And realized that it pretty much sucked. So I tried again:
What do you guys think?
Well, the big obvious thing on both of them is, well...nighttime is dark. Darkness combined with bright, local manmade light sources means high-contrast, which isn't coming across here. That means you have to pay a good deal of attention to where light would be coming from in a real environment- in a place like a hospital where someone may be pulled up outside the front doors bleeding to death, there's going to be a lot of light so the emergency crews aren't screwing around in the dark. Entrances in general are likely to be lit up so they are easy to find, and general safety. Streetlamps are going to be on the sidewalks. Moonlight isn't consistent or bright enough to provide a significantly usable amount of light in a modern city, so don't rely on it in a painting of a city either.
So I threw together a paintover to add those light sources, and bring the areas that wouldn't be lit down to a more appropriate level. Note how the colors of the light sources are handled: yellow/orange safety safety light, dingy orange for the off screen streetlamps, green/blue glow of the entrance florescents.
Compositionally, the added lighting of the entrance, the color contrast of the area with the rest of the picture, and the addition of some space to the right to make the entrance more centrally placed makes it clear what the most important part of the piece is. In the original, it's difficult to tell what is meant to be the focus of the piece, which ends up giving it a rather dull, monotonous read.
It isn't enough to simply draw the objects you want in a piece, it is necessary to establish a hierarchy of what is important and what is not in a piece through value, color, and composition.
Second oil painting assignment WIP not going so bad really. It's not as hard to work with as I'd feared. Just wish I had thought a little harder about composition...
MustangArbiter of Unpopular OpinionsRegistered Userregular
edited October 2009
I was going to ask where the thumb was....yeah redo that if you can, it looks like you accidentally thought the thumb was a finger when you were adding the nails.
Thanks, gentlemen.
Yeah, I did this as kind of a composite of two pencil studies with reversed thumb positions, apparently it shows. Seems really stupid for me to be at this point in the rendering and still be undecided about the thumbs and pinky. Will fix ASAP.
Mufasa Joe, wouldn't a hand coming off the forearm at such an extreme angle have some compression folds of the skin at the inside of the wrist at the bend? It just kind of looks like it's growing out of the arm at that angle right now.
F87- This is cute. Chin seems a little off center, and the eyes are such a huge focal point that I feel like they need something more.
I'll post some doodles I did in my sketchbook yesterday. Spoiler-ed for V scroll.
Mensch, the top part pf that AK seems really exaggerated.
Yeah the gun is definitely borked. By the time I began to define the gun my good pen was running low, so I had to redistribute my priorities a bit--that and I really never draw weaponry, haha
also i need to figure out how to use levels/contrast, durr
DR; I like it a lot. I feel like your paintings often might gain more depth if you used more colors. also, from a compositional standpoint, the guy in the foreground could had more focus if the "eye" of the alien was looking more directly at him, and it might have made the composition more solid; but perhaps that wasn't your intention.
srsizzy on
BRO LET ME GET REAL WITH YOU AND SAY THAT MY FINGERS ARE PREPPED AND HOT LIKE THE SURFACE OF THE SUN TO BRING RADICAL BEATS SO SMOOTH THE SHIT WILL BE MEDICINAL-GRADE TRIPNASTY MAKING ALL BRAINWAVES ROLL ON THE SURFACE OF A BALLS-FEISTY NEURAL RAINBOW CRACKA-LACKIN' YOUR PERCEPTION OF THE HERE-NOW SPACE-TIME SITUATION THAT ALL OF LIFE BE JAMMED UP IN THROUGH THE UNIVERSAL FLOW BEATS
Yeah I don't really want the guy to be a focal point, he's more there as an aid to scale and to inject a little more life. Too many colours could compete with the giant blue/green eye, but I'll think about it for livening up the city streets. It is very red, after all.
I think it'd be a different style, but you could make the eye the focus by using light/contrast rather than just making it a single color in a monochromatic landscape. Bacon would be better at painting over it, but what I generally mean is having like a spotlight, or not distributing your light/dark contrast so much.
by that I mean, you have good contrast, but it's spread out pretty equally, with no one place becoming a focal point. if you darkened/subdued your backgrounds (while leaving the detail), then they'd becoming backdrops, rather than everything being in focus. because everything IS in focus with lighting, contrast, and detail, it leaves "color" as the only way for you to call attention to the eye.
does that make sense? I wrote a paper on composition once, but I couldn't paint a picture for shit, so I don't know.
your shapes are really good though. they help to frame the picture well (especially the tentacles), even if the perspective is surreal.
srsizzy on
BRO LET ME GET REAL WITH YOU AND SAY THAT MY FINGERS ARE PREPPED AND HOT LIKE THE SURFACE OF THE SUN TO BRING RADICAL BEATS SO SMOOTH THE SHIT WILL BE MEDICINAL-GRADE TRIPNASTY MAKING ALL BRAINWAVES ROLL ON THE SURFACE OF A BALLS-FEISTY NEURAL RAINBOW CRACKA-LACKIN' YOUR PERCEPTION OF THE HERE-NOW SPACE-TIME SITUATION THAT ALL OF LIFE BE JAMMED UP IN THROUGH THE UNIVERSAL FLOW BEATS
If you mean that I'm not really painting 'depth of field' effects, then this is true, I have a lot of tight edges. Otherwise, I think I have made the eye the focus by using light and contrast. And... using a cool colour against an image full of warm reds is surely a form of contrast too...?
