08-05-2013, 07:09 AM
OK, on one hand you say you don't understand light, but you feel the image doesn't read well, and you have the feeling there's errors with the perspective or geometry. Lack on confidence is what I sense.
On the the image. Light is a problem for me too when I try to wing it without some sort of reference as to the light's quality. Rendering of form isn't the problem, it's consistency with the quality of light. What I mean by this is the type of light and the halftones, shadows and reflected light it produces. For instance, a very intense spot light will create, say, 3 tone difference between light and shadow. So from 10 tones you have 4 tones to render the light and 3 for the shadow. Also let's say that the reflected light produced is fairly light, maybe a tone darker than the darkest halftones. Now, these relationships (at least this is how I have understood this so far) must be consistent and true in the whole image, so as to convince the viewer that they are looking at something being hit by the same light source. Of course, local color and atmosphere must be taken into account. Some reference would help.
Now here what seems confusing is the way you've rendered the planes of the character. There's times when light affects a plane more than others of the same angle, without these differences seeming to be compositional decisions. Also, the contrast isn't clear, you're going for a diffused light and the backlight (your light coming from the right) is the same intensity as your main light, so tonal differences go down and come closer together, no wonder it looks confusing to you, but you've followed your decisions pretty well, if they have any interesting effect or not is another discussion.
However, I'm thinking that maybe you were aiming for something different, in which case, go back to the beginning and make a small rough thumbnail, thinking of contrast, readability and quality of light, and when you get to what you want, redo this based on the thumb.
On the the image. Light is a problem for me too when I try to wing it without some sort of reference as to the light's quality. Rendering of form isn't the problem, it's consistency with the quality of light. What I mean by this is the type of light and the halftones, shadows and reflected light it produces. For instance, a very intense spot light will create, say, 3 tone difference between light and shadow. So from 10 tones you have 4 tones to render the light and 3 for the shadow. Also let's say that the reflected light produced is fairly light, maybe a tone darker than the darkest halftones. Now, these relationships (at least this is how I have understood this so far) must be consistent and true in the whole image, so as to convince the viewer that they are looking at something being hit by the same light source. Of course, local color and atmosphere must be taken into account. Some reference would help.
Now here what seems confusing is the way you've rendered the planes of the character. There's times when light affects a plane more than others of the same angle, without these differences seeming to be compositional decisions. Also, the contrast isn't clear, you're going for a diffused light and the backlight (your light coming from the right) is the same intensity as your main light, so tonal differences go down and come closer together, no wonder it looks confusing to you, but you've followed your decisions pretty well, if they have any interesting effect or not is another discussion.
However, I'm thinking that maybe you were aiming for something different, in which case, go back to the beginning and make a small rough thumbnail, thinking of contrast, readability and quality of light, and when you get to what you want, redo this based on the thumb.