01-28-2025, 05:30 AM
Sure, these are good questions
1. I think you just need more of a shadow/light mass. And more of a warm/cool relationship built between them. The light gradient on the back wall I think would logically reach further, and be more even and smooth, so that helps that area. The corner in shadow, I paint over all parts in shadow with a orangeish tone to bring them all together and make all shadows related. The bluish bits on the wall make me thing a cool window light makes sense, and that usually makes the shadows look relatively warm. So I think it's just has a little more clarity as to what the light hits, what it doesn't hit, and gets it away from the yellow-grey color with dark shading.
2. Yeah I agree, the touches of color burn in a way. They add energy or life. But what I mean is that they should appear in somewhat consistent places and situations. Like in real life, you can often see in natural light, the edge between a cast shadow and the lit part has a color, or that part of a highlight on an object has a color. maybe a nice blue, if the sky is blue, but it's going to always appear in its respective place, like maybe it's only in the transition on the tops of shadows, or the color gradates from left to right. Or if the blue were for instance like an impressionist broken color effect on the mass of the wall, you might want to scatter it very evenly throughout, but make sure the value is the same as its surroundings.
That's not to say that your painting should be exactly like life. you can paint whatever you want, but your painting should follow it's own rules, like life does. So for example I put little touches of blue on the bottom of some cast shadows, and some purple on reflections seem to look good. If I kept going I might keep that consistent throughout the piece and that would be my soft rules for where pops of blue go.
3. Yeah, just thinking about how, since color is relative, we know the local colors based just on read, and context clues. Not really grouping on proximity, but on similarity across the painting. So if the wall and tusk are basically the same local color, you could make them the same, even though they are not touching, because they have the same lighting. In this case the reason I suggested this is I messed around with the book, and when I felt like I made the white pages in shadow read well, I picked that color and applied it to the tusk in shadow. As a baseline I just think this works really well, and it does build consistency and harmony. Though of course you may later need to add more shading or factor in bounce light, or differences in their material, but those are actually pretty nuanced considerations.
4. I think what you're doing is really good already. I can really just recommend doing a healthy combo of work from your imagination, like you are: so experimenting with color, trying to form things on the canvas. And also working closely with reference, trying to be accurate. This way you can learn laws of how things look, as well as build intuition. For me that's been doing still life, whether digital or traditional, I try to every so often paint from actual reality. Anything that just has an interesting material, or lighting, or whatever, I just think it helps me. Mostly the type of study that revolves around asking "what is this color compared to this color? "is this value lighter or darker?" So pretty detached from the subject matter actually.
Everyone is kind of different though. Doing master studies make a lot of sense for color relationships, as well as drawing and a lot of other things.
1. I think you just need more of a shadow/light mass. And more of a warm/cool relationship built between them. The light gradient on the back wall I think would logically reach further, and be more even and smooth, so that helps that area. The corner in shadow, I paint over all parts in shadow with a orangeish tone to bring them all together and make all shadows related. The bluish bits on the wall make me thing a cool window light makes sense, and that usually makes the shadows look relatively warm. So I think it's just has a little more clarity as to what the light hits, what it doesn't hit, and gets it away from the yellow-grey color with dark shading.
2. Yeah I agree, the touches of color burn in a way. They add energy or life. But what I mean is that they should appear in somewhat consistent places and situations. Like in real life, you can often see in natural light, the edge between a cast shadow and the lit part has a color, or that part of a highlight on an object has a color. maybe a nice blue, if the sky is blue, but it's going to always appear in its respective place, like maybe it's only in the transition on the tops of shadows, or the color gradates from left to right. Or if the blue were for instance like an impressionist broken color effect on the mass of the wall, you might want to scatter it very evenly throughout, but make sure the value is the same as its surroundings.
That's not to say that your painting should be exactly like life. you can paint whatever you want, but your painting should follow it's own rules, like life does. So for example I put little touches of blue on the bottom of some cast shadows, and some purple on reflections seem to look good. If I kept going I might keep that consistent throughout the piece and that would be my soft rules for where pops of blue go.
3. Yeah, just thinking about how, since color is relative, we know the local colors based just on read, and context clues. Not really grouping on proximity, but on similarity across the painting. So if the wall and tusk are basically the same local color, you could make them the same, even though they are not touching, because they have the same lighting. In this case the reason I suggested this is I messed around with the book, and when I felt like I made the white pages in shadow read well, I picked that color and applied it to the tusk in shadow. As a baseline I just think this works really well, and it does build consistency and harmony. Though of course you may later need to add more shading or factor in bounce light, or differences in their material, but those are actually pretty nuanced considerations.
4. I think what you're doing is really good already. I can really just recommend doing a healthy combo of work from your imagination, like you are: so experimenting with color, trying to form things on the canvas. And also working closely with reference, trying to be accurate. This way you can learn laws of how things look, as well as build intuition. For me that's been doing still life, whether digital or traditional, I try to every so often paint from actual reality. Anything that just has an interesting material, or lighting, or whatever, I just think it helps me. Mostly the type of study that revolves around asking "what is this color compared to this color? "is this value lighter or darker?" So pretty detached from the subject matter actually.
Everyone is kind of different though. Doing master studies make a lot of sense for color relationships, as well as drawing and a lot of other things.