06-28-2015, 05:06 AM
Hello there, heres the advice on painting and characters :D
Really try to nail colors and values in still lives and masterstudies. Learn what colors work(for example what complimentary colors are). Try to paint the shadows in a complimentary color to the lit side, look for reflected lights. Get painterswheel or Coolorous application for photoshop. Experiment, for example I sometimes add high saturation paintstrokes on shadows.
As for characters its hard, determine the problems you run into, then find the material you need to solve them. For example if you want to design an adventurer with light armor, that looks appealing and interesting, then firt off you just go for it, try to do the best you can from imagination, after that your gonna run into all kinds of problems, maybe the pose is stiff, or the apparel looks bland, colors look wonky. Thats where you determine the exact problems you have and find your answers, search for some reference for poses, look at master drawings/paintings to see what they did, to make it dynamic. Look how various artists handle color, look for interesting clothing/leather armor on internet, also watching Game of Thrones helps, theres tons of interesting apparel there.
Another approach is to set criteriums for yourself, for example do a character that has fairly high contrast apparel(value wise), or a character that has many different materials and patterns, perhaps you can add a theme to characte, go so far where you can define the entire set of your character by a single word.
Make loose sketches of whatever characters come to mind, use more unstable brushes and looser strokes, paint around the basic forms to give complexity and volume.
Last but not least, have purpose behind everything you do, if you decide that you want to study certain culture, then you should also create a character that is influenced by that.
Good luck on the goal.
Really try to nail colors and values in still lives and masterstudies. Learn what colors work(for example what complimentary colors are). Try to paint the shadows in a complimentary color to the lit side, look for reflected lights. Get painterswheel or Coolorous application for photoshop. Experiment, for example I sometimes add high saturation paintstrokes on shadows.
As for characters its hard, determine the problems you run into, then find the material you need to solve them. For example if you want to design an adventurer with light armor, that looks appealing and interesting, then firt off you just go for it, try to do the best you can from imagination, after that your gonna run into all kinds of problems, maybe the pose is stiff, or the apparel looks bland, colors look wonky. Thats where you determine the exact problems you have and find your answers, search for some reference for poses, look at master drawings/paintings to see what they did, to make it dynamic. Look how various artists handle color, look for interesting clothing/leather armor on internet, also watching Game of Thrones helps, theres tons of interesting apparel there.
Another approach is to set criteriums for yourself, for example do a character that has fairly high contrast apparel(value wise), or a character that has many different materials and patterns, perhaps you can add a theme to characte, go so far where you can define the entire set of your character by a single word.
Make loose sketches of whatever characters come to mind, use more unstable brushes and looser strokes, paint around the basic forms to give complexity and volume.
Last but not least, have purpose behind everything you do, if you decide that you want to study certain culture, then you should also create a character that is influenced by that.
Good luck on the goal.