04-21-2017, 08:25 AM
@Seki. Great work in pushing through! Well done. I like the new leaves you did. Man, I love the smell of, someone taking on and applying feedback like a boss, in the morning. Congrats on getting through to the end! Since you have "completed" the course, as parting feedback for you, I hope you keep working on your value subtlety and on thinking about how to add even more layers of overlap and objects that traverse through depth to give more of a fuller 3d feel to your scenes. If you do that and apply reference/research and keep working on your lighting knowledge, you will be producing more kickass work in the near future!!
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@Klexvier . I think the way you honestly and meticulously self analayze (in a positive way) is going to take you far. You are giving yourself crits I would give you, so I won't even bother to mention anything you already noted down. So keep it up!
I like the night scene of that market the best as it is but the top daylight scene is also a strong contender.
Any of these scenes would benefit from more points of saturated strong colours and shapes in stalls/products/fabrics etc to contrast the more neutral feel of the atmosphere, rto give it a more dynamic colour/contrast range, and to suggest even more that it is a marketplace. The dinotopia piece at the bottom and the first photo in your reference, is a good example.
If you go with the day scene you could probably amp up the feel of direct sunlight hitting distinct areas. Then you can use some more obvious cast shadows to contrast against which could make some interesting shapes within the composition and to help with focal point contrast. Often when a comp is arranged predominantly with horizontal and vertical lines, I will use lighting angle and cast shadows with a purpose to bring in some dynamic diagonals into play.
![[Image: town_by_madspartan013-d5z6l4n.jpg]](http://pre01.deviantart.net/3b8c/th/pre/i/2013/087/9/d/town_by_madspartan013-d5z6l4n.jpg)
![[Image: d93f0029162411124edb2434ddb3026c.jpg]](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/d9/3f/00/d93f0029162411124edb2434ddb3026c.jpg)
If it were me, I might even play with bringing the market more out into the street esp. in the foreground. There is opportunity to add lots of interesting characters and objects to fill out the sense of what the place is. Most of these refs are Theo Prins. simple shapes but highly suggestive of activity and place! His colours are amazingly vibrant as well. My main inspiration for a long time.
![[Image: 6csY1Px.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/6csY1Px.jpg)
So, about colour: The color layer mode I use only when I simply want to apply a quick overall base colour wash to a layer WITHOUT worrying about changing the value of it. I will often include colour variation into this base layer for a bit more vibrancy than if you just painted in one colour, but things will generally have to be painted over in normal colour modes at some point.
So yes, you have to be very aware of how your colour choice is affecting the value of your initial thumbnail as you paint in normal mode. My suggestion is to always check values of your painting as you get into colour, and always have your original value sketch in a flat layer that you can turn on and off to make sure you aren't diverging in a negative way from the idea.
Colour is something that will benefit from a combination of a fair amount of more complicated theory study as well as intuitively learning from observation. I recommend MOAR still life studies and MOAR theory but perhaps restricted to understanding specific effects if too much theory gets you confused. Especially for colour and light, studying from life is probably the best practical painting action to take. Photos are less ideal because they generally cannot see the way our eyes do, introduce all sorts of "distortions" in colour/value/perspective and will miss a lot of nuance. You will essentially learn to paint like a camera if photo studies is the only way you study colour.
More importantly when working from photo ref, it becomes about the gradual increase of your knowledge from both theory AND live analysis and observation over time which will allow you to make the right decisions in amplifying or decreasing the right aspects of photo reference to get the effect you want. Applying theory can come from photography as well not only from artistic colour theory. For example understanding the white balance setting in your camera and what it does will allow you to understand why photos might have strong divergent colour casts to them. This will allow you to understand how to shift things from the reference to get things to look as they might have done on the day. You'll star to understand how to take better photos too! :)
Also go over master paintings that you like the colour palettes of and using the colour picker to note down value/hue shifts as they painted different things varying in shadow/light and see what you can learn. You don't even have to paint anything, just analyse.
This article is they kind of thing I am talking about. Careful analysis alone will give you all sorts of lightbulb moments.
http://surfacefragments.blogspot.co.nz/2...ld-in.html
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@Book. Heya! Nah, this is just the ongoing EDR based on the original material. I would suggest you get stuck in again, and maybe start from the beginning again. I only pop in feedback when I have some time, so keep working ahead! :)
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@Klexvier . I think the way you honestly and meticulously self analayze (in a positive way) is going to take you far. You are giving yourself crits I would give you, so I won't even bother to mention anything you already noted down. So keep it up!
I like the night scene of that market the best as it is but the top daylight scene is also a strong contender.
Any of these scenes would benefit from more points of saturated strong colours and shapes in stalls/products/fabrics etc to contrast the more neutral feel of the atmosphere, rto give it a more dynamic colour/contrast range, and to suggest even more that it is a marketplace. The dinotopia piece at the bottom and the first photo in your reference, is a good example.
If you go with the day scene you could probably amp up the feel of direct sunlight hitting distinct areas. Then you can use some more obvious cast shadows to contrast against which could make some interesting shapes within the composition and to help with focal point contrast. Often when a comp is arranged predominantly with horizontal and vertical lines, I will use lighting angle and cast shadows with a purpose to bring in some dynamic diagonals into play.
If it were me, I might even play with bringing the market more out into the street esp. in the foreground. There is opportunity to add lots of interesting characters and objects to fill out the sense of what the place is. Most of these refs are Theo Prins. simple shapes but highly suggestive of activity and place! His colours are amazingly vibrant as well. My main inspiration for a long time.
So, about colour: The color layer mode I use only when I simply want to apply a quick overall base colour wash to a layer WITHOUT worrying about changing the value of it. I will often include colour variation into this base layer for a bit more vibrancy than if you just painted in one colour, but things will generally have to be painted over in normal colour modes at some point.
So yes, you have to be very aware of how your colour choice is affecting the value of your initial thumbnail as you paint in normal mode. My suggestion is to always check values of your painting as you get into colour, and always have your original value sketch in a flat layer that you can turn on and off to make sure you aren't diverging in a negative way from the idea.
Colour is something that will benefit from a combination of a fair amount of more complicated theory study as well as intuitively learning from observation. I recommend MOAR still life studies and MOAR theory but perhaps restricted to understanding specific effects if too much theory gets you confused. Especially for colour and light, studying from life is probably the best practical painting action to take. Photos are less ideal because they generally cannot see the way our eyes do, introduce all sorts of "distortions" in colour/value/perspective and will miss a lot of nuance. You will essentially learn to paint like a camera if photo studies is the only way you study colour.
More importantly when working from photo ref, it becomes about the gradual increase of your knowledge from both theory AND live analysis and observation over time which will allow you to make the right decisions in amplifying or decreasing the right aspects of photo reference to get the effect you want. Applying theory can come from photography as well not only from artistic colour theory. For example understanding the white balance setting in your camera and what it does will allow you to understand why photos might have strong divergent colour casts to them. This will allow you to understand how to shift things from the reference to get things to look as they might have done on the day. You'll star to understand how to take better photos too! :)
Also go over master paintings that you like the colour palettes of and using the colour picker to note down value/hue shifts as they painted different things varying in shadow/light and see what you can learn. You don't even have to paint anything, just analyse.
This article is they kind of thing I am talking about. Careful analysis alone will give you all sorts of lightbulb moments.
http://surfacefragments.blogspot.co.nz/2...ld-in.html
------------------------------
@Book. Heya! Nah, this is just the ongoing EDR based on the original material. I would suggest you get stuck in again, and maybe start from the beginning again. I only pop in feedback when I have some time, so keep working ahead! :)