heey Artloader!
Great stuff in your sketchbook!
I also like the traditional. I think the dog study looks quite nice, in terms of value and brushstrokes!
You could also do some simpler studies in traditional, if you find it difficult, things with simpler shapes, like fruits for example, just so you can practice more the color mixing and brushstrokes.
Keep up the good fight!
@Aks9: Well thanks for the tip with the splatters - they were great fun :).
@Peter: Thanks - yeah I think value studies are very useful - I go around in real life now trying to work out the values I see around me (when I should be concentrating on something else - like walking or something!)
@VoodooMama: Hey thanks for the kind words and the tip about using a simpler form to study colour mixing I will definitely try that when I move on to colour again.
Anyhow - keeping up the good fight - I've been 3D modelling an anthropomorphic rabbit in Blender for a book cover project I'm doing for an author friend:
The book cover is going to feature a close up of some hands so I thought I'd do a few studies of hands:
“Today, give a stranger one of your smiles. It might be the only sunshine he sees all day.” -- H. Jackson Brown Jr.
hey man, just thought I'd point out on those hands, some of the proportions like on the opposite side of the thumb, that meaty part are a little too short; proportions really sell good hands, the fingers look good though and you're hitting some good shapes on a few of em. Fists are tough! Get em down!
What I learned from these articles is that you need to think about the following when you're trying to mix paint to match a specific a specific colour:
Value
Hue
Saturation
Some people first try to match the value, then the hue and saturation. Others try to match the hue first and then the value and then the saturation.
Having said all this I reckon the secret weapon to mixing paint is ...
... patience.
There is no secret weapon - you just gotta keep working at it until you've got the colour you want.
So here's my attempt at mixing paint ...
This is the reference image:
And here's my attempt:
I'm a bit disappointed with the lack of light and shadow on this, I feel I could have done more to describe the 3D form here.
I think for the next painting I will do an underpainting to establish the light and shadow and then glaze colour over the top. I think the acrylic paint I'm using has enough transparency for this to work well.
“Today, give a stranger one of your smiles. It might be the only sunshine he sees all day.” -- H. Jackson Brown Jr.
I think a good way to learn to mix color is to grab an old school zorn painting or you know something with a pallette of red, yellow, black, and white (and blue.) Then color pick on digital, a random spot in the painting, then mix the colors with brushes digitally until you can match the color as close as you can. This way, you don't have to set up a drawing, paints, cleaning brushes, etc. and you can purely improve on mixing color :)
Then, as you get better at it, find different photos and paintings and try to match those colors, you can mix about 60% at least of visible colors with just those five above, it's a lot of fun when you get better at it too, plus it saves on supplies!
I like your last sketches. The one's showing form, they show very nice 3dmensionality.
It's great to see your studies with acrylics, it's a medium I also would like to work on.
And lol at the 3d mesh! I haventtried rigging in a long time but, I think your bones may be fine but it may be something to do with the weight painting.
You are very analytic, so cool. I like how you handled the acrylic paint. Also, i see you are all over the place, 3d, 2d structure, color mixing. I couldn't do that, I need to focus on one thing for a longer period of time to feel i have improved on it.
Somethings to think about when mixing traditional paints:
Mixing complementary colours will reduce the saturation of the mix.
You'll probably find that your paints, straight from the tube, will lean slightly warmer, or slightly cooler.
For example, Cadmium Yellow is a warm pigment, and you can think of it as having a little bit of red in it. Lemon Yellow on the other hand, is cooler, and more suited to mixing greens. This is important, when aiming for a specific colour. If you mix French Ultramarine and Cadmium yellow, both of which are warm variations of their hue, the red (or warmth) will act as a complementary to the green mixed, reducing it's saturation and resulting in a duller, muddier mix. If you use a cool blue, like Phthalo Blue, and a cool yellow such as Lemon Yellow, the mix will be much more saturated.
This is where the idea of a warm cool pallet comes in.
