Value Studies

In the Environment class from last week, I had to break images down into value studies. Using only 3 values I had to describe an exterior scene, showing depth and shape to tell the entire landscape with only those limitations. I had to do various versions, as you can tell by the image below. Some of the first ones weren't very successful, but after looking at scenes from Limbo I had a better idea of what needed to be done. (Side note, I need to purchase and play that game, it looks gorgeous!). Can you tell which ones came after looking at Limbo?

 The following day it was interiors, and we did the same thing with value studies, but he allowed us to work with 6 values this time around. I had even more trouble with those as I was lost as to the type, style, time of day, and lived-in-ness of each interior and that overwhelmed me. So I picked a photograph of an interior, desaturated it and worked off of it to create my own value study and add some of my own elements to it. On the bottom though you can see an image I created from my head that has it's merits. It's not completely successful, but isn't a bad start.

Overall I feel that what I really learned about all of this for me personally was that in the beginning I was both too wild and too timid with my values in creating the basic shapes. Eventually the whole image becomes one "muddy" medium toned bland image that has no interest (no matter how well designed and/or imagined the picture is), and only after I take step back can I see that I'm wasting all my schooling and I need to push it more does it come together and show it's true potential. Still have a lot of work to do, but it's nice to get back into the swing of things.