[Archived Class 1] Week Four - Principles of Design

[Form]

Week Four Focus: Principles of Design

Recapping Week Three:

Our third week went fantastically. Participation was very high - thank you to all the new members for jumping in so eagerly!! Really good to see. I am overjoyed to see so many people carrying the knowledge of each week over to the next. Keep up the great work. Go for that pro mark! A cookie for the first one!! ;)

Week Four:

Theories of Design

There are two lists commonly taught in art schools, but often skimmed over or not given due diligence. One list is the ‘Elements of Design’, and the other Principles of Design’.

Elements of Design:
Line – Here we are talking about the mark made by a brush (be it digital or analogue). Lines vary in length, pressure, thickness of the brush and the ‘treatment’ or the subtlety of its usage. Here we can also talk about edges, or the lines made when two shapes meet.
Shape – Here we are referring to geometric shapes within a painting that are self contained. A positive shape within a painting automatically creates a negative space counterpoint to it.
Direction – Be it vertical, diagonal, horizontal, direction gives different feelings of action or momentum to the piece.
Size – literally the relative size of elements in a painting.
Texture – The textural properties of a painted element. This describes surface quality, ie hard, rough, smooth, wet.
Colour – We have discussed this in week 3
Value – The lightness or darkness of an object – also called tone, and also previously discussed in colour.


Principles of Design:

The other list is the one we will be expanding on and discussing this week. The principles of design are a little more abstract and merit further investigation, however they are a large part of the mysterious and ambiguous term we call ‘composition’. Composition is often confused with directional lines – and people can wrongly associate composition with visual edges that direct the eye. In fact, when we talk about composition, we are referring to how ALL elements of the picture are combined – that unique combination is your composition. This includes overlap, perspective, colour, all of these elements, and where they are placed on the canvas and what relationships that creates.
Although lists of the principles of design vary, I believe these to be the most central and important:

• Proportion
• Balance
• Rhythm
• Emphasis
• Unity

Proportion: Here we are talking about the proportional relationships between objects. We can also call this scale – although proportion is a helpful term in indicating the two ways it is approached. The first is as a way to achieve a believable illusion – in other words, we are trying to achieve correct proportion. Humans should look in scale within their own anatomy and their surrounds, people are shorter than trees, and so on. The other way, more often called scale, is skewing the proportions of objects to each other for dramatic or narrative effect. For instance, a giant ant attacking a city. When thinking about proportion, also think about the effect that object sizes have on the viewer relative to their position – ie a massive building that dwarfs the viewer looking up at it.

Balance: Here we are taking a concept that pertains most specifically to 3 dimensional objects, and applying that to our 2d methodology. Balance in 3d is easy to conceptualise – if an object loses balance, it tips over. In the same way, our eyes can ‘tip over’ if the composition of our painting is not balanced. There are two types of balanced compositions; symmetrical and assymetrical. Symmetrical compositions are sometimes known as ‘formal’ compositions, and are, as they sound, symmetrical around one or more axis. Approximate symmetry applies the same symmetry, but with objects that are slightly different but still have the same overall visual weight. Assymmetrical symmetry is more vagure but also more useful to us in creating dynamic compositions. Here we attempt to arrange two (or more) distinctly different objects in space in such a way that they balance the viewer’s eye out as a whole. We can think of this as in physics.
Imagine a fulcrum (pivot point) with a long plank on it that represents your canvas. On this canvas, you have to place two blocks. One is large, and one is small. If you placed each block at each end of the plank, it would tip to the side with the heavier block. However if you place the small block at the end of the plank on its side, and on the other side you place the large block close to the pivot point, the plank will balance. The same applies in composing your painting!

Rhythm: We can liken this principle of design directly to rhythm in music, where we are talking about a regular, timed beat. We are speaking of timed intervals and patterns within the overall structure that set a pace, mood, or tempo. To achieve this visually, we replace musical notes with shapes of colour, lines, light and so on. Linear balance can be seen in masterful gesture drawings, where the artist varies the weight of their stroke to indicate the pushing and pulling of the forms of the body. Repetition and alternation refer to patterns created in the work – for instance repeating a line of trees into the background can create repetition and a beat, or alternating the colour of armour plates on a chestpiece from silver to gold to silver to gold could again create a rhythm. Creating a good rhythm in your piece makes it read smoothly, just like in a song, and when the beat drops or a note goes missing that breaks our illusion.

Emphasis: This is what we have been talking about all along when we speak about focal points. Emphasis indicates our ability to break the rhythm or pattern where appropriate and draw attention to the essential message or focus of our painting. You can create emphasis through repetition, contrast, colour, texture, pattern, shape, size, scale, position and detail. We use emphasis as artists to call attention to something we wish the viewer to focus on, or merely to ensure enough variation in the composition that the viewer remains interested.

Finally, Unity describes the cohesion of all of the above principles and elements, and the degree to which we feel they are a successful whole. When we achieve unity, we achieve a strong illusion and nothing feels like it does not belong in the painting (even if it is contrasting highly, it should feel like the focus, not the ugly step brother). Artists strive to achieve unity through consistency of elements – things like not breaking from an established cool/warm scheme, or keeping all of the elements consistent to a time period, or designing a creature that functions realistically in its environment including all elements of anatomy, coloration, scale and so on. Consistency and cohesion achieve unity.

--------------------------

Study Task 1:
Find one painting, classical or contemporary, that uses one of the design PRINCIPLES to great effect, and discuss this.

Study Task 2:
Take your production piece from week 3 and using the same design principle from study task one, improve your painting with that design principle. For instance you may notice that you have no repetition, so you can add in some repeated elements to establish a rhythm.

-------------------------

Production Piece:
This week I want to see ALL OF WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED coming to fruition. This week I will be giving you a MARK OUT OF 10 for the UNITY of your piece. I will be including consideration of all we have learned, right from perspective, atmosphere, colour through to the principles of design and will be judging how well you can combine all of these elements. Consider balance, rhythm, proportion, emphasis. You will be judged on the unity of all of these elements.
The topic is to do a painting of a castle.
It must be:

• Full Colour
• Set on EARTH, during DAYTIME (important for week 5)
• Show the full castle at a reasonable distance – not just a spot on the horizon. Enough to see perspective and design.

As usual there will also be a discussion mark. This is a BIG week’s work – next week we will be backing off a step and having a half time easy week - so work your butts off for this one!

Deadline:
THURSDAY (anywhere in the world).


Good luck!!

[robmorfin]

Cool, gives me a chance to redeem myself by fixing week's 3 piece.

[Earendil]

Awesome! *Kapwinnng*

[Gundersen]

Yatta! Like the japanese would say, or like me a European GREAT. Look forward to start on this tomorow! Kendo almost killed me today, so need to relax a bit :) hehe

[Agustin Poratti]

great.

DAYTIME meaning midday, or it can be dawn?

[robmorfin]

great.

DAYTIME meaning midday, or it can be dawn?


From Wikipedia:

Daytime (astronomy), the time between sunrise and sunset, on Earth or elsewhere.

[Gundersen]

robmorfin: I dont think you need to find one picture for each principle. Decide on one picture and talk about that as much as you can when it comes to the design principles. Since you started on proportion, why dont you find a crazy example instead? like what form talked about in first post, more about a giant Ant attacking a city, or a Huge lizard being ridden by a man ... How to make proportion work when they are not meant to work ... if that makes sense .. hehehehe

[chaosrocks]

hi icon..i seee u lurking
/me waves

[chaosrocks]

The Swing by Fragonard
239562
The contrast of figure and forest and the vast recession of aerial perspective gives you both an intimate interiorspace and the pastoral charm that this piece exudes. The balance here is all in the diagonals and the proportions made by the triangular opposing spaces. The darks balance from upper right and lower left, the light beam dividing the page from upper left to lower right the slight off center placement of the main pink figure is neatly balanced by placing it lower in the page so the upper right is larger and providin a counterbalance while the motion of the figure is described by the tension in rope and the pointing figure. With a lovely added accent of the little fliying shoe leading your eye out of the corner.

In a very literal sense the pendulum of the swing is a rythmn. But in a more visual sense the concetric diagonals echo one another through the space, there is an implied spiral starting in the lower right and leading you step by step to that little shoe (scadelous).

In this painting the focal point is neatly emphsised using color complements. In this leafy green world a girl and a red dress (well pink) is going to stand out micely. And just to be sure there are many lines pointing to herthe ropes the guy the sunbeam, the putto is looking at her…etc.

The unity well . it just is! It all hangs to gether… the green and pastel pallete the diagonal composition and the handling of the leafy detail. All pull together to serve the same visual picnic.

[chaosrocks]

there is a castle in france that haunts my dreams...may we use actuall ref?

crx

[robmorfin]

robmorfin: I dont think you need to find one picture for each principle. Decide on one picture and talk about that as much as you can when it comes to the design principles. Since you started on proportion, why dont you find a crazy example instead? like what form talked about in first post, more about a giant Ant attacking a city, or a Huge lizard being ridden by a man ... How to make proportion work when they are not meant to work ... if that makes sense .. hehehehe

I agree, deleted previous posts

[Gundersen]

Study task 1:

http://images.gfxartist.com/images/ArtworkItem/full/157211.jpgImage Link (http://robfc.gfxartist.com/artworks/157211) Image taken from GFXartist.com

Since we are going to have about castles this week I choose this image for inspiration as well as talking about the great use of design principles. Your last point on the list of principles is unity. One of the reasons I choosed this picture was because I feel like there is a great unity in it. It does not have one strong principle it uses, but has an overall strong use of all of them. To start of ill do this point by point because I feel I learn more if I can see all principles and not only one:

Proportion: Even if the castle is set it in the distance it feels like its believable in size, even if the man in the foreground is larger due to him being closer. You can clearly see that it is massive due to the effects of atmospheric perspective and that it get covered by clouds on the top. The use of elements such as trees, lights, mountain makes the proportions of this image seem very correctly for my eyes.

Balance: The castle in itself is massive object and could make this image be overweighted on one side. Instead of having a tiny man on a horse closer to the castle, he uses this rider and the cliff + tree above him to get the “pivot” stay in the middle.

Rhythm: There is repeating lines of the arches that leads you into the picture, and I can totally see how it creates “music” in the background of the main focal point. The light and shadow on the bridge also has a rhythm to it and it makes it look beautiful and calm.

Emphasis: This might be the most important part about this picture. Even if we have a huge castle in the background the focal point is being placed on the lonely rider in the foreground. The way that the light shines through the bridge and illuminates the rider and his surroundings. He is also very detailed (also the elements around him) compared to the castle. And it brings him forward in the picture. The values are very strong and clear around him. But as I mentioned I think the light that shines behind him is the most important part to make him the focal point of the image. My eyes get drawn straight towards him when I look at the picture, and the rest of the image turns into a great background.

Unity: So I feel that this image has a greate unity to it, it takes all the principles and blends them togheter in a very great way, and its a wonderful picture to look at because of that

[Gundersen]

there is a castle in france that haunts my dreams...may we use actuall ref?

crx

In all digital art its good to use reference, but to paint a reference completly is not very contemporary digital art i think. There is a large debate about this, but i think its good to look at reference for details, to get inspiration and similar, but paint down your own ideas instead.

[chaosrocks]

heehe who ever said I did anythign contemporary? It's bizarre that Im using a computer to paint at all.
rather unlikely really. more like oils..usually. I actually asked about traditional methods when I started this.. The Maestro doesn't seem to have a problem with it. we'll see
crx

[Form]

traditional may be used. ref may be used for inspiration, but the design of the castle must not be taken from the ref (use for mood/texture/materials ref).

good study tasks so far. chaos - i think the rhythm of the triangles is definately a strong point here, and the motion is masterfully achieved with the 'beats' of lines slanting bottom right to top left, in line with that shoe-throwing motion. This piece has a very metronomic feel to it. everything is mirrored - the patch of sky with the warm trunk, the reclining man with the chunk of foliage, its like all the elements are dancing around the main 'player' in a circle, and she is breaking out of that with dramatic action. Its quite rare to see a moving object in classical pieces, but every line in this piece serves to convey that physical sensation. great!

gunderson - definately a good example of rhythm working into the composition. As for the proportion, how is it that we come to an understanding of the scale of the castle? what actual elements are depicted as visual cues/clues for us?
Also - i feel the painting is a bit heavy on the right, i feel kind of stuck there. Thats a very intuitive feeling though - do you agree or do you feel differently?

[Gundersen]

As for the proportion, how is it that we come to an understanding of the scale of the castle? what actual elements are depicted as visual cues/clues for us?

