Yang's Sketchbook

[MasamuneDS]

hi dude! i appreciate your dedication but i believe that you are painting without knowing basic fundamentals. Have you ever thought of going a bit deeper and study how light and color behave?

there are a couple of super straight forward lectures i want to suggest:

http://www.amazon.it/Color-Light-Guide-R...0740797719 this is just a must

http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/store/p...mnup7iLSUk mind blowingly good

[yangdaniel027]

Thanks Masamune, I actually have that Color and Light but I'll freshen up on it. I'll make sure to watch that Gnomon video you suggested.

Would you say there's anything specific that I need to focus on in regards to color and light? Or just improve my overall understanding of how light and color work?

[MasamuneDS]

i'd say you need to look up for color temperature and color variation. Also check your values with the ctrl+y method: http://www.artofscholes.com/checkingvalues/

[yangdaniel027]

Thanks both of you guys for the feedback :) I just spent the past few days trying to better understand things like diffused light and bounced light. Jeremy's video had a lot of great practical information which I liked.

Yeah, I'm still struggling with color temperature quite a bit. In one of Shaddy's videos he talks about how desaturating a color and pulling it closer to gray also cools it down which was helpful but there's still a lot I gotta figure out. A lot of times shadow and dark sides can be quite saturated and so that advice isn't always applicable.

I actually do check my values, I just create a seperate black layer and put it on saturation, but I'll continue to keep it in mind.

[yangdaniel027]

Trying to focus on lighting in natural landscapes

[yangdaniel027]

Last one before I try to do my own original work

[Markus Creation]

Hey,
in your initial post you said you already drew digital one year and your pictures from back then already look really nice.
Could you give advice to someone who is just starting with drawing digital how to learn to choose the right colors and where to make them darker or brighter?

[LaleAnn]

Those studies are coming along really well! Great job. :) There's one thing I've noticed and you may want to be careful with it. Your shadows are very greyish/tend towards black. That will affect your colors greatly and make them look a little muddy. The shadows have a certain color depending on different factors. Make sure to keep it in mind and stay away from blacks in your shadow and I'm sure your paintings will look even better in no time! :)

[yangdaniel027]

Thanks Lale, I'll definitely keep that in mind.

[yangdaniel027]

Just trying to continue pumping out work

[dodeqaa]

Hey man glad to see you're continuing to work on your art!

Heres some ideas for the latest piece,






A: Its strange that the part of the river nearest the source of light reflects little of the light source but the part farthest away reflects so much light. If its meant to be, then the foreground rocks should have some dull rim lights  as the water reflects the light to the surroundings. 

B: I shifted the colours of the earth in the shade towards the blue-green colours of the sky, although the sky is dark, it is still a gentle ambient light source. this also helps to balance the warms colours in the image.

C: The little ruin on the midground seems to be of importance, so i strengthened the rim light. Also added warm rims of weaker intensity to the rock formations to lift them from the flat.



I feel you are repeating shapes, I would suggest doing some quick drawings of rocks or hills on location or from google streetview. The shapes of natural rock formations, their variation and repetition is a marvel and can be studied endlessly.








Hope it gives you some food for thought!

[yangdaniel027]

Dodeqaa, I can't tell you how appreciative I am of the advice I've gotten from you in this sketchbook :) You've made that piece 100% better.

Holidays have gotten the better me and I've been spending a lot of time with friends, family and mostly just playing games as well, so I haven't been practicing much.

It's interesting though, I started a piece and slowly worked on it over the course of about 3-4 days. In total I probably spent a good 15-20 hours on it, and I absolutely hated the end result (which is why I won't post it here). One thing I began to notice with most of my work was that I made a lot wasted brushstrokes. Having a lot of strokes doesn't automatically mean that it's more detailed; it's probably very amateurish. I realized that it was because my strokes weren't confident.

Anyways enough blabbering, here's a piece I did in about 2 hours that I'm much more satisfied with.

[BenFlores]

Nice job on the landscapes! The one in post #90 looks really good. Try to introduce some randomness in your work here and there. When it comes to brush work, planning can make all the difference. Do B&W thumbnails with correct values and work from that. It will be like working from a study when you've got information to start with. Also try to go over your brush strokes, not painting brush strokes next to another until they meet. (Take that with a grain of salt though, it's not a rule or anything)

[yangdaniel027]

Thanks Ben :), it's weird because I was actually just admiring all of your studies on DA and I even bookmarked it so I could go back.

Yeah, so I've been really trying to go back to the basics of blocking out major forms first and trying to see everything in terms of shapes. I'm too lazy to post up all my studies so here's a couple.

[yangdaniel027]

fortress

[yangdaniel027]

I've realized that my paintings are far too boring

[yangdaniel027]

Trying to focus on shapes and positive/negative space

[Artloader]

Wow, awesome sketchbook here Yangdaniel027! I love the way you're playing with Values in your work, it's making your landscapes look pretty fantastic from my perspective. The blue sky in this last piece looks amazing.

[yangdaniel027]

Thanks for the kind words ArtLoader :)

I finally feel like I had a break-through or leveled up. I was comparing my stuff to some work I admired and was just really trying to figure out what it was that setting me back. Along other things I really needed to work on my brush economy. I'm finally beginning to realize the amount of planning you need to do in a painting before you even start painting.

Anyways, so in these paintings I really tried to just capture to essence of the object (apples) in as few brushstrokes as possible. I limited myself to 50 brushstrokes and every single study has exactly 50 marks.

I want to say that it was an extremely helpful exercise, and made me more aware about how I make each mark and how calculated I needed to be. As you guys will see, the first 5 or so studies were kind of disasters as I completely failed to capture the form of an apple in 50 marks, but I think I started to get the hang of it after a while.

The last image I spent more time on just put the practice to work. Hopefully tomorrow or so, I'm going to move on to landscapes and do the same thing. Or maybe I'll do more apples in 25 brushstrokes idk.

[yangdaniel027]

still concentrating on line economy