JyonnyNovice - from Novice to Master!

[JyonnyNovice]

Patrick Thanks for the reply, you've helped me to get it a bit with the halfway to black. It's not a cold hard scientific thing for all situations but a good starting point - that's fine. How Gurney explains his stuff though seems to be more than just a perceived shift - or well, he talks about both - I scanned the page for clarity, I think you were referring to the checkerboard illusion, where we see the black in light and the white in shadow as brighter or darker depending what our brain 'tells us' is darker or lighter. But in reality they are exactly the same value (& colour too). I put the swatches above the image to prove it to myself.



That part is mind blowing, but I accept it, it's all good, and shows how darker or lighter backgrounds can make an image seem lighter or darker, and how what we expect something to be affects how we perceive it.

What was confusing me though, is the photo in the bottom left - black shirt in light, white newspaper in shadow, he proves it with the swatches next to it that the white in shadow is a lower value than the black in light, it seems like it must be a consistent rule if the same light source is affecting both objects. I'm sure it depends on how much light is reflected into the shadow side of the white object - which is perhaps why my blocks didn't fit that rule, since the ground is very light.

I dunno, maybe I stress over these small details too much, but I want to really understand this. I can study photo's and movie stills and photo's of paintings - but no idea how realistic or how much image processing has been done on them. I want to really understand how light and value works in reality before I start to use it for artistic effect.

Thanks again for all your help, if you can clarify those things, please tell me!




Few of my own images so this post isn't all text. Some warm ups from last few days. The cubes are drawn looking at a 3D cube reference, trying to replicate the correct angles from observation (I stress the word 'trying'!). And some fugly heads - with these I wasn't concerned with how it looked as a face, just trying to make a head that's solid with the features balanced, I feel if I can master that my heads will start to look much better.