For me the main elements that creates this feeling of a large castle is the smaller buildings around the base level of the castle, that goes from the base all the way down to the river. The tower in itself is much larger then these elements. The proportion of the castle also comes forth in atmospheric perspective I think. Since in front where the bridge is large its not as much affected as the tower in the background, meaning that the tower is larger then the bridge even if its further away.

Also - i feel the painting is a bit heavy on the right, i feel kind of stuck there. Thats a very intuitive feeling though - do you agree or do you feel differently?

I slightly agree with you on this one Form. There is missing something that leads you from the right side into the picture. The values goes from very dark values directly into very saturated colour. So yes there is missing this transition from the right side over to the left side. Maybe a different angel on the bridge would help to lead the eye away from the right side and into the image in itself.

[chaosrocks]

thumby thumb thumb
240135

[chaosrocks]

oops... big
sry

[robmorfin]

Nice thumbnails, Chaos, I really like the first one.

[Form]

top right loogs good chaos. Look at the inverted triangle you have. Try to mirror that shape (compositionally, getting smaller as you alternate between drawing you out of focus then back in. So you get a sort of zig zag around the canvas, but you keep returning to the focal point. Also, dont forget a close foreground and a background, at the moment its all midground :)

[jodali]

http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m120/jdlfx/CAorg/carefs/186726_1141517994_medium.jpg

i'm not quite sure how well all of the principles were used in this image but there is definitely one that stands out the most to me. that would be proportion/scale. The characters standing towards the middle seem to be in correct proportion to their surrounding objects, ie. the buildings. comparing the difference in scale between the people and the buildings, the artist is letting us know that those buildings and the structures the characters are walking through are quite large. I think it gives a sense of grandeur and a distinct feel for the size of the environment. another principle used pretty well here would be emphasis. I believe the artists used contrast in value between the triangle shaped structures and the sky. maybe a little bit of repetition to bring your eye to them walking through the gate. I'm not sure if 2 equals repetition but if something is done more that once it has been repeated. repetition my not of been used strongly here but i think that it may play a small part of the image. I'm not quite sure if this image is really balanced it seems to be a little tilted to one side

[Gundersen]

Study Task 2

Ok here is my image modified a bit. When i looked at my image i saw that my Emphasis principle could be fixed.... to say it like that. So i tried to change the focus of my image by lighting up certain places aswell as darkening others. I also added a green light to the crystal, that way the crystal had its own colour, that could attract the viewer..
I think it looks better at least now :)

http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/1249/emphasis2lz0.jpg

[Gundersen]

Nice Thumbs Chaos. But as Form mentioned already, you need to work hard on the diffrent levels on those thumbs, foreground,mid and background. Do you think you manage to get atmospheric perspective in there aswell? If not maybe rising the camera a bit so you get the landscape behind might help you out on them

[Earendil]

Gundersen, I like what you've done. More contrast, and darkening in the right areas it seems. I'll be posting more commentary later, gotta get my analysis done.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2086/2037511282_68cd889c2f_o_d.jpg

I'm going to analyze this same piece again. Why? Because I must know as much as possible as to why it ROCKS SO MUCH. If it's required to stick with ONE design principle then so be it, but I'd like to explore these if I can.

First off, proportional relationships.
The trees and animals play an important role in establishing the relationships between the objects in the scene, and their position in space. The deer in the foreground, as well as the birds, give the foreground it's position and scale at the bottom of the frame. The curve of the beach recedes back, until we hit trees which help establish that space, that then recedes further back with the trees getting smaller.

Then, when you jump over to the left, the size of the trees, establishes that area's size and position in space, and helps unify the foreground and left center area. This area recedes back, and the rock formations take over, giving us a really grand sense of how large this landscape is. And then you look at the deer again...deer....mountains....deer...mountains....W ow this is friggin' huge. :)

Rhythm also helps direct our eye around, with the help of color relationships which we discussed last time. The repeating deer lead our eyes around the curve of the beach, the brush in the water, the birds, and interestingly, the reflection from the waterfall. The trees on the right, like Vilppu gesture lines, start straight, and fall over to the left in a repeating pattern that draws the eye to the central water area. The trees on the left, do the same thing, but the motion goes to the right, and is also supported by the lines created in the cliff side.

Balance: I would say this a mainly symmetrical composition, slightly off centered to the left where the white light is. There are 3 large triangle shapes created by the masses and overall values. An inverted triangle on the top, a darker triangle for the left, the point of which is near the waterfall, and another triangle from the right side, pointing to the center again. You can see the general “intersection” for these shapes right at the waterfall, there's kind of a “Y” line created.

Unity: It works darnit! Cohesion! drool




Chaos: I like the thumb on the upper right, the shapes are pleasing, and already the balance seems pretty good. However, I think the lower right thumb has potential if you go for something like a 3 point perspective, and hug the cliffside a bit more.

Gundersen: Like I said, I really like what you've done with darkening certain areas, it helps lessen the amount of competition between visuals. Those gantry lights really stand out now, and help lead to the crystal.

[Earendil]

Well, here's what I did.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2160/2037666450_e753766361_o_d.jpg

1) Cropped more of the left off. Too much dead space.
2) Changed the angle and "action" of the tree on the left to better fit with an overall "swoosh" of lines that starts from center, around left and follow through into the forest.
3) Changed landmasses to help support said "swoosh". Maybe I should put an overlay. :bashful:
4) Added verticals (the fence, and it makes sense too because people could fall in!) that help MOVE to the right...again...swoosh.
5) Darkened background of figure so he pops more.
6) Niggled with colors and background tree lighting.
7) Used a brush that changed size on pressure, not opacity. Allowed for more interesting lines.

I really like what's happening on the tree trunk on the left in terms of color. It's just right I think...sorry, still got my head on colors. :) Now that I look at, I'm wondering if adding a second fence, in a different style and color, would help things...I think the fence and tree are making the whole thing kind of left heavy. What do you guys think?

[Agustin Poratti]

gundie thats a lot of imporovement man. you have this ability to apply what you are taught. you'll get far man, no matter where you are now.

ear, also, changing folr good. this is very polished and makes a lot of sense. i just noticed the trees on the right have a very dark background copared to the blue sky above the figure, maybe?. dude, this piece has depth. i can see it. i like it.

bringing my studies soon!

[Earendil]

ear, also, changing folr good. this is very polished and makes a lot of sense. i just noticed the trees on the right have a very dark background copared to the blue sky above the figure, maybe?. dude, this piece has depth. i can see it. i like it.

bringing my studies soon!

The trees in the background have dark background, that was also changed because honestly when I saw this on an LCD monitor, those areas looked disgusting. :) If you're referring to the foreground trees...YES, that's exactly what I wanted...dark...saturated blue that you get during overcast skies at twilight or dawn times!

Moar studies!

[Gundersen]

Earendil thanks for comments man!

Augustin thank you very much, I am very determined to learn atm! :)

Earendil your piece looks marvelous atm. I love the way that the light bulb lights up more of the area and how its reflected in the water. But i have one critt. Behind the fence there are some stripes of purple? I keep looking at them trying to see if its stairs or a tree.. They are a bit disturbing for the main object :)

Again lovely work man!

[Earendil]

Hmm, they should knocked back. It's supposed to be a variety of pine tree, but I was a bit liberal with the brush. :nohope: Just don't want there to be a lot of contrast back there, even though contrast helps define the form...Thanks Gund!

[daldbaatar]

hi guys. Wow this week is gonna be cool one...people are getting more active than ever....keep it coming!
http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/6518/40291137996036px5.jpg
i this picture i see 3 main depth levels. The tones are very dark and has very low hues. some places have high saturation levels...but very little.
as u can see the 3 priests in the middle are the scale size and comparison of surrounding objects. the 3rd ( farthest ) depth level--u see symmetrical placings of the object..the center line of the symmetry is moved slightly to the left from the center of the picture. And 2nd depth level's objects are put in a assymetrical way. Foreground objects are put symmetrical but the size and shapes are only reletively similar yet the thing thats making it symmetrical is the colors and shades on the objects. I think the focus on the picture is at the broken chapel dome. Because the most contrasted and light colors are the colors of the sky. And the dome itself has a rhythm--the window arcs or something...and through that we see the sky-emphasis.
I think i see several lines cutting the pictures. some of them are hardly seen. i see 2 parallel horizon lines that goes from lower left to upper right ( the light and the pointy "simba" rock ). And the rock and tree cutting from down to up vertically on the 1st depth level ( foreground ). And im not sure but it seems that the branches on the upper part is also making a cut horizontally.
The whole scene is unified through rhythm and symmetry and colors.

[Earendil]

Nice picture daldbaatar! Is this from Lord of the Rings? Sure looks like one of those "passing of the elves" sequences.

Just wondering...is anybody else is bugged by the very sharp shadows being cast by the structure?

[Gundersen]

The shadows look very sharp indeed, and i also wonder why the painter have decided to have the light source shine up the ground mainly and not the main objects... I cant seem to find a good focus point in the image, its a bit messy i think :P hehe

[Earendil]

Seems like the majority of lighter values reach down and encircle the figures standing in darkness. I think it works, but that sharpedged shadow area is competing with the figures. Hmm... think...think...

[chaosrocks]

oddly looking at that image of Dal's and emmediatly make it in to a stage set, foreground, wings and backdrop. Its just a damn big stage. But when you think of it in terms of leko's and fresnels the lighting makes perfect sense. When you realize that you can focus or diffuse your light source, and put different color gels on them.....its not natural, but it is logical.

[robmorfin]

I chose "The Mill" by Rembrandt, this I consider a masterpiece with the Unity principle of design, but I will try to in depth only with the Proportion design principle of design, and will just add some illustrations of the other design principles in it.

Rembrandt created the sense of proportion by locating Human Figures on the painting at different depths, creating an illusion of height, allowing the viewer to guess the dimension of the mill, the use of the human figure is the easiest way to create this effect, because anybody can relate to its dimensions & feels very comfortable totell if the surroundings are big or small, the same way, by looking at the proportions of the mill and the bluff, at first the mind thinks the bluff is really big, but then by comparing the human figures at front, you can tell the bluff is only 5 figures high because it is right next to them, therefore, the Mill is sent deeper into the perpective, making it feel even bigger than before; The trees in the background, being deeper in the perspective gives the feeling of very tall trees in proportion to everything else.

[robmorfin]

Gund, good job with the emphasis, it's looking better, one thing that looks kind of confusing is the color of your crystals being the same as the color of the mountains few steps before deeper into the atmospheric perspective and it kind of kills the effect, anyway, looking better.

Earandil, looking much better, you should add more detail to the branch in the foreground at least in the snowed area, make it stand more, just like the branches in Dal's image.

[robmorfin]

Will post again on Monday, I'm heading out to camping, have a good weekend everyone.

[robmorfin]

Ear, somehow, I miss some kind of rock or stone (or snow simmulating to be on top of it at the edge of your lake, I think that would give a better hint of it being the shore of a lake.

[Earendil]

More specifically? Where? I'll poke it with my paintbrush!

[robmorfin]

Here.

[Earendil]

I meant the rock, but thanks for the paintover! I see the huge difference in well...drawing/rendering ability. Offhand, does anybody know what kinds of trees those are?

[robmorfin]

Ear, I think the reason why they are usually present it's because the lakes tend to be eroding the shore and wherever there is a rock, it starts to erode around it, creating a peninsula and leaving the rock more visible, so I would say place it by the peninsulas, just be careful in #3 placement not to make too much emphasis, it's too centered, anyway, that's what I think but I may be wrong.

[Earendil]

Thanks! I'll get on it!

[Agustin Poratti]

this piece uses rhythm, and more specifically, repetition. the repeating horns or bones generate dynamism, and set the pace for the picture. something that wouldnt happen if the mountain was by itself. the way this is portrayed (foreground to background) further expands the illusion of distance, and helps generate interest. we can see some ships on the right mid to indicate scale.

i decided to rework the first part of my dyptic and see if i could use repetition to generate a more interesting rhythm.

here's my results so far.

[robmorfin]

Agustin, what an awesome piece, who is the author?

[Earendil]

Form was my first guess, but I don't have time to verify that. It is awesome tho!

Agustin, it's a step in the right direction, but for those foreground repeating patterns to have more presence, maybe get some darker blue tones in there? Something closer to to the value of the trunk and figures so they just go BAM. er...maybe you didn't want them to go bam... Just my thoughts.

[jodali]

chaos - i like your thumbs so far, i would like to see a little bit more of the environment though

Gundersen - I agree I think that it is looking a little better

Earendil - that image looks great, I really like the lighting on the trees and the reflections on the water, you got some skills.

Agustin - I would also like to know who the artist is...