Another thing to think about is the quality of your paints. The difference between student quality and artist quality paints is the pigment density. Cheaper paints will have less of pigment, whereas the more expensive paints will have a much greater pigment load. With more expensive paints, you tend to use less paint when mixing, and you can achieve more saturated mixes.
Also on the price of paints, is series. You'll probably find on your tubes a series number, be it 1, 2 3 up to 5, sometimes even 7. Series number denotes how expensive the pigment is. Series 1 pigments, like Ultramarine will be much cheaper than a series 4 pigment like Cerulean blue, or Cadmium blue.
You can get away with a cheap blue, but I'd highly recommend spending a little bit more and getting a higher quality Cadmium Yellow.
Some paints are more transparent than others, and may require multiple layers on the canvas to match what's on your pallet.
Most paint drys to be a different colour than wet. Acrylics typically dry mat, and slightly lighter or darker. A black will dry to be a bit lighter, whereas blue's will often dry to be slightly darker. The same happens with oils, but much less.
If you're drawing on your surface with graphite, you can give it a quick spray with mat fixative to stop it mixing into your paint layers.
If you're having difficulty mixing the right colour before it dries on your pallet, you might have a bit more success with oils. They introduce a number of other things to consider, but leaves you with much more time to mix. Alternatively, you can get some slow drying acrylic medium, although I can't comment, having not used them.
@Fedodika: Sounds like a good exercise to do mate - thanks for the tip :).
@VoodooMama: Thanks - I'm really enjoying using fundamentals at the moment - I feel that my sketching is improving because I've been bitten by the Fundamentals Bug! Fundamentals are like a super power!
@AlexDanila: Thanks Alex, I am supposed to be working on my environments but am happy to branch off into different avenues that take my interest. I find that motivation strikes at unexpected times and I try to take advantage of this as much as I can.
@Matthew M: Wow - thanks for the super-userful info Matthew :). The way you've explained about the warm vs cool tinting of a given colour was really helpful. I've heard that a common danger with mixing paint is that you end up with mud - hopefully I can avoid that. Also that fixative spray tip will help me as on my last painting (of the robin), the charcoal I used ended up smearing all over the place! I do have a problem with paint drying too quick so I might also invest in some slow drying medium. Thanks again for the help :).
“Today, give a stranger one of your smiles. It might be the only sunshine he sees all day.” -- H. Jackson Brown Jr.
You've improved loads since the relatively awkward drawings on the first page. :)
I like the fish and robin you drew in pencil. The bird is such a perfect little orb. lol
@Steeliebob: Hey thanks for dropping by - yep I'm really enjoying fundamental constructions - I wanna get onto lizards and birds of prey next I think.
OK now here is my fifth acrylic painting and this time I was Learning How To Colour Over An Underpainting.
I tried using a grisaille (grey monochrome) underpainting. I then painted my colours over the top.
This seemed to work quite well as the paints I am using were transparent enough to let the underpainting show through.
I also had a go at painting lost edges. I love seeing them as they lend a real painterly feel to a piece of work.
I learned a few things on the way:
Underpainting really does work to provide a tonal variation underneath any subsequent application of colour.
Using a grisaille underpainting didn't affect the hue of the colour being glazed over the top. This makes colour matching a bit easier.
I probably should have planned in my lost edges earlier on i.e. at the underpainting stage instead of applying then right at the end.
Glazing changes the resulting value - if the glaze has a lighter value then the end result will be lighter in value, if the glaze has a darker value then the end result will be darker in value.. Something to bear in mind I guess.
“Today, give a stranger one of your smiles. It might be the only sunshine he sees all day.” -- H. Jackson Brown Jr.
Hello. You have so much stuff going on here. It's great! Really enjoying those studies and your acrylic work. Especially your latest - love the lighting!
I thought I could help you out a little with your 3D rabbit! I'm a Maya guy (as far back as the Alias days...oof), it's been a long time since I've touched blender, but the principles are the same. I was excited to see you doing this.
