06-19-2014, 10:49 PM
BenFlores - Thank you, and you're welcome, I'm glad to be of help.
meat - Thank you, it has actually been rather difficult for me to make figures look volumetric and am still working on it. I've been getting better results concentrating on the primitive shapes (cubes etc) building them, like Tristian said. Another easier thing that helps that is getting a feel for overlapping edges/shapes.
The photostudies have really helped actually, particularly with judging colour and being more aware of light sources and texture. I don't pick the colours on them (you're right that it doesn't really help much), it is basically eyeballing on the colour wheel and mixing colours on the canvas. When I started doing them and found myself totally stuck at the start, I'd open the colour picker and look at some of the colours before starting - but then would reset my brush colour to white without putting anything down so I'd have to remember from the general idea I'd had. Because it was really hard to do at first, I started out with doing master thumbnail studies to help see large areas of colour, because it was a bit easier (for me at least) to see relative colours.
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Continued Bridgman stuff
Morning warmup sketches. Focusing on some form drawing with the cars (need to construct those more I think) and bodies, and some 2 minute faces.
Ten minute portrait practises (doing another fair this weekend)
Still working on that nude study. Really learning a lot about edges and form from this one though.
2 hour photostudy... that looks really wonky, wow.
1 hour film studies. I've seen a lot of people suggest these to learn about lighting and colour. They totally kicked my ass! I have no freaking clue what is going on with the lighting with these, they're crazy challenging. Going to keep at them, and maybe try some longer ones when I can get basic light schemes down.
Another photostudy, done to help me (I hope) with the minotaur picture.
Speedpaint, probably about 90mins - 2 hours. I just really wanted to use that axe head I saw in the museum. Only you can prevent forest fires!
Work for the minotaur picture. This has been a particularly detailed planning process for me, but I'm hoping it will mean I can just flay away at painting it next week. Plus I really need to practise my planning because my thumbs are terrible.
Anyhow, looking at value set ups and trying to get the weather/mood right, since it will be a rainy/overcast scene - so I went for the paler background. I don't care much for the colour comps at all, though the orange blue one seems to work best, probably the warm-cool mix. Might try doing some more rainy scene studies to get some better ideas. The colour picture of his costume needs a bit of tightening still, so it is basically a wip - though other than being a handy costume reference when I paint it has little other purpose.
meat - Thank you, it has actually been rather difficult for me to make figures look volumetric and am still working on it. I've been getting better results concentrating on the primitive shapes (cubes etc) building them, like Tristian said. Another easier thing that helps that is getting a feel for overlapping edges/shapes.
The photostudies have really helped actually, particularly with judging colour and being more aware of light sources and texture. I don't pick the colours on them (you're right that it doesn't really help much), it is basically eyeballing on the colour wheel and mixing colours on the canvas. When I started doing them and found myself totally stuck at the start, I'd open the colour picker and look at some of the colours before starting - but then would reset my brush colour to white without putting anything down so I'd have to remember from the general idea I'd had. Because it was really hard to do at first, I started out with doing master thumbnail studies to help see large areas of colour, because it was a bit easier (for me at least) to see relative colours.
---
Continued Bridgman stuff
Morning warmup sketches. Focusing on some form drawing with the cars (need to construct those more I think) and bodies, and some 2 minute faces.
Ten minute portrait practises (doing another fair this weekend)
Still working on that nude study. Really learning a lot about edges and form from this one though.
2 hour photostudy... that looks really wonky, wow.
1 hour film studies. I've seen a lot of people suggest these to learn about lighting and colour. They totally kicked my ass! I have no freaking clue what is going on with the lighting with these, they're crazy challenging. Going to keep at them, and maybe try some longer ones when I can get basic light schemes down.
Another photostudy, done to help me (I hope) with the minotaur picture.
Speedpaint, probably about 90mins - 2 hours. I just really wanted to use that axe head I saw in the museum. Only you can prevent forest fires!
Work for the minotaur picture. This has been a particularly detailed planning process for me, but I'm hoping it will mean I can just flay away at painting it next week. Plus I really need to practise my planning because my thumbs are terrible.
Anyhow, looking at value set ups and trying to get the weather/mood right, since it will be a rainy/overcast scene - so I went for the paler background. I don't care much for the colour comps at all, though the orange blue one seems to work best, probably the warm-cool mix. Might try doing some more rainy scene studies to get some better ideas. The colour picture of his costume needs a bit of tightening still, so it is basically a wip - though other than being a handy costume reference when I paint it has little other purpose.