Color Studies

Last but not least last week was Color Studies. To start with after working 2 days on value studies, we had to switch gears to color. Using the same concepts of values, we had to color pick the light, medium, dark values of each area of the photograph to help us realize the shear amount of colors that a single object can have. I started with the image on the bottom and worked my way up, changing the way I not only picked the color, but also how I placed them in the image for easy access of review. The last (top most) image is a screen capture of an amazing artist names Craig Mullins. His photoshop paintings have so much depth, lighting, and variations, I had to try to break it down. It was amazing. You should try it yourself, with an artist that you like. You'll be surprised at what you can learn. I hope to post more color studies soon. 

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.

Seaside Sorceress Tower Keep

I'm taking another Environmental Design class with a new teacher. He has a different way if thinking of design that I think is beneficial. He makes me think of story, and culture, and "specificity" ( his word that's why in quotation). The other day we had to design a tower for a seaside sorceress, I had to figure out if she was good, bad, or neutral. Was the tower is it? Inviting? Or lonely? After the tower, was a bridge and then a keep. I used the form of the tower to help me design the keep. You can see my process here. Color is later this week. Maybe I'll finish it on my own.

Environmental Design

Through my studio in able to take 2 courses I would otherwise be unable to attend. One is environmental design. It's mostly photoshop shortcuts in the use of concept drawings, but it's still very helpful. I'm enjoying myself. On my first day we all used the same reference photo to learn said techniques and this is what came out of it for me. He's making us work exclusively in values and not color to help us focus on silhouette and composition. I think that's very smart. I do love how creepy it came out. I guess I'm just that kind of girl.

Fond memories

I did a quick colored sketch of a brightly redheaded girl, with blown out features. I did not, on me, have the right shades of red to show off the beautiful unnatural tones of her hair, but I did what I could. After which I scanned it in with at a handy massive office copier and realized that it had been blown out even more. So I tried to color correct it in Photoshop some (the image on the left), and thought it still didn't capture what I loved about the original piece. That being said I took a photo of it using the camera on my phone and you get the image on the right. Neither of which do the piece justice, but it's what I got.

I feel as if she is remembering a happy moment in her life, so that's why I named the post the way I did. That was not, I believe, the intention of the original photograph, but I obviously like mine better. I still feel as if subtleties of the original piece are missing. The soft tones of the watercolors contrasting with the brights of the marker in the hair aren't readily apparent in either case. But maybe I'm just in love with my own piece, and well, someone has to be. That's ok, though. As long as I don't start believing that I can't improve. As long as I continue to aspire to add new skill sets to my work. There will always be new techniques, new materials, new ideas and images to design. As long as I never loose the will to keep striving, I'll be OK. Don't you think?
Either way hope you enjoy.
PS If you want to see the original photograph click here. 

Now in Technicolor

So I promised a while ago that I would color her and post her up. Well I didn't then, but I'm doing it now. Took me a while to remember how to color in Photoshop (especially since we have a newer version than before), but I think I did ok. Hadn't really given any thought on the overall color scheme, but I feel she worked out well. The umbrella is still off, which upsets me a bit more now, but I am happy with the hands and feet. And I really feel like my coloring really gives her more dimension than my line work alone did. I've been told I need to work on that, can't rely solely on color for depth and dimension, but I gotta start somewhere right? I'll scan a couple more preliminary sketches of the skulls soon so that you can see what a couple of hours of Google Imaging various mammalian skulls can do to my concept of 3 Dimensionality as it relates to skulls.

Hope you like this and all that is to come.

"Concept art"

This is for my project in Maya. Basically it means I got to draw in Sketchbook Pro a couple of cute little trees and color them in Photoshop (cause my Painter "demo" expired). After cursing Photoshop for an hour I remembered everything I needed to do and I like the way it ended up. Hope you do too!