01-18-2015, 08:34 AM
Think back to when you first started drawing. You probably weren't very good at it, even less so from your head.
It's the same thing with literally every other aspect of art. Study it from life or from another artist (photography, illustration, master work, book/tutorial etc) and then soon after use that knowledge either in a full portfolio piece or just as a sketch, otherwise it will take much longer to assimilate the knowledge and make it instinctual. Another good way to study is to write down what you notice about colour, about value and about composition from your studies. You can copy mindlessly all day, but the information solidifies when you externalize it in writing, and then you can always refer back to it later. Both to see how you were thinking on a particular day and to refresh your memory on what you were observing and thought was good information.
From what i see here you have a good eye/understanding of how to observe value and colour, for the most part. The thing is, if you do too many works from observation without applying it it becomes lost knowledge, and your imaginative work suffers as a consequence. You develop an expectation for a certain quality that you then can't quite meet in your own work.
It's the same thing with literally every other aspect of art. Study it from life or from another artist (photography, illustration, master work, book/tutorial etc) and then soon after use that knowledge either in a full portfolio piece or just as a sketch, otherwise it will take much longer to assimilate the knowledge and make it instinctual. Another good way to study is to write down what you notice about colour, about value and about composition from your studies. You can copy mindlessly all day, but the information solidifies when you externalize it in writing, and then you can always refer back to it later. Both to see how you were thinking on a particular day and to refresh your memory on what you were observing and thought was good information.
From what i see here you have a good eye/understanding of how to observe value and colour, for the most part. The thing is, if you do too many works from observation without applying it it becomes lost knowledge, and your imaginative work suffers as a consequence. You develop an expectation for a certain quality that you then can't quite meet in your own work.