For my piece I un-tilted it a little bit trying to get the composition to look a little better, I also tried to add some rhythm,
using repetition with the added sky snake things, I also set them back into the cloud formation to attempt to get the viewer
to associate the clouds and snakes as one force or entity. there was a little confusion about the saturated orange streak
on the ground underneath the largest sky snake, that is a dead youngling which was killed by the guy hiding behind the rock.
I would have liked to work on the balance a little bit but i don't think that can be done without complete redraw, maybe it can what do you guys think?
http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m120/jdlfx/CAorg/dreamredoSM.jpg
http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m120/jdlfx/CAorg/dreamredoLG.jpg


I also did some real quick sketches, I know these dont look good at all, but I only spent 10-15 min on each. they are just to get an idea of overall placement and a feel for the different angles, The architecture of the castles will not look like this, I only used very primitive boxes for time purposes.
http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m120/jdlfx/CAorg/castlesketches1.jpg

[Earendil]

Why not have the monsters lead the eye smoothly from the clouds to the confrontation with the human? Right now the monsters are perpendicular to the verticals you set up from the clouds, and it might be more effective to have more of a transitory er...path? You have one in the distance just dropping down from the clouds, another further ahead, but swooOOShing away, which is picked up by another closer to us that swooshes around towards the man...Make a path. Just an idea.

Incidentally, I really like how you and Agustin build up your forms. It seems more correct in terms of colors to use etc.

EDIT: Maybe have the foremost one swooping around in a more confrontational posture, at the same time, using his body to help frame the dead monster lying on the ground?

[daldbaatar]

well well well...this here is the fixed version the stuff i did last week. I comletely erased the cracks and redid it. i thought what needed the most was a rythm and repetition.
http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/1125/dreameditsq3.jpg

[daldbaatar]

and btw...could anybody tell me the about the "flow" thing on ps. i know it makes this kind of random stuff when u make a stroke. but i dont see much diffence when u put the flow icon on and off.

[Gundersen]

sorry for my lack of activity this week so far guys, I will catch up with you from tomorow on. Have had one hell of a week here, including bussy uni, water breakdown(we had to go to a school to shower and use toilets) ..

daldbaatar: What if you also try to work on emphasis? To create a stronger focal point for the viewer.
flow this referes to an ink pen kind of... it depends on the flow of inc or pain comming out of your brush, if flow is on 100% the same amount comes out all the time, is it on 10% there is a biger difference in the amount of "paint" that comes out of your brush..

Jodali I have to agree with Earendil, the monster is leading you away from your "Hidden character" on the ground ... I could not see him for a long long time. Maybe if make the monster attack him instead.. Your thumbs look good, I prefere the first one even if its very inspired by lord of the rings :) and even if Form said it had to be on EARTH, i still think you should create a more fantasy feel to your castle... they look a bit to simple atm.. :)

Augustin I like the update on your piece, it gave it more dept! nice work ;) And no its not Form that have painted that image, its part of the series of Guild Wars... and Form lives WAY to far away to be in that team :) hehe

[rvdtor]

http://img524.imageshack.us/img524/2415/582841135887633mediumof5.jpg

This painting i feel has a lot of the elements that we were asked to identify, i like the proportion used, the tree trunk towers in comparison to the gleaming city lights give them an air of enormity. the repetitive tree trunks and their change in saturation as they recede into to the background give the entire piece the impression of a large area. they are also evenly spread throughout. another clever way the artist used proportions was using the flying mantis creatures. they become smaller as they go further away and this in turn creates nice rhythm in guiding the eyes toward the back. both rock faces on either side of the painting balance the picture well even tho the left rock has more detail and more space alloted to it. the right sky although empty [not as many clouds] still balances the right full of clouds with the main tower in focus. so i think most people's attention is drawn to the illuminated tower first because of the contrast on the sky your view is still drawn smoothly to the foreground....IF it goes to the foreground first esp. at the cross on the ledge, your eyes can still be smoothly guided to the rest of the area by the path made by the mantas...so i think the entire piece fits well together and and is joined with each other by form not just color. i like it.

Here's my fixed piece i noticed the rock piece and the hill was taking up most of the picture like form said and i need to counter balance the image without taking away form the main point which was the object. so i think the biggest issue with my painting was balance. the proportions of the guy and the trees and the structure were okay, repetition in the trees helped with the depth a bit, i hope the unity and the overall rhythm and mood were upped. what do you guys think?

http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/114/dream6ta2.jpg


gundersen Whoa that crystal is really popping out now the bright lights on the right really offset the crystal so although its symmetrical the change is lighting gives it a bit more variation...good stuff.

Earendil good thing you cut off the unnecessary trees on the left and although your main focus is on the right with the shining fire ball thing, the even poles in the fences give a good contrast from the lit ground and serves as a guide for the eyes leading to your main point.

jodai i agree with earendil on some of the points. the snakes are a bit toooo repetitive and seem to be only placed there ,,they do help with depth tho, making the man a bit smaller and sharper would help more with the proportion comparing the man and the snake things,,,i dunno its probably just me wanting to see the snakes look HUGE!!! hehe. i think the tilting u had before worked more because the clouds on the left seem really heavy and tilting the image to the right like a see saw would give the illusion of balance i think. cause ur area are low rocky hills, THEIR repetitiveness adds to the feel of the landscape already. so counterbalancing the big clouds would be difficult placing a big mountain there wouldn't look natural for ur type of environment maybe the sharpened foreground character would do that ..oi i've rambled too long

daldbaatar well i think yours already had enough repetition with the object shapes not their color and the cracked surfaces on the right bottom side. that separated the two sides well and the colors made the uniform. i think there seems to be a bit more weight on the left side where the objects are.

[Gundersen]

rvdtor thanks for nice comments :)

When it comes to your image it is looking ALOT better now, the main structure dont seem so pressed bellow the edges of the image, you have given it more space to show itself of on. There is still possible to create even more depth in your image. I can see that on the left side there is starting to get some depth, but if you add some mountains behind the structure, you might create a longer depth into your image... :P

Good work so far!

[rvdtor]

yea man thats what i was trying to go for ,the mountain tips on the left i guess don't read too well wanted them covered by the cloud cover,maybe they're a bit too unsaturated their forms get lost. gotta start the final piece soon tho

[Gundersen]

yeah i can read the mountains on the left side, so its deffenatly an improvement :)

About the final piece, dont worry about that yet, we got all the time until thursday :) So plenty of time still! :)

[Earendil]

rvdtor that image rocks! I should visit CGSociety more often for inspiration and study.

FYI, I didn't know there were mountains on the left side until I read your posts.

Yeah Gundersen, I guess that first thumb does look like Minas Tirith doesn't it? :)

[Agustin Poratti]

ummm, i forgot who the author is, i found it on the guild wars eye of the north thread.... i'll check later.

[Form]

hey i just came back from a pretty cool live painting event called cut n paste... im a bit psyched up so im going to do some personal work tonight (his morning), but i was keen to check in - and glad at how smoothly progress is being made :)

For daldbaatar who asked about flow setting -
this has to do with the amount of time you hold the brush down. If you put the opacity setting to 25% then press down, you will get a 25% grey dot, and it wont change. However if the FLOW is at 25%, the brushstroke will slowly get darker as you hold the pen down. Like using an airbrush, or lightly spraying a can in the same spot from a distance. I much prefer to use flow than opacity as it adds in random variety and leans away from an overly vectory/plastic/strokey look. In fact my favourite is to have the flow of a fairly simple brush set to about 3-4%, it kind of feels like oil painting with a dry brush - you get those lovely sketchy rough lines... or like when a marker is running out of ink.

I also seem to see a similar effect in justin sweet's digitals, whether or not he achieves it using the same settings... it kind of has that look to it. Best to go over at the end with a harder brush to tighten up shapes/edges though.

Cheers guys, time to paint :)

ps. that painting Augustin posted is by CICINEMO, who works at arenanet

[chaosrocks]

http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e181/chaosrocks/dreamscape9w.jpgbeen messin with it
gets better,, and more fucked up
I intend to keep messing with it

[Earendil]

Here's what I've come up with so far. I like the design of the 2nd one, but the composition of the 4th one. I might try and combine those, or just keep working things out.

1st
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2212/2041823717_1a982616fa_o_d.jpg

2nd
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2191/2042620026_65347125a5.jpg

3rd
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2303/2042434640_61bdf1a518_o.jpg

4th
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2273/2042619862_ed3ff70754_o_d.jpg


I'm going to keep reading up on castles, because right now, my designs just blow chunks. :dead:

[Gundersen]

Just remember when you read about castle that you decide what kind of style you want to go for.

There are tons of diffrent castles.
- Celtic castles
- Scottish castles
- Medieval castles
- Viking "castles" (Rohan is based on this)
- Chinese temple design
- Middle eastern castles

There are alot of diffrent styles, so it depends on the landscape you are painting what kind of castle you should design. If you put it in a desert environment you need to look into why castles work in a desert. And why a castle can work up in cold scotland aswell.

This i guess is about makeing your painting beliveable to the viewer, cause if you would place a concrete/mud castle in scotland it would be strange. Or build something out of stones in norway, or make it out of wood in a desert....

Be carefull about it ;) hehehe

[Gundersen]

Id thought id put togheter some ref photos i have taken myself.

First a couple from Paris:

http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/3364/refparrx7.jpg

Then some from around Scotland

http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/4536/refscotip3.jpg

All these photos are taken from me, so i am not stealing from anyone :) ehhe. Hope this can inspire some people that havent visited these places and dont have access to libraries to look at castle design :P

[Gundersen]

Here is step 1 of my design. Have done several pages of sketches, and tested some sketchup model, before i today decided on going on this perspective. The design atm is pretty EVIL, I plan to put a templar or similar in the front to represent the contrast between the evil castle and the nice guy. The castle will be lit by a sun from the right side of the image... I know its hard to have an evil castle during daylight, but its gonna be an interesting challenge :)

Gonna keep working on the design as soon as i get painted up the basic shapes and details..

http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/146/thumb1wc1.jpg
http://img125.imageshack.us/img125/6828/thumb2cg6.jpg

[D.Labruyere]

hey guys, off to a late start. Was away all week giving me little to no time to paint :(

Well, I've already made a start on the castle, watching the things as good as possible we have done past weeks. Also I decided to work with a bit new approach I uselly don't do, so I hope this works.

Instead of starting with an actual shape in my mind I just painted darks and lights untill I had something interesting and started shaping that. I've now started putting in the first colors. I still have to place the castle in perspective though, and I don't know if it was the most handy move to wait for that untill now... ah well we will see.

So here are the first steps of zu painting:

[Gundersen]

D.Labruyere its looking realy cool atm man! But i am not sure if the approach you have used made sense for you, Cause even if you blocked in black and white first fast to get shadows and light, it doesnt seem like you have used any of the elements you blocked in ... hehehe

BUT the painting looks cool, so dont worry about that at all. Keep going on it! Remember all the points of the previous weeks! :)

[Form]

jodali | post #21

cool image - nice strong shapes. I think the parrallel lines creating that frame for the central action are a good example of emphasis. Scale or proportion can be seen beautifully with the monolithic structure in the background travelling up out of frame, and there is repetition in the foreground rocks and trees as well as the canvas/leather sails on the structures.

As far as balance, there is certainly more emphasis on the right hand side, but i wouldnt say it is out of balance, as there is a large area on the left which attracts less of our attention, and a smaller, but more eye catching area on the right to balance it out. also, the large building on the right stops that open sky from being too light and letting our eyes sweep off the page.

gundersen | post #22:

cool improvements man. The green is subtle, but does attract the eye more now. Do you think your image is balanced? A great deal of your shapes are vertical which makes anything that breaks that pattern draw the eye strongly. Im concerned that without some shapes coming in at angles, our eyes are tempted to fall off the top and bottom of the canvas (especially on a scrolling web page). Also, the shape of the crystal sort of 'fits' into the canyon gap, which is just slightly causing confusion with its place in relative space. (or at least, breaking the illusion somewhat).

earendil | post #24:

great observations - great to see you so excited about examining artworks :) its mind boggling with a piece like this when they seem to be doing everything at once... cheers :)

post #25

cool changes here too... im wondering why you left the end of the fence off, and whether it would be better to continue it through the tree? oops gotta run... rest tomorrow!

[Earendil]

Gundersen thank you so much for those refs!!! :yayca: Watch out for those verticals in your thumbs. The whole castle looks like it's tipped over to the left.

