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Author Topic: Art learning thread: The lesson strikes back  (Read 6599 times)

Jopax

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Re: Art learning thread: Week 1
« Reply #45 on: March 12, 2014, 05:22:06 am »

Yeah, you still have 24 hours and 40 minutes from when I'm standing.

I'll post the rest of what I did later today and possibly the first part of the next weeks' writeup, the rest will follow tommorrow, along with starting to take note of who did how much.

Edit:

Here's the 3-point one now, writeup will have to wait for tommorrow sadly.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

You have no idea how much trouble the shadow on the pit gave me :C
« Last Edit: March 12, 2014, 09:26:19 am by Jopax »
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Nirur Torir

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Re: Art learning thread: Week 1
« Reply #46 on: March 12, 2014, 06:40:36 pm »

Is it a castle? My recommendation is this, block it out first. Literally a giant cube, then start subtracting parts until it looks how you want it. Treat it like you're carving a statue.
... Only now does it occur to me that you probably meant to just start by drawing the lines for the cube, not by drawing towers. Oh well, different style practice is useful.


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Jopax

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Re: Art learning thread: Week 1
« Reply #47 on: March 13, 2014, 05:07:17 am »

That first castle looks wierd on the right side. Like it bends or twists into a different VP by that point. The second one is pretty good, a nice extreme angle that represents the size pretty well, could've further reinforced that with some tiny stuff on the ground, but that's extra polish and not neccessary at this point.

Ok, week two rolls around, we're going strong, with a suprisingly large amount of people participating (and hopefully learning something).

Now, for week two we'll be doing more perspective, but this time we're focusing on using it with wierd stuff instead of making the grids and straight lines ourselves. So for all you digital users I have this. A powerful tool to quickly create perspective grids from scratch, or from pictures (this would've made last weeks #4 a cakewalk). You can use it to save time if needed, but it's not neccessary.
First part of this will focus on elipses in perspective and how to do those, now, there are tools for this when doing it traditionally (since freehand drawing them accurately is a proper pain and requires a ton of exercise), but digitally you're stuck fiddling with the selection tools and doing it freehand. Your best friend in constructing an elipse in perspective though will be a square around it's supposed position. The elipse itself will touch the square on four points.  These four points are always the halfway points of the sides of the square. Of course these will be moved with perspective, which will give us the perspective of the elipse itself. Another important part is the minor axis of the elipse, or the line that connects the short distance. This will always be a perspective line that goes off to the VP that will define the elipse itself. This is kinda hard to explain with words alone, so expect some illustrated help tonight or tommorrow.
Second point of the week will be doing symmetry in perspective. We'll be doing this by using additional lines on the original part we're trying to replicate, and then using more of those lines to shape it like the original. Once again, nearly impossible to explain properly without pictures, so there'll be an updated for that too.
And last, but not least will be curves in perspective, which once again will heavily rely on using additional lines to better approximate how they should look. Usually your best bet is to divide the space into as small elements as possible and use the resulting grid to replicate the curve itself. Better explained illustrations, coming soon.

That's it for now, I'll post the tasks with the more detailed explanations and illustrations since  it's kinda pointles to make you to guesswork like this. I'll also try and find some more helpful videos.
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vastaghen12

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Re: Art learning thread: Week 2 : Revenge of the art!
« Reply #48 on: March 14, 2014, 05:15:00 am »

Hmm I didn't made the finished piece in time, but this is what i had by yesterday (I was just starting it out):

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I like the sidewalk
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Jopax

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Re: Art learning thread: Week 2 : Revenge of the art!
« Reply #49 on: March 14, 2014, 05:11:56 pm »

Ok, here we go, hopefully this is helpful enoguh. If not, feel free to ask for help or advice or clarification and I'll try my best to help.

