Layout i'm painting

[civicboi]

Hey there,

This is my first time posting on here, I'm about halfway through this painting in Photoshop (going to try painter when I have the time :S). If you have any C & C then i'm up for it :) anything to make it better, here goes

http://www.rmode.ca/steve/forsite.gif

Thanks, hope you like it

[Adam]

your colors are way too saturated! bring them down a little and it should look quite nice. The line drawing is stellar, but something about the foreground wall and the archway on the right side bothers me. Also the clouds are fairly obviously done with a filter, which is something that would be good to start avoiding. I hope that helps! This is a very cool drawing and it should look awesome when its finished.

[Chris Beatrice]

I like where this is going. You've got some nice old /new contrasts.
As for color, (with all respect to Adam) it's not fair to simply say "too saturated." Color is relative, and I'm not sure what you're trying to do with light and color here. If you intend this to look "realistic", then yes, maybe some of the colors are more saturated than you want. My sense, though, is that the colors in this piece bear no relationship to one another. The light / color in the whole piece has not been thought out, but rather each component is simply "colored" separately (I see that a lot...).

Also, since there really isn't that much color in the piece, Adam may be picking up on the whole green grass thing. There are a lot more colors in "green grass" than what's shown here.

I also think you have a perspective problem, but again, I'm not sure how much of this is intentional. Your vanishing points are too close together, resulting in the angle at the top of the tall building being less than 90 degrees. This can never happen in real life (imagine you're standing directly at the foot of the building, looking straight up - the smallest that angle can get is 90 degrees). It can never be less than 90 while you're still able to see both sides of the building. But if it's an intentional distortion, of course that's fine. If the intention, however, is to create the illusion of dizzying height (contrasted to the other buildings) then there are other ways you might try to do that (such as atmospheric perspective).

Amen to Adam re the clouds (filter).

[civicboi]

Thanks a lot for the critiques guys, I like getting educated ones like yours instead of, "I don't like it". I'll take what you both said and I'll post up an update in the next few days. Thanks again!

[civicboi]

Hey guys,

I've pretty much laid out the colours I'd like. I'm really new to painting (this is my first). Any comments and crits are welcome. I have a feeling the clock tower building is too warm, and looks too close for the scale I'd like. Any suggestions on that? Also, you mentioned saturation, could you please define that a bit for me? Thanks a lot guys, it's much appreciated.

http://www.rmode.ca/steve/finallayoutrender11.gif

[Chris Beatrice]

Civicboy,
It's really hard to comment on this without knowing what you're trying to do. I think it's an interesting piece, but parts of it are more interesting than others. For example, I really like the way you've rendered the leaves on the right side of the piece (the ones against the sky), but those on the bottom don't look as well-realized to me. Also, the buildings seem to be like line drawings with color, while much of the lower half of the piece is more of a painting. The sky is a very bright blue, yet this is not finding its way into your shadows, which it should, I think, for what you're trying to do here.

I will talk about color one more time. This may be too much for you at this stage, but take what you can out of it: First, "saturation" refers to how much... well, "color" there is in a color. For example, pure red, pure green, etc. are 100% saturated; gray is 0% saturated. Some people call this "chroma", i.e. more saturated colors have more "chroma." If you use Photoshop, pick a basic color, then adjust its saturation via the slider, and watch what happens. That's probably the best way to understand it.

But how to deal with saturation (and color in general) in painting is more complicated. I will try to explain it with respect to the comment made about this piece. The color of the light in a scene determines how the objects in that scene appear to the eye. When you have a strongly colored light, whether it's direct, or ambient light, it affects the apparent colors of objects more dramatically. So when we say an apple is "red" or grass is "green", all we really mean is those are the respective colors those things appear in pure white light. In green light, the grass would still appear green, but the apple would appear black. Mind you, that's only if we're talking about a pure red apple in a pure green light. Such conditions never really arise in the real world, but understanding the extremes helps you figure out how light operates in more subtle, natural conditions.

We call the red of the apple its "local color." This is a convenient way of distinguishing it from its apparent color, although in fact there is no such thing as "local color" because if you can see the object, it is being lit, and only apparent color therefore matters!!

Anyway, the long and the short of it is, going back to the apple and grass in the green light issue, it is almost impossible to have equally saturated apparent object colors in a scene, if you want it to look natural. When you color things based solely on their local color (grass is green, sky is blue, cast shadow on wall is black, etc.) you end up with something that looks too saturated. Coloring this way is coloring what you think you see, not what you really see.

It's not that everything is too saturated, it's that there is no relationship between all the colors in the scene. That relationship comes from the light, which is an illusion you're trying to create. In a natural setting such as this, a lot of bluish ambient light comes from the sky, from almost all directions, and will tend to color the shadows cast from the direct light of the sun. That blue will therefore pervade the entire piece, tie it together, and connect it with the sky. Your sky, here, is completely disconnected from the rest of the piece.

Also, light will bounce off of everthing it hits, before petering out. This is called "radiosity" (another inaccurate, though convenient term), and has the effect of equalizing a lot of colors in the scene.

[civicboi]

Thanks so much for taking the time to describe that in detail. It helps alot. I'll take your suggestions and attempt to put them into this piece. I'll post again soon!

[civicboi]

Hey guys, I worked on it a little today, Keep in mind, this is just a rough of what direction i'd like it to go in. As always, C & C are welcome. Thanks!

http://psychaotic.tripod.com/clocktower.jpg

*edit* sorry, I'll Ftp up the image to my site later, tripod sucks.

[EVIL]

The shadows tell me you have 2 suns!

I think the shadow in the bottom left doorpost should be removed.