EDIT: THat's really cool you got to visit those places too I'm jealous!

jodali | post #21

earendil | post #24:

great observations - great to see you so excited about examining artworks :) its mind boggling with a piece like this when they seem to be doing everything at once... cheers :)


I am QUITE boggled. :xpld:

[/B]
post #25

cool changes here too... im wondering why you left the end of the fence off, and whether it would be better to continue it through the tree? oops gotta run... rest tomorrow!

I honestly cannot remember much about the thought process other than "echo the tree! ECHO THE TREEEEEEE!" :teeth:

I might try D. Labruyere's method as well, see what I come up with. I think I'm going to explore the design of the castle in the 2nd and 4th thumbnails.

Also, D. Labruyere, this piece has a lot of great depth to it already! Can't wait to see how it develops!

[Gundersen]

Thanks for comments Earendil, i can totaly see the castle almost tipping over, will get to work on that :)

I just had such a cool experience that i need to tell about it .. I opened the book "Concept Design 2" just to have a look since i was bored and needed some inspiration. Last time i looked in it i didnt find it to interesting, it was ok but not the best. This time was a AHA experience. I just started to notice all the details, how people do stuff, how they make it work. It was such a great book and i realy got stuck in it looking at great artist how they make concept design... Form you have opened my eyes and mind ;) [portal]

[Agustin Poratti]

gundersen i honestly think one can create a new style for a castle, i mean, i dont really have to choose among the existent styles, but i can inspire from them to create my own style....
nice refs.
cheers

[chaosrocks]

I got distracted by the cover of the times Magazine this morning
did a "warm up" speed paint
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e181/chaosrocks/nyt-speedie.jpg

I''l get to castles in A minute.... I need more coffee.
Sometimes I think try ing to make somethink work in the wrong environment is one of the best ways to work up something innovative. rather than merely making another version of Sleeping Beauty's castle. and One of the joys of making it up is that bythe timeyou figure out how tha waste disposal sytem and the water and power work ans well as accessability and defensibility.... you can really understand how to do it.
If we are drawing a castle for a cool environment.. we can slide on some of that. but if its going into a game and hasto be built it helps to have at least thought about that stuiff

[Gundersen]

gundersen i honestly think one can create a new style for a castle, i mean, i dont really have to choose among the existent styles, but i can inspire from them to create my own style....
nice refs.
cheers

Agustin i think you miss understood me. I didnt mean you had to choose among existent styles. I meant that you have to think what environment you create and STYLIS your structure after that. I just said the names of diffrent styles to inspire people to look at them. So actualy you are saying the same thing in your post ;)

[Gundersen]

Sometimes I think try ing to make somethink work in the wrong environment is one of the best ways to work up something innovative. rather than merely making another version of Sleeping Beauty's castle. and One of the joys of making it up is that bythe timeyou figure out how tha waste disposal sytem and the water and power work ans well as accessability and defensibility.... you can really understand how to do it.
If we are drawing a castle for a cool environment.. we can slide on some of that. but if its going into a game and hasto be built it helps to have at least thought about that stuiff

Nice to see people have opinions on the mather of designing a castle. Again i think its good to look to real life refferences. A castle is normaly built as a strategic defence position. So putting a castle in the middle of a valley is normaly not smart, but putting it up against the side of one valley with only 1 front to attack is more smart.
But since its conceptual art there is possibilities to try new solutions, but they might not work :)

[daldbaatar]

Hey guys
Well this is my final work. I actually redone the 2nd week's work. This time the mongol warrior in the front is a wounded officer looking for help from another clan's controlled ( occupied ) castle after he survived an ambush or got his squad wiped out. And its obvious that the Lord of the castle isnt there...since the order to open the gate isnt issued. And the number of men in the castle is very few and them bastards are careful about strangers. Now the mario castle is gone hehe.
I spent so much time doing this piece. My schedule is tight in this month so i tried to do it as early as possible.
The Flow advice of Form was very helpful. I think you can see it from this piece too. I considered gundersen's advice on what kind of castle should be in which environment. Well here you go. Try to notice the tiny guards on the gate and some other places. They are the scale--and windows should be the scale too. And guys if u have any advice please feel free to give me. I tried to do something unique here. and i hope i covered everything we learned past 3 weeks.

[Agustin Poratti]

chaos, what you said is very interesting! i'd never thought of that. definitly going to try work that way, at some given point

[Agustin Poratti]

dald, remember to actually post the picture

[daldbaatar]

i did...im sure i did..refresh please

[chaosrocks]

unfortunately. I spend more time thinking than drawing
but it s fun

take that castle in the valley. maybe its there because the river runs through and it uses the river as part of its fortifications, and never has to worry about water supply in seiges
may be it is strategically located where two valleys come together so that the trade routes travel through it.
maybe its is in fact blocking the valley so as to controll the roads
maybe the best farm land is in the valleyt so it needs the protection of the castle.....

I could go on
put your castle where you will... then figure out what its made of and why its there.....

in the words of Tim Gunn "make it work"
:P
crx

[Gundersen]

realy nice dalbaatar, you are out early with your finished piece ... like 5 days before time almost :) btw before critts LOOKS GREAT

I think you can do more work on it. First of all its very similar in style to the other castle you posted last time. With the mongolian warrior in front .. This time i think he stands out a bit to much, like he is sticked onto the painting, he doesnt blend in with the rest kind off... There is also some black outlines on some part of the castle, makes it look kind of hurried up because of that, maybe you should work on getting those away.

Here is an update on my image, changed canvas size, flipped it and also started to paint it some colour and more depth to it
http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/7971/thumb4xk2.jpg

[Gundersen]

Chaosrock i dont think its mainly about makeing it work, its about makeing your image beliveable...

[daldbaatar]

realy nice dalbaatar, you are out early with your finished piece ... like 5 days before time almost :) btw before critts LOOKS GREAT

I think you can do more work on it. First of all its very similar in style to the other castle you posted last time. With the mongolian warrior in front .. This time i think he stands out a bit to much, like he is sticked onto the painting, he doesnt blend in with the rest kind off... There is also some black outlines on some part of the castle, makes it look kind of hurried up because of that, maybe you should work on getting those away.


ok will do gundy...and i mentioned i redid my castle didnt i? yeah...i will try to finish it before thursday...peace brother

[chaosrocks]

gundy ,,heheh
nice start. The green square is reading as an out door movie screen dunno why that popped into my head but it did

and by "work" I mean visually... not actually ...silly
I guess you don't watch "Project Runway"

[Gundersen]

hehe no i dont watch that show :) I never watch TV actualy, if i turn it on its to see a movie... TV shows are nonono for me :P (except Heroes, PB and Dexter atm) hehe

Yes the green thing looks strange in the image i posted there, i am painting pretty fast atm and developing it fast fast ... The point about the green thing is that this is an evil castle, so it has a green light to it comming from the inside. That "wall" is supposed to be an entrance ... have added stairs to it now ;)

Thanks for comments btw ... I am impressed with how my left side of the castle look ... i keep telling myself someone else must have made that..

[chaosrocks]

http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e181/chaosrocks/wcastle1w.jpg
I am also painting at warp speed atm.

but thats where I am going with this. I want to lower the POV
and threepoint this up I guess
iono it keeps wanting to be a vertical compositon

[chaosrocks]

the left wall is indeed looking sweet. in a bleached bone kinda way. I find the compositon to have way to little going on on the righthand side. and what is casting that big black rectangular shadow in the foreground. ?
I dunno the distance and the castles are coming together nicely .. but the rest of the space needs love

[Gundersen]

Here is my last update for the day, will get working on it again tomorow

Flipped it back the other way again, havent decided which way i like best, so i try to balance it out both ways. Added some more to the foreground... tried to add some grass ... clearly need to work more on that ... AND also a big overal update on details and so on..

http://img123.imageshack.us/img123/7289/thumb6sv8.jpg

[D.Labruyere]

nice work Gundersen! Watch out with the mountains though, they look a bit disconnected

[Form]

finishing off post #25, Earendil:

yeah so the fence sort of leads my eye into that dead zone there, where it could maybe come through the tree and be an element that leads the eye subtley into the focus? Also, the shape of the lake or water at the bottom still feels inorganic to me, the form doesnt read flat like water should, more like rubber being stretched. It seems to be something a lot of us do subconsciously, putting big flat dark shapes straght across the bottom of the picture frame... anyhow, I do like the rest of your changes :)

daldbaatar | post #30:

Good observations - i also love the repetition of shapes in different contexts - like the shape of light on the ground echoing the 'simba' rocks (hehe great description by the way!), the tree shapes echoing each other in the background... i also think its fantastic they way the tree shapes are so wiry and thin compared to the solid, albeit crumbling buildings. Subjectively, it adds to the abandoned feeling of the place - that nature has taken over, and it frames the characters very differently than a pristine environment would.

Im not sure i like the lack of emphasis on the figures.. for me they form the most interesting element of the narrative and they seem to be fairly subordinated... judging by the overall level of skill I would assume its an intentional decision, but I find my eyes resting around the architectural elements sort of wondering why they are pulling so much of my attention, when I care more about whats going on with the culties :) also love the way the culties hoods echo the doorway shape, and the shape of the vaults in the main building :)

robmorfin | post #35:

One of my all-times - I love Rembrandt's work... this piece has an amazingly understated quality to it - it has that deceptively simple nature that belies a mastery of the artistic principles. Every element balances something else here - the boat balances the detail of the windmill, the patch of light above the path stops the cliff from being too heavy, the value transition between the two bluffs sets the whole depth in perspective, the figures form a triangle with the mill at its apex, and as you identified, that lovely swirling rhythm that winds its way up the hill. Notice even the oddly shaped tree that balances out the small protrusion on the top of the windmill... and how amazing that these masters had only the natural light and their memory to paint in the fleeting twilight hours...

how awesome is the way he has darkened one arm of the windmill so we aren't thrown off the page? Its a good lesson to be learnt in that sometimes when we paint we are tempted to choose a light source, and then mathematically construct every shape of lighting to be perfect according to the laws of physics... it is a reminder that there is always room in painting for gentle poetry :)

Agustin | post #44:

Ah yeah, such a memorable piece for me. This is a great example of a musical beat... you can follow that trail of spikes with your eye like a trance-bass beat almost... b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b.... and then it slowly fades out... and then those big ones in the background are like the atmospheric crescendo :) ... and then it fades away over the horizon... great! and the balance... big large simple area balances out small, detailed focal area. I love this guy's work - he is definately going places. And I think he is in his early 20's from memory?

Love the rework on your piece too, i think it adds that same sense of rhythm, and moreso it improves the perception of depth which it was somewhat lacking at the earlier stage. How about balance? Right now, the light value of the sky and trees is VERY dominant for me... again its that thing we all seem to be doing - that staging - where we put that long, dark, foreground streak without variation in depth...

jodali | post #47:

hey cool rework. I think the cloud mass is heavy, and the tilted horizon helps balance that... but maybe that shape needs to be broken up a bit? The silhouette is a big circle, which makes it feel very unnatural. Real tornados and clouds would have a much more assymetrical and random shape than that... i think that solidarity of that mass is breaking the balance because it is crowding that corner and not sharing the space. I think the best way to balance out the piece is to use some foreground elements (since everything now is starting in the mid ground and working back). Also i think the beasts could still be better integrated with the clouds, imagine when a plane comes out of the clouds, the way it pulls them along with it in a vapor trail? Also i like the addition of more snakes, but they feel like they are too rigidly repeated. Inlike fence palings or sections of wall, these are living, animate beings. So their rhythm should be more like a dramatic overture with big sweeping rhythmic lines, especially as snakes! at the moment they look more like a fleet of robosnakes... very orderly :) I love your first thumbnail by the way. Looks like a big ice shelf with dangerous icy stalactites (sp?)