So, as stated before, elipses are simply circles in perspective. And your best bet when drawing an elipse is to use a square in perspective.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Now, this is all fine and dandy for simple practice and theory and whatnot. What you need though is to figure out how to fit them into an image, for a pair of wheels or something. Fear not, there is a way to do this. And it involves perspective grids and working the minor axis to your favor. Basically, the minor axis will always be a line which goes off to one of the vanishing points. The rest of the construction will rely on on the square around the elipse which will further define the perspective and the degree (the squishness) of the elipse.
Elipse related tasks:
1.Pick a VP and fill up a page of elipses in perspective with regards to the VP (atleast five of them)

Second thing is drawing repeating forms and shapes, mainly based around cubes and diagonals because they are the simplest forms to repeat and you can carve pretty much anything from them.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
How it works then? First off, you construct your rectangle in perspective. Second, using the red lines you find the midpoint of a side you want to replicate. After that, you pull a line (the blue one) into the VP of that side to find the midpoint of the side. Afterwards you use the green line, going from one corner, trough the midpoint and into the opposite corner. There it intersects the already established perspective line and gives you a place to start constructing the copy properly.
Tasks for this one are:
2. Construct an object using a single cube, repeating it in perspective using the described method

The same is true for drawing symmetrical curves in perspective. Only this time around, instead of copying the entire object in said way, you transfer only certain points that would help you construct the curve itself. Again using extra lines and the midpoint method to get points of the curve to the other side of the symmetry line and then freehanding them together.
Rest of the tasks:
3. Construct atleast three different symmetrical curves in perspective
4. Construct an object using cubes to set up the major form, then shape it futher with curves

We'll try four this time because I have no idea what else to give you guys, so get working!
You have until next Saturday morning.
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Nirur Torir

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Re: Art learning thread: Week 2 : Revenge of the art!
« Reply #50 on: March 18, 2014, 05:34:08 pm »

Uncontested victory: The only kind that matters. (Even if I could use a few weeks dedicated to drawing circles freehand)

Spoiler: 2-1 (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: 2-2, 2-3 (click to show/hide)
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Valtam

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Re: Art learning thread: Week 2 : Revenge of the art!
« Reply #51 on: March 21, 2014, 08:33:49 pm »

Jopax, can we extend the deadline for a day or two? Suddenly, submissions are non-existant, perhaps everyone got really busy this last week. At least I did, but that doesn't matter.

It doesn't belong to this challenge, but I've been trying to use perspective to draw stuff.
Spoiler: Something (click to show/hide)

Don't leave us, Jopax.
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Jopax

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Re: Art learning thread: Week 2 : Revenge of the art!
« Reply #52 on: March 22, 2014, 01:28:20 pm »

Sure thing, I've been rather occupied for the past week and went on an exhausting field trip today so I haven't made anything worth showing.

How's Monday evening working out for you guys?

48 hours or so to go, I'll hopefully have something tommorrow, and then we'll start on values and stuff :D

Edit:

Ok, here's two of the tasks I did, one of the curves turned out half-assed and ugly, mostly because of the extreme perspective and how horrible I am at doing clean lines in PS without using the lasso tool.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Also to offer some thoughts on Nirurs stuff. One of the elipses, the rightmost one is off in perspective, like it belongs to a different vanishing point. And I should've been clearer with the curves in perspective, sorry. Refer to my piece to get an idea of what is done and how. They do look good and proper though, they're just not symmetrical in any way.
« Last Edit: March 23, 2014, 03:49:47 pm by Jopax »
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Guardian G.I.

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Re: Art learning thread: Week 2 : Revenge of the art!
« Reply #53 on: March 24, 2014, 03:49:43 am »

Posting to watch and maybe participate some day.
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Valtam

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Re: Art learning thread: Week 2 : Revenge of the art!
« Reply #54 on: March 24, 2014, 06:59:20 pm »

This must feel pretty distasteful, but being left with none but your shittiest student is probably a heartbreaker, Jopax.

Here's my attempt at second week, which narrowly looks worse than what I had at the first one.
Spoiler: Prepare yourselves (click to show/hide)
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somebody

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Re: Art learning thread: Week 2 : Revenge of the art!
« Reply #55 on: March 25, 2014, 12:56:01 am »

I meant to do more than this too but life kept getting in the way.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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Guardian G.I.

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Re: Art learning thread: Week 2 : Revenge of the art!
« Reply #56 on: March 25, 2014, 03:46:26 am »

I have a question: would using a ruler be cheating?
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Jopax

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Re: Art learning thread: Week 2 : Revenge of the art!
« Reply #57 on: March 25, 2014, 12:55:01 pm »

Not really, no. You're trying to do perspective properly, if you can do straight lines freehand, more power to you, if not, it's no biggie. Heck, I used the shift+click for most of my straight lines in the last excercise because it was a hassle to try and get those straight with the tablet and they weren't the focus of the exercise anyways.

