07-28-2014, 11:17 AM
Hey glad it helps. I love sharing knowledge I come across but rarely find the opportunity to do so without being like "hey heres some shit I learned." I have an ultimate goal to make free videos for people on art subjects, of different topics, but I don't think I'm knowledgeable enough yet. Anyways...
Good point about the gurney stuff. I must admit I'm guilty of just reading it lol. Then again I bought when i was still in my artistic infancy so now that you mention it I think I'll give it a reread!
That resource looks great by the way. I read the first few lines to see what it was and it already seems interesting. Probably gonna read through that this week.
As for photoshop, its essentially trying to be like real paint, but not quite doing it right. Dont remember if it was mentioned in the richard keyes thing, but real paint is subtractive and tends to grey out or neutralize, but usually thats only with complementary pairs or when you add black/white. When you do that with real paint, theres a nice progression and a great deal of control when you actually mix them. You can easily just add a tiny drop of green to red and suddenly come out with this nice dark crimson colour. Photoshop isnt as precise as real paint, and so to compensate you reallyyyyy need to be careful if you decide to blend colours. It does an ok job. Its much harder to control than real paint, and so I personally just memorize certain colours that I know work together in the colour picker. If your memory isnt so great you can make swatches of them and adjust them as you work to match your current picture.
Since we're talking about real paint, theres a pretty nice swatch that comes with CS6 i believe that replicates real paint colours. Give it a whirl if you've never worked with physical paint. its a great learning experience to learn how to work with limited colours. Or just try real paint lol. I know the masters and most professional painters tend to plan out really precisely their palettes before hand, mixing all their colours onto an actual palette and working from there. So a swatch set in photoshop would essentially do the same thing
As far as I know, the only way to work additively is to go to Window>color and in the little drop down switch from whatever the default is to RGB. It wont change how colours actually blend on canvas but it will allow you to make colours the way they form in nature. I have read some tutorials on it and cant personally wrap my head around it, but I know Alex Negrea uses it to great effect. You can also switch from the "H" option in the colour picker to 'R' 'G' or 'B'. I have 0 clue how those work though so I guess you'll have to fiddle.
All that to say, I dont think there are any PAINTING programs that work additively, as in on canvas. My brother is a colourist for films and I know their programs work additively, but theres no painting involved whatsoever in that. In other words, yes photoshop is working against you in that respect, but it has good intentions trying to be like real paint!
Good point about the gurney stuff. I must admit I'm guilty of just reading it lol. Then again I bought when i was still in my artistic infancy so now that you mention it I think I'll give it a reread!
That resource looks great by the way. I read the first few lines to see what it was and it already seems interesting. Probably gonna read through that this week.
As for photoshop, its essentially trying to be like real paint, but not quite doing it right. Dont remember if it was mentioned in the richard keyes thing, but real paint is subtractive and tends to grey out or neutralize, but usually thats only with complementary pairs or when you add black/white. When you do that with real paint, theres a nice progression and a great deal of control when you actually mix them. You can easily just add a tiny drop of green to red and suddenly come out with this nice dark crimson colour. Photoshop isnt as precise as real paint, and so to compensate you reallyyyyy need to be careful if you decide to blend colours. It does an ok job. Its much harder to control than real paint, and so I personally just memorize certain colours that I know work together in the colour picker. If your memory isnt so great you can make swatches of them and adjust them as you work to match your current picture.
Since we're talking about real paint, theres a pretty nice swatch that comes with CS6 i believe that replicates real paint colours. Give it a whirl if you've never worked with physical paint. its a great learning experience to learn how to work with limited colours. Or just try real paint lol. I know the masters and most professional painters tend to plan out really precisely their palettes before hand, mixing all their colours onto an actual palette and working from there. So a swatch set in photoshop would essentially do the same thing
As far as I know, the only way to work additively is to go to Window>color and in the little drop down switch from whatever the default is to RGB. It wont change how colours actually blend on canvas but it will allow you to make colours the way they form in nature. I have read some tutorials on it and cant personally wrap my head around it, but I know Alex Negrea uses it to great effect. You can also switch from the "H" option in the colour picker to 'R' 'G' or 'B'. I have 0 clue how those work though so I guess you'll have to fiddle.
All that to say, I dont think there are any PAINTING programs that work additively, as in on canvas. My brother is a colourist for films and I know their programs work additively, but theres no painting involved whatsoever in that. In other words, yes photoshop is working against you in that respect, but it has good intentions trying to be like real paint!