[chaosrocks]

whimper...
crx

[Form]

daldbaatar | post #49:

I don't know if it needed more repetition? Since the shapes on the left already sort of repeat... conceptually. I think what it needed more of was emphasis... the composition is very symmetrical, and everything is competing for my attention... there is a lot going on and the composition seems to be split 50 50, and I'm not sure what is more important - the blocks/figures or the cracks?

gunderson | post #51:

Arrr, I be livin on an island, arrrr! ;)

rvdtor | post #52:
Yeah, the manta rays give a nice flowy rhythm - sort of how Jodali could use for the snakes in (his? her?) painting. Here in this piece, that bright sky is balanced by the left foreground which is bigger in proportion, and the cross and mantas stop the image from being too tipped to the right. The only thing im not so keen on in this one is the water at the bottom, the way it is close to the canvas edge but it shys away from it. Not so sure about that... and the foreground detail may be a bit 'noisy'...

as for your piece, i think you could look at balance again - you have a focal point of darkness in the light, now you need a slightly less eye drawing patch of light in the dark area to balance that. Look at cicinemos water dragon piece above again for that! Also are those white strokes above and to the left of the figure birds? also you could clarify those mountains by contrasting some blockier forms against the soft clouds - its all about edges there.

chaos | post 59:

the proportion is looking better now.. there is better atmosphere, it is less staged... the vertical rectangle on the left still bugs me, created by shadow shapes... and there seems to be a lack of general unity - things are feeling disconnected from each other... id like you to make some bold decisions and put some big objects in there, overlapping and really messing up the composition. The feeling i get at the moment is that you are being too safe and this is also coming through in the feel of your brushstrokes. Mess mess mess with it :)

[Form]

earendil | post #60

loving the look of the 4th... work on that one!

gunderson:
Thanks for those refs dude, the 3rd from last is fucking amazing!!! that tower just DOMINATES the town. I bet you could hear the maniacal dictator laughing all the way from down in the seedy tavern :D

d. lab | post #64

liking the abstraction here, and the colours.... keep working the design and your awareness of the composition!

agustin | post #69:

I guess gundersen was just talking about function vs. form... the importance of believability in a design. Of course you are inventing your own concepts, but there has to be some degree of believability in their context, pr a good justification why there shouldnt be - its all contextual :)

chaos | post #70:
STOP PAINTING STAGE SETS!!!!! where are you going to fit your castle in here??? I want you to start a new one and steal a composition from a classical master. GO ON DO IT!!!

daldbaatar | post #73:

this is fantastic! the forms read fantastically.. its a very dramatic image. Im really stoked with this! I think you have some perspective niggles - some actual errors, as well as some just 'odd' shapes. Things like windows not getting smaller the higher on the tower they are, the underside of the left section with the flag on it... just some shapes that need tightening. Other than that, you could put some slight colour variation in there... and also the light colour you have chosen feels slightly less warm than it could be. But you are at a stage where you are tweaking, fixing, refining... which is great. Maybe try putting some modification layers over this? you know, multiply layer on 5%, fill with red, things like that. Tweak it with curves... find what works for you. Great! cheers.

gundersen | post #85:

flat foreground shape is unnatural - break it up!! lol! that big valley area is unbalanced... you need to think of vertical balance as well as horizontal. First things first... break up that flat shape, give us some foreground elements, maybe some repeated shapes into the background... at the moment everything but the castle is far too uninteresting. WHIP WHIP!

[Gundersen]

Yeah i totaly agree with you form, will try to look away from the castle today when I paint and only focus on the soroundings ... also there is a HUGHE mistake, the foreground is suppose to be totaly seperated from the castle ... like 500 meters before the castle or something, and atm it looks like the castle sits on the foreground ... need to work on this ALOT

Cheers, but first some Architect work today, need to work on my theater design

[jodali]

sorry i haven't been as active this week, I've been a little busy, I will atempt to be more active.

Earendil - thanks for the constructive criticism, i really appreciate it, I need to fix so much with it that I really need to just start over and repaint it from the beginning. about your thumb, I like the second one too, i just might steal that idea from you, just kidding.

rvdtor - thanks for the comments. I like the redo on your image, It really seems to add some depth and background and to the over comp, I personally think that they might of needed a little bit extra touches to look like mountains (I thought that they were just clouds at first)

Gundersen - Thanks for the comments and all those refs. saved me some time trying to google the images, its so hard to find quality images there. I will definitely being using those images for texture refs. Scotland, France, your so lucky, you get to travel. about your early wips, they are looking good. it might just be me but I don't like how the castle get cut off on the side, but thats just my opinion.

D.Labruyere - Interesting start, I like to draw with that style a lot, with me it seems to produce good outcomes, it can be difficult, because the overall picture can start to cloud up certain details that are hard to fix. but I still like it, no crits so far.

daldbaatar - very cool, getting it done nice and early

form - thanks for the constructive criticism, I understand most of what your saying, but i think that the image just cant be fixed without a complete redraw, I'm afraid that might cut into the time for my final, do you think that I should redo it?

[chaosrocks]

silly maestro
pout don't yell at me... at least when I dont deserve it
70 is not my castle
its a warm up

83 is is my castle
crx

[chaosrocks]

gunderson...theater design? (perks up ears) now this is some thing I know something about..... can I help?

[Form]

ITS MY PARTY AND I'LL YELL IF I WANT TO!

Jodali - there is no need to redo your piece now, you can do it later, or not at all - its up to you wand what you want to have in your folio. :)

[Gundersen]

gunderson...theater design? (perks up ears) now this is some thing I know something about..... can I help?

Chaosrock its a Internationa puppet Theater complex in Edinburgh Scotland :) hehe

Jodali thanks for likeing the refs. I dont like how my castle gets cut of atm either, need to work on that for sure!

[Agustin Poratti]

*bounces wacom9x12 off forms head*

[Agustin Poratti]

*pats gunddy on the head* hey, sstop painting lets go play some pool

[D.Labruyere]

*is confused* :S

[chaosrocks]

*cries*
the boss yelled at me

hey that cool, what kinda puppets?
I did some scenery work for Balinese shadow puppets last year
I was really cool
and the first time If actually gotten to put my computer image production techniques in to an actual production

[robmorfin]

Does anybody mind if I use a previously created Castle that I would like to improve (just the linework, I never rendered it)?

[robmorfin]

Ear, I like the second one as well.

Gund, looking good, nice studies.

Chaos, watch your perspective, remember any line comes from the vanishing point in the Horizon Line, I like the bridge connection in the castle.

Dald, awesome man, only the walls next to the main entrance should be taller than the walls with the same height on the edge of the complex because they are deeper into the perspective.

[Gundersen]

Does anybody mind if I use a previously created Castle that I would like to improve (just the linework, I never rendered it)?

No one would never found out ... But i think its perfectly fine as long as you have drawn it .. AND IT BETTER BE GOOD THEN! :P

[Gundersen]

Here is an update on my image, changed the size on the canvas again, added some new elements, and tried to generaly build up the image ... AND no i cannot paint people at all, so sorry for it looking shit

http://clicken.no/Thomas/Design/Thumb8.jpg

[robmorfin]

No one would never found out ... But i think its perfectly fine as long as you have drawn it .. AND IT BETTER BE GOOD THEN! :P

Well, all my sketches are in my sketchbook here in CA, so I wanted to save the embarassment of getting caught, although I think I am creating a new castle out of my previous assignment, that way I kill 2 with one shot

[Agustin Poratti]

ok gundy my critique so far. it isnt bad, but we gotta apply ALL we learned so far, you saw form psyched out back then in the week description. and 75% of your picture is pretty much a lot of greys, and whites, and completely desaturated hues. maybe look after colour composition a bit?
off to balance, i beleive the left side has too much of that white nothingess, so much one notices it. and the castle falls out of the field of view! but not gently, the canvas just ends! - how about move the whole castle a bit to the left, so we can see the mountains to the right of it, and get rid of some "left side"? keep it up.

[Agustin Poratti]

dald i like your final. i just find it comfy to look at. again that old school/slightly comic book feel, heh. you could of pushed colour further though. gj!:)

[Agustin Poratti]

chaos, some minor stuff i see, you mighnt be needing more constrast in there. also try to find good reference on how sun hits walls, what happens to the highlight, the midtone and the shadow. your sky is blue, but your shadows tend to violet, so do the mountains.

[daldbaatar]

wasup gundy. time for some crit.
the colors a kinda too white and less hues. i think u better see to this. and as agustin said the left part looks empty. the humans are kinda weird cus the castle is looking way further than it should be and the dude standing on the entrance is looking like a giant. u lost some perspectives on the walls. i know u will get it right man.
oh thanks agustin. im gonna add some colors and fix some shapes as form and rest of the class told me to.

[Agustin Poratti]

labruye looking great man, thats a great start. nice palette, good foreground/midground/background. nice use of desat colour. it looks balanced. you work on it, man... you've got nice foundatkon here.

[Gundersen]

Here are some changes... Thanks alot for comments guys, will work alot more on bringing out colours aswell..

ANd i cant decide what way to have it ...
http://clicken.no/Thomas/Design/Thumb9.jpg
http://clicken.no/Thomas/Design/Thumb10.jpg

[D.Labruyere]

I think one of your main problems right now is simply perspective. Isn't very noticable on the building, but your mountains should be waaaaaay smaller in the distance, if they are all around the same size.

well to show you what I mean:

[D.Labruyere]

oh, before I forgot, a small update on mine:

[Gundersen]

Thanks D.Labruyere I can see your point about the mountains not being in complete perspective if they are all the same size. But how often are all the mountains in the same size?? But yes i will look into it, if it changes my picture for the Greater good :P hehe

Your picture is looking good

[Agustin Poratti]

the thumb i've chosen to work at, and buncha ref.

dont worry, i have a long way to go and will look into every aspect we've been discussing.
busy weeks sort ofs :/

[Agustin Poratti]

ddddddddd

[chaosrocks]

http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e181/chaosrocks/dreamscape10w.jpg
still messin withthis one

need to drastiaclly change the building the value is fucked.
but....

also need to work on the new one

gunderson- one thing nags at me about yours the very promenant guy... his flag is whipping in the wind. his robes aren't. and compositionally the wind motion and the direction of the stroaks and the perspective all lead the eye right off the side of the page

D- lookin good
Augustin Im really wanting to work with the colors and textures in your ref. I need to go dig up some of my own

looking good guys
are we all LMS3 ing?
chaos

[rvdtor]

chaosrocks are those drunk ducks by the pool of water? lol , i do like how sharper your colors and image is now .

gundersen i love how well ur work is flowing..the colors work just needs a bit more depth like with the mountains , some of them mentioned earlier that ur mountains are about the same size so even if you decrease saturation as they move backwards there's still something odd about it, but the mood is great.

augustin im really liking your values and the tones are bringing ur castle's form out can't wait for the finish as always.

daldbaatar the enormous space you've created with the perspective you chose is just great to look at. its very simple castle with very simple environment but the wide open space just invites more into it. i like it. a few mishapen cylindrical towers and windows here and there but its good.

i'll be posting soon...eep its almost thursday...stupid midterms!!!

[Agustin Poratti]

chaos go ahead and use it. i'm going for a different time of day/materials anways.

[Earendil]

Great stuff guys! I'm LMS3-ing chaos, but not right now I'm working on developing/combining my thumbs, and getting the values DOWN. Color later. Will post soon like rvdtor! :bashful:

Agustin> Liking the value relationships already, keep going!

D.Lab> Liking how it's developing. Those patches of (relative :P) blue however within the orange and on the lowerleft path...make sure that's where you want my eye to go, cuz they're really say "HEY LOOK AT MEEE!" :)

dald> Great stuff! I'm not sure about the perspective/anatomy of the foreground figure though.

Who am I forgetting?

Gundersen!> Watch that patch of green on the tower it's kinda "loud". Maybe that's what you wanted hmmm....

[chaosrocks]

giggle OMG they do look like drunk ducks

[robmorfin]

Ok, way far from done, but want to start participating, hopefully tonight I can have something much better; the steep hills on the back will have castle walls and structures all over as well, I want the whole port to be a magnificent castle, an expensive idea but heck, they can triple the taxes.

[Agustin Poratti]

drunk ducks ROFL

[robmorfin]

Update; Need help, what should I add, make or consider to give balance to the composition, I still don't understand it very well.

Thanks.

[Gundersen]

chatted with you on msn about it. Like the sketch, but I think you need to define foreground, mid and back to establish your image here. And also define a focal point ... Told you more on msn ... cant remember all

Thanks for critts on my work people ... you are so hard ........ :o

[robmorfin]

Again, Gund, thanks, you also told me there was no space to breathe on the left side and that it was too heavy on the right side, you also suggested adding a secondary focus in the front like a man looking at the main entrance.

Will work on it, will definitely add a drunk man in the foreground, thanks a lot.

[Gundersen]

yes that was it :) The scale factor. The man will add some scale to your picture! :) hehe

[Gundersen]

hmm Form was very mean today ... hinted to my image not being too good, so i had to work hard :P

Here is an update on todays work. Have changed the mountains slightly to make the perspective look better, added more elements in the front to make the castle seem like it goes behind rocks instead of just stops on the canvas. have added the "Templar" force on the left side ... by force i mean the croses going from front to back. Sort of to contrast the evil side up against the wall...