@ Valtam, those are pretty damn good, if a bit wobbly, but that's more to do with linework than a lack of understanding how to make those shapes. I really like the buildings, a great way to show off how useful this stuff can be when constructing things like that.
And no hard feelings, as long as I have a single student who's trying (holy crap I can't believe I'm actually the teacher here :O ) it's all good, you guys are here to motivate me just as much are you here to learn yourselves.

@somebody, those are pretty ok, some of them are slightly misshapen but you have a pretty good grasp on how this stuff works.

Anyways, I'll do a writeup later this evening, hopefully the more interesting and fun values should bring people back. And as an added bonus I'll probably modify the giveaway rules, say, if half or more of you pass, then there'll be an extra gift for you guys.
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Jopax

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Re: Art learning thread: Week 3 : Valuable values
« Reply #58 on: March 30, 2014, 11:44:15 am »

And we're back, terribly sorry for the delay, most of the week was either classes or recuperating from said classes. Anyways, now that I have proper internet (well for a while atleast) I'll be able to look for useful stuff more easily! And since we're doing values which are pretty high up as far as importance goes this stuff will be extra nice to have.

First off these:
Muddy colours on values (some boobies present)
Form, Value and Light on Ctrl+Paint
Scott Robertson on rendering form with value

And that should get you off to a good start. Now for that part where I ramble my understandings for those who won't/can't watch/read the stuff in the links.

Value is a rather nifty thing, it's how we see most of the world after all. Suprisingly not trough colours, but their values. Because colours without value are nothing, while value without colours is artsy black&white. Now, this is all fine and dandy to know, but what exactly is value I hear you ask. Well, value is the lightness, or darkness, or where on the grayscale does the particular colour lie (if that makes any sense). Here, lemme show you:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Now, why is understanding and mastering values so important you ask? Mostly because of the fact that if you get these right (and don't mess up the other important stuff like perspective) you can pull off a very convincing image. Because if the values look right, and most of the other stuff is approximated the human brain, in all its wonder and glory fills in the blanks and makes you see something that's not there, just like LSD!

Painting values themselves is fairly straightforward and easy if we're being honest. What is hard is deciding which ones to paint, where, and how much. Balancing this stuff is incredibly important, and trough several different excercises (mostly studies) we'll hopefully set ourselves on a good course to get this stuff down properly.

We'll be stretching this into two weeks' worth of work (partly because I'll have less free time due to midterms rearing their ugly head) so we can cover this stuff properly. As always, any and all questions related in one way or another to values are more than welcome.

The assignments in all their terrifying glory:
1. Do atleast five master studies on value (First part of this video will teach you what those are). If you don't know where to find master painters' work, worry not! Here's a large collection of various artists, and best of all, their work is in the public domain so it's okay to get them from the bay of pirates where they have been so kindly uploaded by one awesome bloke!
2. Do three different times of day of a single thing. For example, a nice little house in the morning, midday and during the night. Try and figure out how light affects the value of the building and the scene itself, how best to illuminate the subject and make it readable.
3. Do atleast ten thumbnail sketches of enviroments. These should be small, quick and dirty, using only a handful of values (ideally three or four) to give a basic idea of a scene. You want each of them done in about 15 minutes, and to have them as clear and readable as possible. (Here's a somewhat good example of what it looks like)
4. Do a portrait, yourself, someone else, it just needs to be a person with their head taking up the majority of the painting. Then do atleast three variations on the lightning (direction, strength and number of lights varied in each piece). You can use this to help you along: http://www.zvork.fr/vls/
It doesn't have to be anatomically perfect, but do try and get the values and their relations as close as possible to how they would work in reality.


So yeah, that's it I think, might add another task or two if I find something interesting. But this should keep you (and me) busy for the next two weeks.
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Jopax

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Re: Art learning thread: Week 3 : Valuable values
« Reply #59 on: April 06, 2014, 01:04:51 pm »

Guys?

Anyone?

Heloooooo!!!!

*wind blows*

Oh well, here are my thumbnails, maybe that brings you lot back:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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