There is few things to be aware of when modelling for animation - but primarily - your topology is crucial. It is a good idea to model following the natural structure of the muscles. Think about where the muscle rotations will occur. Here is a decent example:
This will help preventing 'weird stuff' from happening when it comes to animation. It takes a bit of practice, but it's really rewarding when you get a rig working well! I would approach this differently depending on wether it is to be bipedal or quadrupedal. I assumed here it's quadrupedal.
With some tweaks to your current rig and some weighting, you might get it working much better. I'd recommend smoothing your mesh first. With regards to 'paint weights' - this might help. https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D...ur/Mesh/vg
I'm sorry for my hand drawn examples - my Wacom pen, having not seen use for over a year now, seems to vanished! If you have any questions, I'm more than happy to answer the best I can!
It's really inspiring to see so much levelling up going on! Looking forward to seeing more!
@Neopatogen: Thanks, I'm trying to get better at engaging my brain in the learning process, spotting weaknesses and finding ways to tackle them. I'd say I enjoy traditional ever so slightly more than digital at the moment I think. I'm hoping that when I get back to digital, my work will have a more painterly feel to it - we shall see :).
@EmEl: Wow dude, that is awesome feedback, thank you so much for the help. That topology link has some nice topology - is that one of yours? I was actually going for a bipedal rabbit, it's for a short story where animals have evolved to have human traits - but this was helpful anyway :).
Quote:Model following the natural structure of the muscles
Sounds good - I will bear that in mind. I also tried some weight painting but after some research I found that it wasn't easy to mirror the weight paints across from one side to the other in Bender so got a bit frustrated with it! I'm working on a bipedal dog at the moment so will try to implement some of this. Thanks again for the help EmEl!
“Today, give a stranger one of your smiles. It might be the only sunshine he sees all day.” -- H. Jackson Brown Jr.
I got involved in a great discussion with MikesQuest on Discord the other day about rotating a rectangle in perspective and promised I would have a go at solving the following problem:
Starting with the blue rectangle in the diagram below, how do we rotate it in perspective to end up with the purple rectangle?
There are 2 methods that I am aware of for doing this, the "Measuring Point" method and (for want of a better name) the "45 Degree Vanishing Point" method.
I promised to investigate the 45 degree vanishing point method as described on p48 of How To Draw by Scott Robertson and Thomas Bertling where a 45 degree vanishing point is used to find a length in perspective.
Please note that I am still a learner myself so if you see any flaws in my logic, I would appreciate you pointing it out to me :).
Step 1: Go into top view and establish the Station Point using the Left Vanishing Point (LVP) and Right Vanishing Point (RVP). See p24 of How To Draw.
Step 2: Consider the side view that is perpendicular to the side of the rectangle.
Step 3: Project this side view over the top of the perspective view so that the Side View Picture Plane runs vertically through the LVP. Then find the 45 degree Vanishing point by arcing the Station Point through 90 degrees about the LVP.
Step 4: Go back into the perspective view. The 45 degree vanishing point we found in the side view will also work in perspective view since we kept the distance from the station points to the picture planes the same. In perspective view, use the 45 degree vanishing point to find the length of the rectangle when it is laid down horizontally.
Step 5: Use the existing vanishing points to construct the rectangle we want.
Hmmm ... upon reading this through, this process looks really confusing. In all honesty, I would advise using the Measuring Point method for this. I will try to do a study of the Measuring Point method at some point in the future and post it up.
“Today, give a stranger one of your smiles. It might be the only sunshine he sees all day.” -- H. Jackson Brown Jr.
Hey Artloader, read through it I think it does work this way as well, and it's a really interesting way to approach it! Like you said though it's simpler to do it the measuring point way. I think there's too much room for error when you move the station point from it's original position to the original horizon line in that arcing motion, not so much if you're working digitally but traditionally that would be a pain I think
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