Hope you like it.. AND give me constructive critts people! And not only negative ;)

http://clicken.no/Thomas/Design/Thumb12.jpg

[chaosrocks]

IM onthe wrong monitor its all washed out.. notyour fault
BUT i wasn't mean
I was constructive
I toldyou the part that was bugging me
if you want ass pats
here "it's stunning!"
Im lieing but it might make you feel better...
now
I hate the cross and the whole trite knight thing. cant you use something more interesting as a foreground figure?
the flag is blowing the other way now but his robes are still made of lead

and the ducks Are drunk ..so there

Show me some thing new! what haven't I seen?

[Agustin Poratti]

gunn that perspective-less cross, and the guy are fighting for the focus with tee castle, and the topic is castle. something different happens at daaldbatars one, in wich the figure is dwarfed against that huge keep.
i get this feel you're tryng to polish something that doesnt need polish, but serious redoal. and this is not being negative, is just what i see :). if you ask me what'd i do, id start from scratch, and get something fresh. sometimes we struggle with crappy paintings. well founded ideas develop very quiclky almost on their own.
i dont know dude... theres still that huge mass of white to the left. the castle is still too much to the right. what the right side trioes to establish as rythm with that perspective, the left side nullifies, with that 90° lines. (cross, ground line, flag, guy)....
hope you get something neat in time!

heres a crappy op i did with the mouse, trying to show you what i mean. (and failing to do so:))

[Earendil]

Which comp is better? I'm thinking the larger sized one, but I wanted to get your guys' thoughts.

[jodali]

Earendil - I'm liking that larger one too, the smaller one looks a little off balance to me.

Gundersen - i wish i could give you some constructive criticism, but I just dont know what to say about it. whats good about it.. the perspective on the castle seems good. The ariel perspective with the mountains seems good to. honestly, I dont think that the cross and the knight look good, it doesn't seem like they fit there. sorry man I wish I could help, but I'm a noob at this composition thing. the only thing that i could say is to take your current image, start a new document, and just scribble all kinds of stuff on the left side and see if anything looks interesting. spend about 5 min or so on one, then move on to another layer, try a few of those, thats what I do, i must of had like 10 different ones that I scrapped before I posted my thumbs, and went through a few more before i came up with this one

robmorfin - its starting to look good, thats going to be fun putting in all those details.


D.Labruyere - I like it so far, interesting way of going into the painting, cant wait to see more.


this is another speedy that I liked, let me know what you guys think about it, I'm really liking this one, small river on the right with a water fall in the back..

http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m120/jdlfx/CAorg/112007castles245245.jpg

smiley rides horse through flame! :mod:

[Earendil]

You need to find something to balance the left side, there's a lot of dead space.

[jodali]

do you think that just cropping that part off would help?

[jodali]

http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m120/jdlfx/CAorg/drunkduckjdl.gif

[robmorfin]

Update, need ideas on what elements to use on the left side to create balance;

Thanks for the advice on MSN Chaos.

[robmorfin]

Ear, the first composition

Jod, looking good, just a bit too centered element

Gund, I really like it, avoid using pure whites, get rid of the cross, angle that flag, again, you are using the same colors on the foreground hills and the castle walls, change that, add some clouds to balance that empty area, I like the castle and the perspective is fine, add an element in the main center part of the bldg. (top wall) it's a very big empty space right now.

Chaos, your colors are looking better on last asignment, the pillows and wine glass need to be smaller to haveright proportion with structures; in your castle, watch your perpective, every line has to come from the same vanishing point.

[Gundersen]

Thanks for comments and critts guys. I know the painting needs alot of work :)

Here is an update ... gonna work more tonight (this was a quick 30 min update)

http://clicken.no/Thomas/Design/Thumb13.jpg

[Gundersen]

I can see now the white stuff on the left side ... Its these damn old CRT screens, on my macbook its a nice cool blue colour ... gonna try to change it later today........

[Earendil]

Rob> Make sure your lines are aligned. Right now some of the verticals are tipping over to the left and right, and a few lines aren't going to the vanishing point.

Gund> Looking better!

Jodali> It might, or it might be an opportunity to put something there.

Here is my latest WIP. Hope to have all the structures and value relationships setup up soon. Then color and refine.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2285/2052096855_307730b5cd_o_d.jpg

And there will be two more bridges on the right, stacked on the right vanishing point, I just haven't drawn them yet. It took forever to get the one on the left working perspectively. O.o

[Agustin Poratti]

and, this is for thursday, right? - i think we're all in a hurry. weve got put a lot of detail and rednering today and tomorrow

[Agustin Poratti]

ear i think the tree on the right is too strong. i'd also add more canvas to the left of the áinting.

[Earendil]

Maybe just bring that tree forward? Yeah, it's saying it's ok to look to the left, and that isn't where I want people to look. Thanks Agustin.

[Agustin Poratti]

gundy, isnt that too many crosses?.just a thought. lol. try not go insane

[Earendil]

Rob> On second look, I really like what you've done to separate your values into chunks. Brightest/lowcontrast in the distance, and coming back darker towards us. It's a good way to start I think.

[rvdtor]

well i haven't posted any and its Wednesday night here so whatever input i get i will make sure to do well with it. so its still wip but i need to fix it up.
initial thumbnail wanted a really different angle than just forward. also i know its a bit unbalanced cause most of the bulk is on the left but i was hoping the structure itself creates a sort of path to where ur eyes go,, you see the castle first then the deep valley.

http://img129.imageshack.us/img129/7990/caste1fy5.jpg
refining
http://img112.imageshack.us/img112/7947/castle2et6.jpg
even more refining and worked out the horizon points.
http://img112.imageshack.us/img112/7578/castle3xz4.jpg

damn i NEED to learn textures it would make working go a lot faster...i keep repainting an area over and over cause it doesn't look like what its supposed to be. hopefully the shapes read well. and i pass to make it to the next..i'm learning lots with u guys.

D labruyere its very nice i like your textures and ur coloring and how it defines your form...does it take you very long to get it consistent like that? i waste a lot of time working and reworking cause the textures aren't right.

Earendil i like the style of your castle and u got the right thumbnail to use. the tree is very strong a but then thats probably only because its full black just to give the distance im sure when its painted it won't be as bold and it'll mesh well into the picture. the bridge and water is a nice touch.

Jodali ur castle is very far so making it stand out from the rest of the other environment will be good, as is it stands out well because of your values , its very shiny. on the left the most obvious thing to add would be more mountains but then maybe u dont want to have it TOO symmetrical. tho the shape of the castle itself could offset and compliment it. i dunno just thinkin.

Robmorfin wow i like how you lay down ur basic colors and already u get the impression of depth and distance. the castle takes up more than half the screen unbalancing a bit, i dunno what u could put on the left that would balance the right a bit, boats as i see there are practical but they still dont seem to counterweight the enormous structures on the right. maybe extending the canvas more to the left and adding like a whole fleet of ships hehehe im kidding, but still wow nice work.

[Earendil]

Robmorfin wow i like how you lay down ur basic colors and already u get the impression of depth and distance. the castle takes up more than half the screen unbalancing a bit, i dunno what u could put on the left that would balance the right a bit, boats as i see there are practical but they still dont seem to counterweight the enormous structures on the right. maybe extending the canvas more to the left and adding like a whole fleet of ships hehehe im kidding, but still wow nice work.

I think rob beats us in the "number of polygons" category. :confident So many buildings O.o

rvdtor> I think you can bring that mid-ground mass a little closer. That'll help sell how high the view is I think. Right now the far background and midground both look the same distance.

[robmorfin]

Rob> Make sure your lines are aligned. Right now some of the verticals are tipping over to the left and right, and a few lines aren't going to the vanishing point.


Will do, thanks, I've noticed it on the tower, but will do a checkup all around.

Ear, your composition is nice, but I feel the building corner line is right in the center, should move it to either side or enlarge your canvas, just a thought

[robmorfin]

Rob> On second look, I really like what you've done to separate your values into chunks. Brightest/lowcontrast in the distance, and coming back darker towards us. It's a good way to start I think.

Thanks, will try to create the same effect with clouds on the left.

[robmorfin]

damn i NEED to learn textures it would make working go a lot faster...i keep repainting an area over and over cause it doesn't look like what its supposed to be. hopefully the shapes read well. and i pass to make it to the next..i'm learning lots with u guys.

Very nice castle design, simple and clean, nice angle as well, it reads very well, I think you need to play with atmospheric perpective and bring the values higher for the middleground, maybe even create some hills or some kind of element that overlaps the background to create more 3Dmensionality, also, make a gradient in the roundness of your roofs, they look kind of flat.

Robmorfin wow i like how you lay down ur basic colors and already u get the impression of depth and distance. the castle takes up more than half the screen unbalancing a bit, i dunno what u could put on the left that would balance the right a bit, boats as i see there are practical but they still dont seem to counterweight the enormous structures on the right. maybe extending the canvas more to the left and adding like a whole fleet of ships hehehe im kidding, but still wow nice work.

Thanks, I need to start adding different elements and see what works best, I didn't think about the structure being more than half the image, good point, will play with the canvas size as well, I can try ships, airplanse, islands, rock, tornados, clouds, birds, zeppelin, will play with it at lunch time. Thanks a lot.

[robmorfin]

I think rob beats us in the "number of polygons" category. :confident So many buildings O.o.



395,956,1865 Polygons, if modeled for a game, you could play it only on XBOX360, just kidding, it's all fake boxes.

I think you can bring that mid-ground mass a little closer. That'll help sell how high the view is I think. Right now the far background and midground both look the same distance.

You are right,I didn't notice, they kind of blend, I will try lightening the background instead, otherwise the middle will blend with the foreground, thanks for the observation.

[Earendil]

You are right,I didn't notice, they kind of blend, I will try lightening the background instead, otherwise the middle will blend with the foreground, thanks for the observation.

Oops, that was meant for rvdtor. Your masses look fine to me. :bashful: I'll go edit the post for clarity.

[robmorfin]

Cool, thanks.

[Gundersen]

Very nice work by people! I am sorry i cannot comment on your guys work today, I am filled up with Work, have a presentation for a project tomorow morning, so i am stuck into that atm. Will paint all day tomorow, which is Thursday for me, so will hand in the final version tomorow evening!

Keep going guys, use all we have learned and lets try to impress Form ;) I know i havent :P hehehe

[Gundersen]

Ok here is a tiny update ... decide on going all crazy. Since i realised by just haveing one coloured element, aka the sun, it would look plain ... so i tried to add this clouds with some red light in them... Not sure if it works at all, it is a bit interesting to keep working on..

Need sleep now, Is it going in the right direction? :P hehehe

http://clicken.no/Thomas/Design/Test2.jpg

[Agustin Poratti]

yes gundy, thats definetly what you need to do: go crazy. that's a good start. at least we got rid of that white!!!! sleep tight

edit: the COLOUR add is good, but i still believe theres too many of those darn crosses. and castle is still visually tiny.

[chaosrocks]

Argh Gundy NO Bad PUPPY! Wrong DIRECTION!

this is becoming less and less about the Castle
It's supposed to be a Castle!
what are all these symbolic christien icons doing lieing about spoutint iconographic knee -jerk responses and weird compositinal lines


CASTLE
it gets smaller and smaller, and less and less important in the visiual field. and I thought my images were totally fucked up.....

Rob
looking good
glad I could help

[chaosrocks]

Argh Gundy NO Bad PUPPY! Wrong DIRECTION!

this is becoming less and less about the Castle
It's supposed to be a Castle!
what are all these symbolic christien icons doing lieing about spoutint iconographic knee -jerk responses and weird compositinal lines


CASTLE
it gets smaller and smaller, and less and less important in the visiual field. and I thought my images were totally fucked up.....

Rob
looking good
glad I could help

[chaosrocks]

ok re-draw
castle

[Agustin Poratti]

well, now that i look again, yeah, chaos has a point there. so, don't listen to me, listen to her. she's a keen eye.

[robmorfin]

Rob
looking good
glad I could help

Thanks, Chaos, I really appreciate your help, you are a very good invisible critic.

The perspective in your castle looks fine now, good job, its looking very nice.

glad I could help as well.

[robmorfin]

Balance is killing me, I don't quite understand what's the right way to acomplish it, here i am posting some studies of balance through shapes of the same size, through lots of shapes to make it look busy and heavy on both sides, by dividing in equal spaces, by creating a composition through contrast and emphasis, but I'm not sure these are the right ways to acomplish it. Please let me know what you guys think.

Thanks.

[chaosrocks]

rob im not seeing the balance problem. dont fill the sky
the un detailed open space IS the balance to your hyper detailed right side
when you start detailing the sky the way you are detailing the image you will lose that sense of wide open space which IS the weight that balances the complexity of the of the castle itself.
crx

[robmorfin]

Alright!, thanks again, Chaos, now I get it.

