opacity to 25%, so there'd be more green in the areas that were before pretty white, like the mask. I know you're new to digital stuff so don't fret too much about the numbers and such here, the take away is that you should play around with layers and blending modes a bit to see what they do, because they're pretty useful when you figure them out. (I'm assuming you're using Photoshop here, but most other paint programs will have similar options).
You may want to try them out on your previous Wildstar pieces as well- adding a bit of blue/purple throughout the pieces to tie the background with the character would probably go a long way to make the colors harmonize better.
-Simplify
A good idea to keep in mind is the importance of working broadly, and addressing the big, simple ideas first. Coming from a color pencil background, you may be more used to working on details or areas in a piecemeal fashion, which can make doing this difficult without first doing preparatory color sketches of the overall color treatment beforehand. A benefit of digital is that you can go back and pull out a huge brush at any time and attack huge areas of a picture at any time without destroying anything, thanks to being able to throw a new layer down whenever you want.
So, what do I mean by the 'addressing the big, simple ideas'? Basically, I mean that if you take away all the details- the cloth folds, the eye sockets, the doors and windows- and just reduced everything down into the simplest possible three dimensional forms- does the picture still hold up? Does the lighting feel coherent and believable? Is the mood and atmosphere working? If you can successfully simplify an image to its core components and still have it read well, it's probably a successful picture, and layering detail on top of it will probably go well. If it feels like things could be working better, or you can't tell where the eye should go in what order when viewed from across the room, it's probably worth going back with some big brushes and working out what you can improve on a broad level.
I put in a very simplified version of the scene in the images up there to make to try to boil it down to just those simple, important elements. The takeaway isn't that actually painting something that looks like that simplified version is a part of the painting process- it's not 'Step 3 of 12' so to speak- I just included it as an illustration of what the important things I'm keeping in my head mentally as I paint- that if something feels off or I go off the rails, those are the things I can go back and rely on to set me straight.
(Another, probably more coherent explanation from Nathan Fowkes on the same idea, if you go down to the bottom 2 pictures and their descriptions: http://nathanfowkes.blogspot.com/2008/09/head-drawing-demo.html)
So, what could use addressing here?
First thing that stands out that could be clearer is the lighting. Obviously there's a streetlamp casting a lot of light onto the road, but it doesn't seem to falloff into darkness on the buildings, and the lighting for the rest of the scene is fairly ambiguous- I'm not really sure where it's coming from. So, sorting out these issues would be a decent step one.
In my paintover, I decided to add a light up above the character to account for the mask and the yellow coat standing out, and cast much of the rest of the surroundings into darkness (I'm picking up a 'horror' vibe). I can't say this is a 'right' or 'wrong' decision, but it's what made sense to me as far as my understanding of the intent of the picture went. If I were trying to make it more mysterious feeling, I might not have added that second light and used the single original light as the only illumination, making the majority of the character very dark, with only hints of light to show form.
Another thing that feels could use simplification is a lot of the line and brushwork in the cloth, tentacles, and windows, where there's a fair bit of 'choppiness' in an attempt to get a greater sense of detail. In most cases, addressing things in terms of their simple forms will ensure that there's at least a readable clarity- windows, for example, are generally just flat planes, so noodling in strokes arbitrarily is actually a less effective treatment than just leaving a simple solid color or gradient, unless you're factoring in specific reflections or objects within the building.
If further detail is necessary, look up reference and figuring out how to incorporate that detail in a logical fashion. For example, on the cloth, there's so many lines consistently all over the place and the contrast between lit and shaded areas are so high, it's hard to get a read on what the basic forms are. I looked up references of monks robes- and looked down at my own shirt a bunch of times- to try to simplify it down to a point where it still had detail, but also got across the basic forms a bit more clearly. Using these sources, I observed that in a lot of cases, the fabric will be smoother around the top of the torso and shoulders, where gravity is pushing the cloth down, close to the skin, and will bunch up with creases at bends in the form, like at the elbow. Using that as a basis, I could give the cloth a nice area of rest, where I could keep things more simple, but still have a good amount of detail that felt appropriate, rather than being overwhelming.
A small compositional note as well- you may have noticed I cropped off the streetlamp on the far right edge. The reason for that is that cutting off that light on the edge there kinda makes for a weird and distracting compositional read- unless there's a specific, storytelling reason for doing so, it's probably preferable to either cut it off (as I had) or expand the canvas on the right side so it's placed well within the frame. Also, the light corner bricks on the building next to the lightpost may be good detail to have, but it being so bright next to the surrounding walls makes the eye go right for it, when it's not really all that important for the viewer to pay attention to. Subduing the detail/contrast there might be a more satisfying way of going about things. On the other hand, I tried to make sure I reserved the highest contrast for the face/mask, and the most saturated color for the coat, drawing the eye there straight away- everything else gets pushed back to make sure the character stands out, it being the most important thing in the picture.
Hope some of that helps/(is at least interesting to think about?)!
(Also I hope I didn't screw something up with the character design because I'm not familiar with it at all, I assume it's from something?)
Twitter
3DS : 2165-5535-6036
I also did a thingy, trying out some new brushes from zedig
Kinda beginning to lose steam on this one.
How do you know about our powers????
Thank you. This is exactly what I needed. That was also extremely cool of you to take the time to break down a critique like that; I hope to pay you back by getting up to speed skill-wise in short order, and start posting better work. I'll digest this and see if I can put it into practice with my next piece. Thanks again.
Situation excellent. I am attacking.
- General Ferdinand Foch
The reference is a black-and-white photo of my grandmother when she was young. This is just the basic underpainting but I don't know how to proceed. Should I paint this in black and white (or brown and white) or make it full colour? If I choose to colour it I have to try and match skin tones to a monochrome photo and there isn't a lot of dark shadows to make it interesting.
Twitter
That is a pretty awesome looking hoodie. I kind of want it now.
Are you a video game protagonist, by any chance?
Twitter
The BG and wall etc were a bit of an afterthough. This just started out as a little exersize. #360noref
Well I bought one in blue so I might post a picture of it to the chat thread when it comes in. (I wanted the grey one with white accents but I already have infinity grey jackets.)
I could also draw a REALLY shitty version of it for this thread.
>_>
<_<
I need to know if I am right for quashing my not-so-secret pining for it, or if it actually grants cool guy powers to the wearer.
You gotta do me a solid and be my guinea pig on this brah.
Twitter
No hoodie is worth sawing off portions of your pelvis.
Fashion is pain, chico-cheeks.
Is that what they do to people that insult the Kim regime?
Twitter
probably exploitative child labor
but what isn't
I actually have a wool version that's all black (this one is the newer version), I've had it for 2.5 years now and it's held up incredibly well. Just had the zipper break on me about a month ago, but that's it and that was my fault - don't hulk out in your favorite hoody people. Breathes surprisingly well for when it's not really cold, and is really warm when it is cold. I think they're so cheap because it's from a korean retailer warehouse thingymabob. I got mine for $20 back then and these used to be $20 as well until a few months ago.
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