John's Thread (Used to be super active! Still the longest thread name ever in CD)

[John]

chubbycat - What you said got me to thinking. That maybe what I was doing was forcing the issue on putting a lot of things in one basket, which in turn, the whole thing might lose its sense of focus.. Good thoughts, very well appreciated.

Ambiguity - Oh the selective color layer tip is awesome! I'm going to play around with it. Thanks for this!

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Portrait exercise:



Changed a bunch on my workflow:
1. "Premixed" my colors so that I won't have overblown saturation like my last attempt. Plus it helped a bit with the accents.
2. Worked in halftones then built from that to the lightest light and darkest dark. Kind of in the middle Dorien Iten's (separate the sketch values between lightest and darkest first) and Sargent's (work from halftones) ideologies regarding their process in values. By mapping the lightest and darkest in halftones, work on the middle values while slowly bumping up/down the values at the extremities. 
3. Always start with hard brushes and paint broadly. Then zoom in to focal points still with the hard brush. Finish with a soft brush and blend edges.

Have to do more of this exercise. I think how I do things need more work and re-adjusting..