[D.Labruyere]

hmmz, I think option 3 is the best option with your painting, in the sence that you balance your darks and lights. For me it is always a bit of a gamble. Though I think balance isn't always the correct word to use for it. A perfectly balanced painting will imo look boring.

example:

boring:
\\\\////
more interesting:
\\\\\\/\\\/\\\\

Well this is really abstract, but to me balancing out the amount of lines that go that way, or the amount of dark spots which will stand on certain locations in the painting is just one part of the job. Actually abusing your balance by purposely unbalancing it on certain parts is what leads the eye and makes something more or less interesting.

Though... now I got to think about it, that is just another part of balancing :\

places that look balanced.
places that don't look balanced.

blegh :dur:

Well what I do is find the "normality" in a painting and put abnormal points in it to make it more interesting. Though I'm a noob.

Ok, well here is another update. Though I don't know if the painting is actually progressing... I got stuck halfway through, and completely changed the overall look. Though it has gotten a lot more rough again, putting me a few steps backwards I geuss....

[jodali]

it gets smaller and smaller, and less and less important in the visiual field. and I thought my images were totally fucked up.....

lol

gunderson- I don't like the cross additions either but the darker clouds in the sky definitely changed it, i think that you maybe able to do it if you take out the cross field

chaos - your image is looking pretty good so far. I kind of like those colors you going so far. but I'm not sure if the perspective looks right. I really like the overall idea of it, the castle on a mountain top. very cool.

rob - I wish i could help you with the balance thing, I'm having a problem with that too. I liked what you had before, i think that if you do decide to add those clouds in, then you should make them not-to-contrasty, kind of make them high level soft kind

D.Labruyere - your image has changed a bit, I kind of liked where it was before, but now it seems to be a little better, get some highlights in there and also watch the perspective.




a little update here...
just trying some new things, a feeble attempt to create some balance in the composition.
on the left, I added small rocks, big rocks, and also cropped it. I'm not quite sure which looks better

http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m120/jdlfx/castles1212.gif

[Earendil]

One issue is the fact that the river is travelling in a perfectly straight line, almost directly at the viewer. Is there a more dynamic path the river could take that still shows off the waterfall and the castle? A large zigzag would look more natural, and allow for interesting stacking shapes that could lead the eye to the castle.

[daldbaatar]

Balance is killing me, I don't quite understand what's the right way to acomplish it, here i am posting some studies of balance through shapes of the same size, through lots of shapes to make it look busy and heavy on both sides, by dividing in equal spaces, by creating a composition through contrast and emphasis, but I'm not sure these are the right ways to acomplish it. Please let me know what you guys think.

Thanks.

Yo Robbie..I actually had known these stuffs but to me...i just follow my instincts. Try it.

[jodali]

earendil - thanks that sounds like a good idea, try to break up that unnaturally straight line, well I'm going to have to work on that tommorrow

I a few deatils in and also a few color layers just to see how they look..
http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m120/jdlfx/CAorg/castlesthumbsII.jpg

[rvdtor]

Well its thursday here so in case you guys ask me to do more on it i can use you guys' thursday instead of mine hehe, in any case i added details didn't want to overdo the distant valley

http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/2774/castle5uw4.jpg

jodali wow the castle is really coming together i favor this composition over the symmetrical one u had before. the landscape on the right gives it some great variation.

Robmorfin chaosrocks makes a good point about the balance...i hadn't thought about it that way before and in so doing i rethinked my own composition. i was filling the right of mine with mountains and clouds and all kinds of stuff trying to balance it but i figured like she said the open space compliments the chunk on the right of yours...though i still thing it could use a bit more atmosphere on the left. just my thought.

gundersen i like where its going just dont try to take away form the castle as that is your main focus. the crosses are way better than that lone cross you had before.

[daldbaatar]

The final....fixed and tweaked...

http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/3285/castlemuk9.jpg

[Earendil]

Dald> Awesome. Really like your lighting and rendering on this. Figure is still warped but other than that...

Rvdtor> Great addition of birds, banners, etc to give some action to the scene. Maybe even add a foreground object closer to the camera so we get that sense of depth/height even more. Maybe a lone bird or something.

[Form]

Agustin Patooti | Post 116:

No updates since this? Come on dude lets see a wip :) Thanks for posting more ref. Goodness.

Chaos | Post 117:

Yeah nice changes, though I think you have a real transition problem coming from traditional to digital. Your brushwork is so undefined and frantic that you are losing a lot of focus in the image. I think you are working on the wrong things too early, and you need to stay in the earlier stages for longer. Right now you are getting bogged down in tweaks, and polishing a turd... as they say. The cushions - rofl!
Id say big things to work on are scale - the cup is huge, the columns are tiny, the cushions are bigger than the door. You need to fix this by observing more keenly the proportion of objects in real life, and adopting a more logical approach when painting (think more). Also, your value is letting you down, and if you think you can hack it, I am happy to guide you through the process of doing a cast drawing. Your call - PM or msn me if you are keen to do this. It will eat about 40h of your time, but they are worth every penny.

Gundersen | Post 128:
You think that's mean? You aint seen nothin yet ;)

Chaos | Post 129:
You lack subtlety :P

Jodali | Post 135:
Did you make that? Whats with all the awesome custom smilies on CA at the moment?? :D

Robmorfin | Post 136:
I will comment more on this in your next post, but just a note here to watch your double saturated colours. That sky colour is competing against the city for volume. Much more down in composition.

Earendil | Post #140:

Looking really nice man. I hope you put that second bridge back in, it helped the composition. The tree on the right is important for composition, to swing the eye back into the composition, but try to avoid making it look too forced. Right now the curve of it seems a bit 'convenient' against the canvas edge, and you could have some more interesting angles in there while still providing a blocker and returner for the eyes. Also, the foliage seems a bit 'shy' from the top edge. As for focal point, your sweet spot (as far as the canvas goes) is the left side of the main tower (golden proportion point 1). Make sure this are has your conceptual interest in it, and also make sure that tree and bridge combo on the left leads the eye into the focus, you dont want to overshoot underneath the focus and lose that sweet spot. It should go bridge - tower - building base - 2nd bridge - loop back with tree - explore details. I like the pull of the clouds :) Watch your white clipping on the sky - save your value range for punch at the end. Cool cool :)

rvdtor | post 146:

Ok lets get to bizniss.
1. Try to avoid in most circumstances for major lines to intersect with a canvas corner. The way your hill comes in right from the corner makes the composition seem overly geometric and unnatural.
2. The main tower is oddly cropped at the top - add canvas.
3. The architecture is very odd - stylistically, it is inconsistant. Every element looks different. Its like a wall in a tile shop, where they put every tile on the wall for display purposes. For sure, you need variation, but you need to repeat the same sections a few times for it to be believable. Right now it looks like 8 architects all designed their own piece of the building.
4. It looks more like a wall than a castle in its dimension.
5. The grass ridges are odd, they seem far too sharp and dont have much depth. Why not a rolling hillside coming into the foreground?
6. The background is too indistinct - you lack a middle ground and a good foreground. You neeed a couple of plane changes in there and some sense of depth in the valley - thats a big panorama to be all one colour!

as for textures, feel free to use photos on soft light or multiply layers, or just experiment around to achieve effects. In production art, there is no such thing as cheating unless you are stealing the work of others.

Gundersen | Post 155:

Ok - the cross conundrum. Now for context, Thomas put in these crosses because I told him he needed a compositional element to lead into the painting more. Im glad you were so confident with it and went all out. I think the reaction from some people is exaggerated but proves a point, and you may have gone a bit crazy with them. They do absorb a lot of the focus. Most importantly though, they confuse the narrative. We have a foreground figure who appears to be some sort of wanderer approaching the city, and yet he has had time to jam all of these crosses into the ground? He must have been there a while :) Some sort of logical backstory needs to shine through. If the crosses were meant to be some part of the castle, then it doesnt make sense that there are none closer to the castle.

For future reference, the compositional leader could have simply been done with cloud shapes and maybe a mountain or two :P DOnt forget 'hidden' compositional lines that arent actual objects, just shapes of light or hue shifts in the painting. They still lead the eye.

chaos | post 157:
Oh, im gonna be so mean to you know :)

Post 159:

No design in the architecture right now - its still all blocks, and all in the mid ground. You need more depth! MOAR! There is currently no design to the architecture, leaving the shapes feeling slightly plain. Your warm and cool relationships are competing for attention as they are both very saturated. Not knowing whether to look in the darks or the lights, it begins to look abstracted. You have very few diagonals, and few lines which lead the eye around. I am getting stuck in the big elements of the circle at bottom, and the dark patch of right. And when i go exploring, there isnt much to look at. Push it. Push it reeeal good.

robmorfin | Post 162:

Ok a big rule (OF THUMB) is not to split your canvas in half compositionally. DOminance should always occur in rhythm - that repeats at smaller and smaller levels. Like the golden proportion - it balances in rhythm. A is to B as B is to C, NOT A=B=C.

I would suggest cropping the top and left away a bit, and making the top of that main tower the focal point. It should rest on the top right corner of the divine proportion. That brings the whole city into the frame as the SUBJECT, and highlights the contrasted tower within that large mass to balance as the FOCAL. Then the smaller area of sky will balance the darker tower. Capiche? Dont forget to bring some of that sky hue through the city for continuity.

D. Lab | Post 165:

This is looking really good in design, and colours, and in general. But i dont see how the path connects to the background (breaks depth), and the castle looks too flat, idl like to see that form reading nicely. I like the design, its kind of babylonian or something :) Push it!

jodali | post 169:

Looking better now, more balanced - the changed river shape balances the big shapes somewhat. Work your cloud and background shapes to add variation and make sure we dont slip off the canvas. Push depth more - though the basic structure is looking good. Increase your range of values and push focus. Find some colour unity (experiment with overlay layers maybe). Push the design of the castle. Cool :)

rvdtor | post 170:

ah, missed this on my first scan. The valley looks better now. Same with textures, and i like the birds. But the crits about the design and also the foreground hill still apply.

daldbaatar | post 171:

This is a great final piece, but im still seeing some perspective errors in the right hand side of the bottom face of the wall with the pennant on it. And in most of your ellipses (they are too narrow). Good work on the hue shifting :)

This week has been stellar guys. I am looking forward to recommending you guys to jobs in the future - your hard work is paying off!
A

[Earendil]

Form! Come baaaack!

Updated WIP!!! Today's turkey day and I've gotta finish this LOL. :P

Figure will be added, as well as a better tree, and some sky variation...better rendered rocks etc, textures O.o LEAVES...Ok

So you're saying that top tower, the right side should just GLOW or, have a focus there? Or should I have had the light coming from the other direction? I liked having the swooping lines all just go BAM to that gate...and then put the figure in relation to that in order to kinda sell the idea of "shit, I gotta get in THERE?" :)

EDIT: WAIT! I can flip it! YAYYY! But I'm not sure now...what do you think? aaieee!!

Ach, there's all sorts of oversaturated bits of color. Those'll go too.

[Agustin Poratti]

form i'm sorry if i havent posted much of my wips. the place i paint at doesnt have internet. and i gotta bring everything with me and send etc. i doubt ill post a wip today, atm im rendering stuff out and working from reference to see how to crap are castle walls suposed to look. oddly, ive chosen a very similar palette to part 2 of my dyptic from last weel. im kind of stuck at those colours. lol.

i started to work somewhat late this week, but ill defintily try to be more active next one.

[Agustin Poratti]

ear i think your piece looks way too "mirrored". think hwo would it look if you pushed up a bit the values on that trees, also.

[Agustin Poratti]

also ear you need more saturation on some of those walls. look at referencem of how sun bounces in the ground and lits walls adn stuff.

not the best example,
http://www.ellenkennon.com/art/Tuscan%20Sun%20NYTimes.jpg
http://images3.besthotels.com/hotelimages/s/034000/034531A.jpg

look again at this ref: see how saturated are teh walls in shadow
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=243405&stc=1&d=1195573218

[Earendil]

I'm going to try and make it work despite the fact that it's mirrored. I've some ideas. I haven't worked on the foreground at all those are basically block-ins. I'll take a look at the saturation. More WIP's forthcoming!

[Gundersen]

BTW people ITS THURSDAY the deadline is no mather where in the world you are. And according to the world times its either Thursday or Friday in the country you live in atm. which brings me to: TODAY IS THE DEADLINE!!

The latest possible deadline if you live in Honolulu is in 17 hours. After that the entire world is not in thursday any longer :P

Please be precise people. Its about acting proffesional!

[chaosrocks]

it is still thursday here for another 11 hours. I will post finished by deadline. well some version of finished. since I was just told that the whole thing sucks and I should go back to kindergarten I think it will not be as finished a s I though it was going to be. but it will be revised.

not to mention the whole cooking a 7course meal for 10 people today. but we won't go there.

