04-11-2017, 08:12 PM
Hello, LowPolyLama. You seem to be on the right track pushing forward into the stuff you find difficult.
I want to leave a crit which I hope can save you some time and frustration. With your values/paintings I think you're using too much opacity, and thinking on the canvas. (I did this for the longest time as well). What you can do to fix this is think before you put anything on the page. Something like, "How many values are in this area? How will I simplify those values? Where will be soft edges? Where will be hard edges? Which value should I paint first, which middle, which last? What should be on its own layer?" etc. Opacity can be used to make smooth transitions, or finding a value between, of course, but it has to be used w/ a purpose in mind.
This is basically the same thing with layer modes or any other digital trickery. When I was first starting out I thought there was some trick to multiply/screen/color dodge, that people were basically using these tools to get the program to do the hard work for them, but really, the trick is that the artist doing the tutorial I was watching knew what the image needed to look like, and whatever method they used was a convenient way to get there, and definitely not the only way. When you know what the image needs to look like, and you know how to make it look that way, there's nothing else to it but get it done.
I want to leave a crit which I hope can save you some time and frustration. With your values/paintings I think you're using too much opacity, and thinking on the canvas. (I did this for the longest time as well). What you can do to fix this is think before you put anything on the page. Something like, "How many values are in this area? How will I simplify those values? Where will be soft edges? Where will be hard edges? Which value should I paint first, which middle, which last? What should be on its own layer?" etc. Opacity can be used to make smooth transitions, or finding a value between, of course, but it has to be used w/ a purpose in mind.
This is basically the same thing with layer modes or any other digital trickery. When I was first starting out I thought there was some trick to multiply/screen/color dodge, that people were basically using these tools to get the program to do the hard work for them, but really, the trick is that the artist doing the tutorial I was watching knew what the image needed to look like, and whatever method they used was a convenient way to get there, and definitely not the only way. When you know what the image needs to look like, and you know how to make it look that way, there's nothing else to it but get it done.