Homepage
 • Blog
• Blog Archive
My Comics
• Morrowind Comic
• Trivium Entertainment
Other Comics
• Hustle
Art Galleries
• Skaarj on a Stick
• Gimpy Stick
Art Tutorials
• ArtWiki
• Inking
• Figure Drawing
Other
• Skaarj.com Forums
Links
• Booster Logic
• Maglot
• ehunno
|
December 14th, 2006 |
Practice... It's been awhile.
Her body is too much to the left... And the pitcher had some trouble.
Does anyone have any good suggestions for learning shading? I've found I don't know much about it and it's rather frustrating. I'm lacking in several areas and I want to improve but I'm not sure how to go about it, other than using real life.
I suppose I need to draw more than I am right now. I seem to be slacking off somewhat. |
|
| Comments |
| Name |
Time |
| Stickman |
December 20th, 2006 |
|
You've got some goodness in these pictures. The thing that immediately stands out to me is the pitcher. Have you studied the way ellipses work in perspective, because you drew that pitcher perfectly. You also accelerated the perspective at the bottom a little by making it thinner. Intentional or not, it works. And it works well.
First, a note of perspective. You're familiar with vanishing points and the horizon line? A circle directly on the horizon line is just a flat line. As it moves further away, it compresses less and less. Your pitcher does just that. Another (optional) perspective/depth cue you acn put in your pictures is that parallel lines converge at a distance. Your pitcher is doing that, though in a more accelerated manner than you might find in nature. Which is fine and good! That simply emphasises that part of it becoming more distant and gives the picture more life.
As for the inaccuracies on the figure ("It's too much to the left"), I'm going to say that it doesn't break the contrast threshold, so it's not immediately noticable. (More on contrast thresholds here: [url] ) However, if there's anything we as a human race have seen throughout all our life, it's other people. You've seen millions of them in your lifetime so far, no doubt, so we tend to be better at picking out something wrong with a figure.
And to close my I-Just-Woke-Up ramble of random facts, I'll talk a bit about shadows.
Use real life. Get a lamp and a dark room, and maybe an egg, a ball, a box, and one or two more complicated objects, like a cell phone. (You may need a towel or something textured to keep the egg and ball from rolling away) Then practice looking at shadows and drawing shadows.
First, there are two basic types of value. You've got "local value," which is the non-luminance information of an object. If you had ambient light from all directions, you would see the object's local value. As humans, this is how we look at things unconsciously. We don't see light shining on the wrinkles of someone's orange shirt and see all kinds of shapes and colors, we see an "orange" shirt. And that orange, if you take away the hue (see it in black and white) has a specific local value.
Second, there's the luminance value. This is the change in value according to the lighting conditions. If you're drawing/painting or whatever, always do local values first, and add luminance information second. It's much easier that way, and helps you keep things straight.
When talking about luminance value, there are four or five elements you need to be aware of.
1. Highlights. When the light source is perpendicular to a surface, that surface reflects the light source more strongly and we get a highlight.
2. Normal Areas. Light hits the object and reveals the local value.
3. Crest Shadows. These are the shadows that the object casts on itself. Darker than both highlights and normal areas.
4. Cast Shadows. When an object blocks the flow of light, it will cast shadows on the ground or other objects. Cast shadows are the darkest form of shadows.
5. Reflected light. When light hits objects or the ground, it actually bounces back. If you take an egg and study it, you'll notice that the crest shadow actually gets lighter as it gets closer to the surface it's resting on because of the reflected light.
In order to figure out how light actually works, I recommend practicing. As is good for a practice, try not to spend more than five minutes on any drawing, and try to spend all of your time drawing. Study the object for a minute or two, and be sure to step back and study your drawings now and then to see how accurately you're representing the information.
And don't get discouraged if things don't work out exactly how you want them. Figure out what you did right and keep doing; figure out what you did wrong and find ways to practice that part specifically. Having problems with reflected light? Get a mirror so it's even more pronounced and try playing with that.
For a previous lecture I did on local value versus luminance, please check Ember's thread here: [url] |
| reply to this comment |
|
|
| Name |
Time |
| Tannasg |
December 20th, 2006 |
|
The way you closed up your "I-Just-Woke-Up ramble" took longer than the lecture it's self. ;)
*ahem* Anyway, I seriously doubt I could come up with anything that Stickman hasn't already. And I seriously doubt I would've come up with most of it, anyway. Honestly, the purpose of this whole comment was to state the first sentence. At least I'm honest... :-P |
| reply to this comment |
|
|
| New Comment |
|
|
|
