Lesson Plan
I want to test to see if this helps my scheduling. Every morning by 11AM PST, I will post a lesson plan, and I will update this page as I work on the assigned tasks. Today I posted a bit late because I came up with this idea later, and I was also writing up different blog posts for the morning.
Form studies (Due Today)
I started off watching “How to Paint with a Lightsource (Light and Form) by Istebrak as I was curious about how to do form studies and blocking as mentioned in the first lesson I tuned into. It was a good choice because later I found a playlist on her channel which was titled “Just Getting Started? Watch these!”, and the second video was the one I watched followed by “Why your Drawings Suck”.
I also learned the desaturating colours do not provide a proper greyscale version of it. So my previous technique I thought up of in a previous post about value studies and using photos was not a good idea! Lesson learned. I will have to find another method of being able to convert colours I see in life into its value scale…
I tried using a brush to paint in different values after building the initial shape with the lasso tool, but I gave up and just used the lasso tool to make the shapes because everything looked so smudged x). I don’t know if it is a brush issue, or its a painting technique issue…
As I was working on forum studies, I was wondering how I would know if I was doing things correctly… I found a form study critique by Istebrak and a form study process by her as well.
Hunting around the Istebrak reddit as well had some helpful tips. People post their studies for critique but not everyone gets critiqued. There are a few posts I found that were quite useful answered by community members.
Questions I had:
How do I know if I’m using the right values?
–A topic by Katsbatsandrats was answers by NumberWangMan which touches on this question. I will paste the reply here in case the comment is ever deleted!
Hi Katsbatsandrats, I tried to do a paintover:
View post on imgur.com
Before I started, I decided to make all the objects have the same local color/value, instead of keeping the leftmost one as lighter, as it makes it easier to check everything for consistency.
Ok, so here are the main issues that I could see:
-Istebrak reddit topic
I think the shadow value was a little too close to the light values, based on the environment. I made the shadows a lot darker. I have trouble with this sometimes too, so I’m not sure if I got it quite right.
I think the cast shadows weren’t dark enough — they should be a bit darker than form shadows, because they don’t generally get bounce light. Although, in a more complex light environment they might be lighter. But they probably shouldn’t be so much lighter as you rendered them — they’re generally pretty close in most situations.
You were missing some cast shadows on the lower parts of the elbow-shaped objects. Also the long cast shadow down the side of the lumpy one.
By the way, this page really helped me understand how to choose half-tones. I’d recommend doing the exercise to guess the light intensity: http://www.dorian-iten.com/shading-mistakes/
It was hard for me to tell exactly which way some of the surfaces were turned — they were almost at the angle of being in shadow, it seemed, so it was really hard to decide what value to choose. Just like that “shading mistakes” page explains, around 80-90% from the light source, the values change drastically depending on the angle.
I hope that’s helpful! I saw that your post has gone 3 days without any critique. Better late than never though!
How do I know my shapes are done “well”?
This topic that I read made me realize that I really need to sharpen up my perspective alongside these studies!
Practise perspective first. Once you understand how perspective works, you’ll be able to construct volumes with intent rather than random shapes. Then, lighting should come easily. I don’t mean one point, two point etc. I mean being able to rotate a cube in any direction you want (while keeping it looking like a cube) and more complex shapes from there. It’s difficult but very much achievable and really important.
c_m-grenouille
Also, how do I cast the shadows according to shapes
–
Value exercises (Due Today)
-Did not do!
Explore Perspective tutorials (Due Today)
Just browsing to find some good tutorials so I can look into it more in the coming days.
Study this week:
Hand
Head blocking
Figuring out Portrait Studio
Reviewing last Critique Hour (Due Tuesday before the class begins – 5pm)