Eddy´s Sketchbook

[OtherMuzz]

Nice stuff man.

With this latest painting, you seem to have two light sources, but they aren't interacting! You have one to her right side, but her face is lit from top left.

Define a light source and stick to it. Light sources have to be as solid as perspective, otherwise the realism of the piece will break down.

Pay serious attention to your planes, and make sure to respect them properly, a flat plane will have a flat colour assuming the light isn't close enough for the inverse square law to affect it.

Also specular reflections! Speculars are horribly misunderstood by most (they are really hard to understand granted).

I'm sure you know that a specular is a reflection of a light source? Well in most cases most lights are fairly diffused, and this means speculars are really large and soft, and if it is the one large light source it makes no sense to paint a small hard specular inside a large soft one. Also because it is a reflection you can visualize where they should be if you know your light source.

try and imagine if you had a mirror, what angle would you have to hold that mirror to get the light source in the dead center of it. Now look at your image and find anywhere that angle will be, that's where the speculars are.
A good thing to keep in mind is that soft speculars can have hard edges if they go over a plane change.




I've painted my paintover assuming hard speculars, but i implore you to experiment with both.

have a look at a bouguereau piece, his work has this soft dream like feeling because he always used super soft lighting, like you would get from a cloudy day. Note the specular on the plane change below the closest eye, it is really soft but has a plane change making a hard edge.

http://uploads0.wikipaintings.org/images...t-1890.jpg