Also, the colour choice might be doing some of the heavy lifting but I really don't think it's the only element performing the function of leading the eye to the machine. The entire composition is set up to draw the eye there - it dominates the canvas in size, it's a circle in a canvas full of squares, a lot of the buildings are pointing directly at it, there are several very large lines (ie tentacles) leading directly to it. So I'm not sure what you're getting at. If you're just saying 'you should have done it in a completely different way', I don't know how constructive that feedback is going to be at this point.
The suggestion to darkening/subduing my backgrounds doesn't make a great deal of sense to me; I'm trying to create less contrast as the buildings recede in to space, as the atmosphere would dictate. If I made it darker, it would increase that contrast ruin and, I don't know, maybe ruin that effect?
Posts
Well, the big obvious thing on both of them is, well...nighttime is dark. Darkness combined with bright, local manmade light sources means high-contrast, which isn't coming across here. That means you have to pay a good deal of attention to where light would be coming from in a real environment- in a place like a hospital where someone may be pulled up outside the front doors bleeding to death, there's going to be a lot of light so the emergency crews aren't screwing around in the dark. Entrances in general are likely to be lit up so they are easy to find, and general safety. Streetlamps are going to be on the sidewalks. Moonlight isn't consistent or bright enough to provide a significantly usable amount of light in a modern city, so don't rely on it in a painting of a city either.
So I threw together a paintover to add those light sources, and bring the areas that wouldn't be lit down to a more appropriate level. Note how the colors of the light sources are handled: yellow/orange safety safety light, dingy orange for the off screen streetlamps, green/blue glow of the entrance florescents.
Compositionally, the added lighting of the entrance, the color contrast of the area with the rest of the picture, and the addition of some space to the right to make the entrance more centrally placed makes it clear what the most important part of the piece is. In the original, it's difficult to tell what is meant to be the focus of the piece, which ends up giving it a rather dull, monotonous read.
It isn't enough to simply draw the objects you want in a piece, it is necessary to establish a hierarchy of what is important and what is not in a piece through value, color, and composition.
Twitter
Man I need to work on my environments >_<
I knew a kid in highschool who's thumb looked like a fifth finger. Maybe you know him?!
INSTAGRAM
Yeah, I did this as kind of a composite of two pencil studies with reversed thumb positions, apparently it shows. Seems really stupid for me to be at this point in the rendering and still be undecided about the thumbs and pinky. Will fix ASAP.
@AoB
Thank you. That was brilliant.
---
Working on something else now, what do you guys think?
F87- This is cute. Chin seems a little off center, and the eyes are such a huge focal point that I feel like they need something more.
I'll post some doodles I did in my sketchbook yesterday. Spoiler-ed for V scroll.
~Jeremy Clarkson
You refuse Ginormous ta-tas?
I know you meant urantia's
~Jeremy Clarkson
i am in love and inspired
quicky before i go back to working:
edit: Moved to my thread
Anyways, I finally got a scanner; here's lighting practice from a week ago:
reffed from here (that gallery has a ridiculous of male refferences/nudes)
Yeah the gun is definitely borked. By the time I began to define the gun my good pen was running low, so I had to redistribute my priorities a bit--that and I really never draw weaponry, haha
also i need to figure out how to use levels/contrast, durr
Lovely.
mountains?
Hiking Essentials
INSTAGRAM
and thanks!
So much wrong with this to fix. Anatomy/perspective and what not
Still fun as fuck though
Background is going to be fun to draw. I know he's pretty much floating there. I'll figure something out, I wasn't sure what I wanted just yet.
The perspective is all wonky but I think it really works.
Some quickish gestures from imagination:
by that I mean, you have good contrast, but it's spread out pretty equally, with no one place becoming a focal point. if you darkened/subdued your backgrounds (while leaving the detail), then they'd becoming backdrops, rather than everything being in focus. because everything IS in focus with lighting, contrast, and detail, it leaves "color" as the only way for you to call attention to the eye.
does that make sense? I wrote a paper on composition once, but I couldn't paint a picture for shit, so I don't know.
your shapes are really good though. they help to frame the picture well (especially the tentacles), even if the perspective is surreal.
Also, the colour choice might be doing some of the heavy lifting but I really don't think it's the only element performing the function of leading the eye to the machine. The entire composition is set up to draw the eye there - it dominates the canvas in size, it's a circle in a canvas full of squares, a lot of the buildings are pointing directly at it, there are several very large lines (ie tentacles) leading directly to it. So I'm not sure what you're getting at. If you're just saying 'you should have done it in a completely different way', I don't know how constructive that feedback is going to be at this point.
The suggestion to darkening/subduing my backgrounds doesn't make a great deal of sense to me; I'm trying to create less contrast as the buildings recede in to space, as the atmosphere would dictate. If I made it darker, it would increase that contrast ruin and, I don't know, maybe ruin that effect?
Thanks for the comments though.