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The resolution is set for 8000 by 6000px, and seems to be working well. Things don’t get pixelated when I zoom in on each thumbnail which was my main concern.
Day 3 – Today I decided to do some landscape value studies. Some are more detailed than others, I tried blocking in big value changes but I’m not sure if I’m doing it correctly. After I finished each thumbnail I adjusted the contrast and saturation of the reference to expose the light and dark areas. I did fairly well in comparison I think.I’m also thinking about changing my challenge to minimum of 6 thumbnails instead.
Josseline, did you ever struggle with grouping lights and darks from a reference photo? Where did you draw the line? That corny pun was not intended 🌽
I haven’t watched many of his classes but I can tell he’s super knowledgeable. Really diggin’ his teaching style too, like you said clear and concise.
Karl Gnass has a similar teaching style, every word out of his mouth is to the point.
These are really nice! It seems super helpful that you have the value scale at the bottom of each thumbnail. Landscapes are a good idea. I am wanting to get better at grouping values together too.
These day three thumbnails are great! Very evident that you’ve applied what you’ve learned from Bill so far. Yeah it can be tricky. I’m sure you do already, but I try squint real hard to look for the overall main masses in the image. Landscape is real good for this. Eg. sky mass, forground mass, tree mass, that kind of thing. It looks like you’re already doing that. I draw the line for how I want to design the image. If a mass that’s mostly dark has some areas that are very evidently light but don’t “add” any information that’s descriptively necessary, I won’t include it as a light, but shift it into the set value range for that mass and work with the value constrast I want within it.
@Eden Thank you! It definitely is very helpful to have that scale, I try to work within those 6 value options (includes white). It forces me to plan ahead and be more decisive before I begin and also while I’m going. I need to consider how dark I want the tree line to be in relation to the sky and the foreground, etc. Landscapes are great for grouping values, depending on the image there’s usually a good separation of foreground, mid-ground and background which helps!
@JosselineJeria Thank you! I’ve been squinting to try and see the value groupings and separations like you mention and it helps! There are still some areas of the image I find myself getting hung up on and your advice is exactly what I was looking for. I need to ignore those subtle light areas that are mixed within mostly dark grouping and learn to revisit those later. I appreciate the the help, I’ll give it a shot next time!
Day 4 – I decided to spend my time on a single image today and realized I messed up a bit with the approach. Instead of finishing my grouping of lights and darks then revisiting each grouping to add additional values and adjust contrast, I got ahead of myself with those tempting little details. The large dark smears in the middle will become barn-like buildings when I bring this closer to completion.
I’m glad it helped! I need to practice value thumbnails at some point too. I find it difficult to juggle everything.
I think it’s good that you’re practicicing doing shorter and basic, and longer more developed thumbnails. I don’t think you’ve messed this up that much. I think the value of the path is a bit too close to the tree masses closer to the foreground. Adjusting those relationship could be good. oh yes those tempting details! I’m not too bad at this with thumbnails, though something I do still need to work on, but when it comes to painting, ehhhhh, I’m terrible.
I’ve had issues with it too. Just have to wait a fair bit of time. Mine from yesterday took more than 9 hours, so I reposted it thinking it didn’t come through, but came to find the original did hours later. They are getting a lot more traffic here, so the spam issue and all means they have to go through a lot of posts to clear that up. I’m going to now wait a day or more, rather than 8 or so hours.
Day 6 – I was tempted to do some figure studying today so I focused on grouping and designing the shapes of dark and light areas on the figure. I hit a few rough patches as you’ll see in the obviously reworked areas – I took my time and made sure I made conscious decisions about my groupings.
@josselinejeria Thank you for the feedback and tips! When I continue that study I’m going to give your suggestion a shot, I see what you mean! I’m also finding it difficult to juggle it all. I have so many things I need to practice so it’s not easy for me to stick to just one at a time knowing I should anyways (as you can see with my challenge results so far). At the very least I am sticking to my original goal of practicing value and form I think. Even if it is just dark and light shadow groupings right now, I’m trying to apply the concept to multiple things. How are your studies going? Are you working on anything specific or do you have any specific goals in mind?
Day 5 – I felt like I was spending most of my creative time on this challenge and not enough on my own work. So I did a value study in my own way kinda:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-4_gX3gj4pbeLHEu0Miq9O7b2jucME2n/view?usp=drivesdk
I was in an online 2D animation workshop this past weekend with the amazing Aaron Blaise and this was one of the exercises I did. I ended up coloring/shading the ball and making a simple background lol.
ALSO, I think I might just hold myself to 1-3 value studies, I know I sound lame but these take me a long time and I still want to practice figure drawing as well.
Anyways hope you enjoy!
Haha, I struggle with sticking to one thing too. Yeah I think sticking broadly to value and form is good. Ultimately, the challenge you set is for you to get what you want out of it. It doesn’t have to be super specific for you to benefit from it or to feel challenging. My brain loves novelty. Hence why I set my challenge as just “do two pages in your sketchbook a day” because I know focusing on one main thing for almost three months just isn’t realistic for my current art endurance.
I’m currently working through Gnass’ course, which I’m really enjoying. I’m meant to be getting back into the Russian course (just up to the the geometric forms) but I’ve been leaving it aside, I think because observational measurement feels so dry to me. I have to push myself so I can get to the more in depth drawing. My ultimate goal is to be a good painter. Not sure yet what specifically I want to paint, I just know that painting is a part of who I am, so I’d love to be much better at it. Part of that is becoming a much better draftsman. You may have mentioned it prior, but what about your personal art goals?
Watched your animation – that squishy drop is so satisfying, haha. Aaron Blaise is great. I’ve watched some of his YouTube videos. Yeah I think that’s a rela good goal Zach. I set mine in a way that I knew it wouldn’t take away from my own daily studies and work,
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