Today I will be doing value studies!
I mainly followed this video.
10 Swatches
So the first thing I set out to do was to create a value scale. I was not sure how to do that…
I first tried to use all the grey swatches in photoshop to create a gradient of sorts from black to white and I skipped every 2 colours to create a swatch of 9. I started at black but decided to go one shade lighter to match the image I found on the blog. But I realized the swatches I found on the blog sites don’t match the personal one I did vs. the video gradient so I was not sure how I would create the swatches. But the video mentioned how it doesn’t exactly need to be exact and recommended sliding the % in 10% increments. So that made more sense to me, and the swatch looks like it builds up from black to white and so instead of doing 9 recommended swatches I did 10. I guess this method felt more concrete and certain so I went for it. Though maybe I can consider in the future that not everything will have clear cut answers as tutorials have a range of ways to do things, even for a value scale.
Final Swatches
Next, I needed exercises to work on. ___’s video mentioned just looking at simple shapes first and filling out what value it was as practice. I figured the best way to go about producing a bunch of practice images was to use Blender to make some 3D shapes and move the light source around. I think that’s what the video used too? I used the program before for a digital media class and it’s open source 3D modeling so hell yea!
A problem I came across is that I am worried about how the background affects things
The first one on the black background looks lighter. The blob on the white looked darker!
Is that also part of the learning? Understanding which colour to apply to get that effects depending on BG or is it purely about perception?
Do I memorize how different values look contrasted with varying values?
I even switched the bg of my swatches to see if it would help… I’m not sure it did?
Still the shade is only about 2 apart, so if I can guess ~5, I would count that as a correct maybe x). But if I see any 20% differences, I can probably guess that maybe the value was affected by the surrounding grey values.
Later I dug up an old video by Sycra on the value game and played around with it.
Summary:
-Did some value games and studies with cube.
(The scribbly looking numbers were my guesses, and the types ones are the correct answers. Sometimes I’d switch between swatch# or percentages.)
Somehow over several games I got WORSE.
How I did the game by myself is that I picked colours out in advance. Savedthe image and went back to “play”. At that point I’d forgotten all the numbers. Not that I saw any to begin with as I picked at random.
So far I am eyeing the swatches I made today and trying to compare it to images before choosing what i think the value is.
Things I dread learning:
On a side note. Now I’m trying to learn the fundamentals more intimately. I am dreading perspective. I have never been good at 3D. Also working with cubes and spheres/cones and what not also worries me… because 3D.