[Gundersen]

Chaosrock: When i started this course i had never used Photoshop for painting almost as well. Had tried it, but didnt understand how to do it. I think you are useing painted, but that doesnt mather. The best tips i have gotten so far is:

- Start with a BIG BRUSH
- Detail more and more and more as much as you can in the end. Smaller brushes for details.
- Start of in B&W to get shadow and light correctly
- Paint loosly, let your brush explore the canvas. Dont beat yourself up on mistakes.
- Use alot of colours, blend it in togheter
- Paint over
- Changes canvas size
- Flip image

.... on and on...

What i find most important is to work loosly, work fast and dont care if i have to take away stuff and redo certain parts.

Cheers. I got 5 hours left of Thursday

[chaosrocks]

good advice.

still under construction
actually I do use big brushes
Im trying not to mush all the colors together

Im a failure at detail

[Gundersen]

I am sorry I dont have time to take your painting and show you some examples, working as hell on mine atm...

Try to paint on your image opened in a size equal to this

__________________________________________________ _____________
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The reason for saying that is that you see how your image works, rather then the details !

Try it! it works amazingly good. Then you can zooooooom in on it later

[chaosrocks]

actually I do
but Im messy
I'll keep trying

sorry to be so grumpy about the crosses... but I really disliked them
crx

[Gundersen]

youll be the one to hate my final one the most then :) hehehehe

[Gundersen]

Final: The Arrival of the Templars

This week was a strugle for me.. grr, But it was a good learning experience. First of all that not every painting you do is great, and if i had realised that earlyer i would probably have made some new thumbs to see if i could get a better image. BUT i decided to stick with the image i had and try to use my skills(heheh) to make it what i wanted too. One of the reason why i strugled was that i wanted to show an evil castle, but it had to be during day time. And not many people paint evil castles during day time ... So it was a challenge when it came to lights. I got stuck with only one lightsource, and the colours was dull and boring in the begining, til some of you opened my eyes. Then i tried to work with colours as well as light sources. In the end I got a tips from Adam/Form that made me realise a good way to show what i wanted.
The idea of the image atm is the title "The Arrival of the Templars" Where the templars are approaching this evil fortress. And a magical "hole" in the sky is creating a cross of light on the ground from the Templar towards the castle.

Hope you like it

http://clicken.no/Thomas/Design/DesinFinal.jpg


Here is also the process for anyone interested, Please give tips if there is part of my process that doesnt make sense... Images go from left to right, left to right...

http://clicken.no/Thomas/Design/Process.jpg

[chaosrocks]

im gonna have to go cook. yeah I would rather work on this than spend the next hour peeling potatoes... but

so I suppose this is done
244918
augh I gotta go cook yet I keep seeing thing I HAVE to fix!

it's ok gundy... but I still think you kinda lost the castle in the drama

[Agustin Poratti]

my only comment on you gundy is do a lot of thumbnails next time. :) that's what doesnt make sense. starting right away with the first.
gj!

i like that mirrored valley on the third row of the process.

BTW i still have 6 beautiful hours of Thursday here in Argentina, so, sucks to be you friday-people.
handing my final at night.

[Gundersen]

Augustinohh it was not the first thumb at all ... no no .. I did Sketchup 3D models, and several drawings, but this was the thumb i decided on.

Chaosrock ok . WHERE THA HELL does it say that the castle needs to be the only thing in your scene, or where does it say that it needs to be the main focus? It simply say it need to be a castle in there somewhere AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[chaosrocks]

Production Piece:
...
The topic is to do a painting of a castle.

bold added for emphasis

Im a litteralist... I interpreted this to mean it had to be about the castle. Silly me stuck here in this box. :P
crx

[Agustin Poratti]

woa chaos, ive been looking at digital pieces of you for a long time now, and this is the first one in wich, imo, you've finally pushed the envelope, congratz!
the clouds read well, values start to work, and theres a sense of cohesion and dynamism around.. :) fix what you ahve to when you can!

[Agustin Poratti]

final. critique welcome (notice i'm the kind of guy which first takes the piece to a completed level, then receives the critique, and then based on that critique perform changes for the final folder. im sry, im not the 1 brushstroke/1 wip posted kind of forum guy, but ill try my hardest to post more of the processes. also, busy week here)
selfcritique:
-done some "poetry" on the specs of the dome and other places to show the material. not sure if its acceptable.
-feeling i need more elements than just castle, sun, mountains and pyromaniacs. maybe a weeping willow on the left, 'something', somewhere.
-wtf with those pyromaniacs? that's pretty random dude... you generate a nice peacefull sunset setting, and then out of nowhere all that people with torches appear. it could be distracting and confusing.
a:i know, i couldnt help it. im on a very "masses of people going somewhere" mood lately.
-the castle needs more polishing. and there are some minor bugs in the construction aswell.
a:does "no underdrawing" ring a bell?
-personal one here. the whole palette is very cliche. you can do better than that.
a:ok.that's enough. shut up.

----------

"That was the last time I saw Castle Horessenni standing..."

[Form]

great finals...

officially, the deadline is 9 hours and 45 minutes away :) plenty of time to start over should you feel inclined ;)

[D.Labruyere]

4:20 am and it still looks like crap >.<

[Form]

i think its looking good, d.lab. You need to now consolidate your focal point and push your sat and contrast there, to make the castle pop out from the background. the close corner of the castle would be perfect, but be aware that your focal point is dead centre on the canvas - you may want to consider cropping the right side a bit to get it a bit less static.

[jodali]

well I spent a few more hours last night doing some stuff, and today, I woke up spent a few hours on it, did the whole turkey day thing, and spent even more time on it, tried to squeeze every hour out today that I could, now I'm tired...
11:20, I still got some time left!

http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m120/jdlfx/CAorg/112207castleFIN600.jpg
http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m120/jdlfx/CAorg/112207castleFIN1000.jpg
http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m120/jdlfx/CAorg/drunkduckjdl.gif
form - yes I did make that and thanks for noticing, I thought about it after reading about chaos' drunk ducks, I had to take a break from painting and do some easy stuff.

[chaosrocks]

heheeheh
is that my icon?
I love it!
http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m120/jdlfx/CAorg/drunkduckjdl.gif

[Earendil]

Still a WIP. :bashful:

I'm not sure if there's any other comments I can react to, at this point I'm rendering the foreground elements, texturing, and adding the figure. All before 4AM my time. ;) Wooooo! YEAHHH!!!! :vodkamachine:

[robmorfin]

Turkey day as well, all day cleaning up, cooking, taking care of children, just had the last 2 hrs. to work on the assignment, thanks everyone for your comments, thanks also to you Form, Here is my final for the Castle, I am happy, I like it.

Still have to work on previous week piece, will post later.

[jodali]

gundy - I kind of like your final, i'm glad you kept that sky, and your overall composition is done pretty good.

chaos - I really like your final colors, you have a good eye for colors that work well with each other. and I dont know why those smiley's keep giving alcohol to the ducks.

agustin - I really like your final, the colors, composition and the lighting. the only thing that I dont like is that there seems to be something wrong with the perspective.

D.Labruyere - I really like the colors and the mood of your final.

Earendil - the perspective is right on, and the lighting looks real good to. gotta love that photoshop leaf brush. it may just be me, but it looks like you had the tree on the right textured and the painted over it? either way it looks pretty good

edit:
robmorfin - sorry I didn't see your post when I wrote this. a very interesting mood you have going there. I like the fact that you have color variations to show fore, mid and background, but the only thing that i dont like is how they dont really blend into each other, it kind of looks like chunks. But lighting and perspective make it believable

[Gundersen]

Some good work people, the colour work was more impressive last week, seems like alot of the work are getting more neutral in its colour use... Is someone getting scared of useing colours that are not "natural" ? :)

Glad you "kind" of like it Jodali hehehe

[robmorfin]

Alright, here is my previous week assignment with a better emphasis, lots of rythm, proportion, scale & balance.

[robmorfin]

Form, Thanks, helped a lot.
Rvdtor, Awesome work, if you have a chance add shadows to the side walls.
Daldbaatar, great job; Thanks I followed my instincts at the end and used everyones advice.
Labruy, Nice Depth, too centered, add some more detail where you emphasise most, thanks for the advice.
Jodali, Looks very nice but the rocks and the waterfall at front are ouy of proportion to ea. other and is hard to tell if one is too close, the other too far or one too big and the other too small, very nice texturing; Thanks for your advice.
Gund, looks awesome.
Chaos, I like it, great improvement.
Agustin, too centered, horizon too centered as well, darker with the sun behind, dome is out of perpective, you are looking at it from below.

Hope I don't forget anybody, bye, good luck, is 1:41AM my time, tired as hell.

[Earendil]

Annnnd FINISHED! Or as close to it as possible.

I really like how I got the exact pose I was looking for on the 2nd or 3rd try.

:blahblah:
Cropped the image so the composition hopefully works better now. Wanted to spend more time texturing, but I think it reads pretty well altogether. I'm not sure if got the "almost sunset" lighting of late-afternoon, but I think so...

Crits will happen after I die for a few hours.

Process:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2273/2042619862_ed3ff70754_o_d.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2343/2057732565_71886534a0_o_d.jpghttp://farm3.static.flickr.com/2218/2058518712_88837de29d_o_d.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2159/2057732615_084875704b_o_d.jpghttp://farm3.static.flickr.com/2186/2058518776_6190bc66dc_o_d.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2177/2057055914_b5a66ac04f_o_d.jpg

[robmorfin]

robmorfin - sorry I didn't see your post when I wrote this. a very interesting mood you have going there. I like the fact that you have color variations to show fore, mid and background, but the only thing that i dont like is how they dont really blend into each other, it kind of looks like chunks. But lighting and perspective make it believable


Thanks Jodali, I guess I didn't want to blend them, otherwise you loose the depth effect.

[robmorfin]

Ear, looks great, only the symbol lines kind of mess with the perspective.

[jodali]

spent a little bit of time playing with colors and overlays ans a few others, (about 30 layers) kept in mind what everyone said about it.I know its already past due but i thought you guys might want to see it.
http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m120/jdlfx/CAorg/112307castleredo1.jpg

[Earendil]

Nice jodali, I think it works better overall. Not sure what specifically, but the saturation is better in certain areas, and the foreground grass is less neon in color which is also good.

Great!

[chaosrocks]

the value contrast is working a lot better.the colors are still very soft. The large rock on the right as getting a weird perspective uplift. there is one spot where the separation of castle from Back ground isn't happening. on the right edge where both the color and value of the tower and the cliff are so similar that the space is getting flattened. and the darker square of cliff between the tower and the Keep is popping forward. easy to fix. I still want to darken the entire castle to pop it a little mor eon the landscape.

If our castles were going to poll. I'd vote fro Robs. both as coolest image and most improved. good job.

more crits later
respectfully submitted
Crx

[Form]

http://sistertoldjah.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/kerryfootball.jpg

OMG!! i really dropped the ball on this one, sorry.... doing up week 5 now!! Stand by...

[Earendil]

Muahahaa! :yum:

[Form]

247287

[Form]

well, sorry if some of those marks seem a bit whoa!!

keep in mind, it was all based on theories of design this week.

The method i used was to give a mark out of ten for balance, emphasis, rhythm and proportion, average those all out to a mark out of ten, and then tweak it + or - for unity and design. Noone was tweaked more than 1.0 either way. There were 2 people who I really wanted to give pro to this week, but for varying circumstances, fell slightly short. Next week we will have our first pro, i can feeeer it!!

[Form]

ps im really, really busy so i wont be critting the finals tonight. if you really want C+C, ask up, but if you are content with your own and other's critique, i could use the shut eye ;)

[Earendil]

That's kind of where I imagined myself. And now for one of the new smileys. :anime: Haaaaaa! Moar studies! :lifedrawing:

Looking forward to next lesson!

[D.Labruyere]

I already thought I would get a low mark since it isn't finished. I will work (have to for next week anyway) more on it this week and try to improve it :)

[robmorfin]

Wow, 3 HPs already, didn't expect them so soon, will try to get more of those. A 7 is pretty good as well, will try to aim higher.

[D.Labruyere]

Ok, I wasn't happy with my finished product of this week. Since we have to use it for week 5 also, I decided to continue work on it. Right now I'm at a point where you could say I'm basicaly "stuck" with the painting. I know it isn't a finished product yet, but I don't really know how to take it to the next step without totally screwing it. Since I dont want to fall back to far behind, I'm going to use what I've got now for the assignment of week 5.

Well, here it is: