The Peer Project- OPEN Foundational Exercises for All, A great place to start.

[Idiot Apathy]

The Peer Project Vol. 2
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See Vol. 1 here: http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=53517
It is of course still open to participation, however my time is going to be spent here so I will be unable to comment on your results.
Do note however that for the most part "the answers" have already been given, you may just have to dig them up ;)
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The Mission Statement:
In coming here I hope you have come to learn, to discuss and to teach; or at the very least one of the above. A lesson learned in Vol. 1 of the Peer Project is that if I want this project to live I unfortunately will be unable to detach myself as ringleader for this project, alas I'm fine with that. It is my sincerest hope that others will also contribute to the thread and I whole-heartily encourage you all to do so - more on that later.

I'm nothing special, just a normal guy on this forum same as you and everyone else - I may know a thing or two you don't, but I assure you - there are many things you know that I don't as well. This is in fact, an essential part of this threads concept - we will share our own knowledge and what we are unsure of our collective thoughts will decipher. So to restate, I may be the ringleader however I am no teacher and am not qualified to be so - all participants including myself are in fact the teachers and the students.

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It would be great if some of you professionals and instructors could drop in from time to time to help us out!

I would like to thank briggsy@ashtons for all his kindness and hard work in the Peer Project Vol. 1 and would love to see him in here as well.
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The Rundown:

Here are the keystones I would like to see for the project -

1. Exercises: The backbone of the project. This is what I will focus most on. These will, for the time being be fairly foundational and basic. A solid foundation is extremely important in my opinion. The focus on these is to open participants eyes and to get them thinking, the focus is not on perfection. In other words, you will learn to learn for yourself I hope. These will again, be fairly basic to keep the amount of time needed to participate at a minimum. I of course welcome anyone to contribute anything to this keystone. Also, any suggestions are welcome as well - if you have something you think would be good for this let me know, or if something is bothering you I'll see what I can do as well.

2. Demonstrations: Well, come on - we all know what demonstrations are. I see this as something others would be more inclined to contribute as it's a bit less work than the exercises. For this keystone as well I see suggestions and requests as a large part.

3. Questions and Theory: Have a question? Something bothering you? Ask away! I would prefer to keep this more open and less about individual critiques and etc - there is plenty of other spots for that. I would like to see this as a large part of the thread as well. I will create a post near the beginning of this thread to host links to all the questions so they don't get lost.

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The Exercises:

I will post the exercise and an example of the "finished" product I envisioned. The "finished" product will be in link format only - I do NOT want people to look at this until they have done the exercise. I believe it is vital that you think through this for yourselves, more vital in fact than the actual exercise. If you are completely lost please ask questions - if you can't help it use the example as a guide, do not copy it try only to understand the reasons behind it. You are not here to show off or produce art, you are here to learn and to study. Those of you who feel embarrassed to post their results and lurk beneath the shadows shall feel divine wrath! How are you to learn if you don't try?

1: Exercise Guidelines
a. The exercise will be set up with a goal in mind, sometimes specific, sometimes fairly loose. Focus on the concept, not on the final product.
b. As you do the project I want everyone to keep notes of their thoughts and reasoning. Why did you do what you did, that sort of thing. If for whatever reason you can't keep notes I still want you to think explicitly about what you are doing and write something down afterwards. In your notes and thoughts I want to take the key ideas and post them here. With this insight into your thought process we all can both learn and teach each other much more effectively.
c. Spend as much or as little time as you need to understand the concept. This is only a race against yourself.
d. All exercises are of course optional, feel free to pick and choose if there are activities you would rather do or rather not do. I will however note in the exercise if they are somewhat concurrent or if I believe it would be best to do a previous exercise before hand.
e. People who are too embarrassed to post their results will be shot on sight, you're here to learn not to show off.

I strongly recommend you read the discussions and analyses within others posts that will occur between these pages and exercises. In the past volume I saw and personally repeated the same advice over and over.

This being said, sometimes advice or critiques will be given that may be incorrect, or misconceptions; I most likely am not innocent of this either. If you spot mistakes be sure and correct them! Don't confuse these with opinions however, which are never wrong only different.

Exercise One: Simplified Construction of a Sphere (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1016341&postcount=2)
Exercise Two: Tone with Color (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1016342&postcount=3)
Exercise Three: Light and Color (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1016344&postcount=4)
Exercise Four: Light and Color Part B! (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1016345&postcount=5)
Exercise Five: Light and Color Part C! (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1023560&postcount=31)
Project One (Beta): Simple Shape Rendering, emphasis on different materials! (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1028888&postcount=46)
Exercise Six: Color Recognition: Part A: Hue! (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1030667&postcount=53)
Exercise Six: Color Recognition: Part B: "Brightness"! (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1087019&postcount=111)
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The Tutorials, Demonstrations and Explanations:

Demo by Prometheus|ANJ (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1026345&postcount=40): Lighting different materials, Clay Plastic and Chrome + Insight into thoughts and Painting Process.
Demo by ChrisMayernik: (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1029123&postcount=47)Efficent Tool Selection in PS, general process tips, shadows and aerial perspective.
Demo by Cup of Joe: (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1029160&postcount=49)Method for Determining Cast Shadows.
Demo by Romance: (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1041761&postcount=86) Using Lighting to Efficently Describe Surface Texture.
Demo by Yoitisi: (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1279975&postcount=173) Proper Sphere Shadow Construction.
Demo by dischord: (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1346824&postcount=208) Method for Determining Specular Position
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The Questions:

Question One: From EtaCarinae: (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1036356&postcount=76)Specific Questions on Edges, refering to Elwells Edges Tutorial
Question Two: From Duq: (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1313822&postcount=197)Questions on Reflected Light Value and Precise Specular Position

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The Valuable Link Archive:
Please feel free to suggest any contributions!

Dr. David Briggs: Further Reading
http://djcbriggs.googlepages.com/
Fantastic collection of knowledge, go here and learn.
Prometheus|ANJ's excellent "Art Tutorial" (This is awesome!)
http://itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm
More than you ever wanted to know about light (Amazing)
http://science.howstuffworks.com/light.htm
briggsy@ashtons on proper sphere construction: (Woo!)
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=699669&postcount=175
Edges Primer by Elwell (You will read this or die!)
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=51913
Detailed Lighting Tutorial (You will read this or die!)
http://www.itchy-animation.co.uk/ (Click Tutorials>Light)

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Basics and Definitions:

Hopefully these will keep us on the same page and better help us to understand each other. A standardization system and a lexicon if you will. Please correct me when I am wrong and I welcome suggestions!

Light for Artists, In my limited understanding:
Picture for a moment if you will the most blue light that you can imagine. What is theoretically happening with this light is that the only the hue of blue is present in the lightsource. Sunlight, theoretically is pure white light, meaning it contains all hues at their maximum saturations. Now it is important to consider that absolutely everything you can see is quite technically a lightsource - if it wasn't you couldn't see it. More on that in a minute...

So, from light from a lightsource to an object - when light hits an object, to keep it simple at the moment, the object either absorbs or reflects the light it receives. What we actually see, i.e. a yellow banana, is the reflected light - all other colors are absorbed. This light in turn can be considered a lightsource, though nowhere near as powerful as the the original direct lightsource and of course in the case of the banana the light has taken on new properties such as a dominant yellow hue.

This should serve only as a very basic and flawed primer - more on this another day, or perhaps today if you yourself feel so inclined. I suggest starting at the first two links provided above from howstuffworks.com and Prometheus|ANJ. I'm still trying to pin it all down in fact.

Color:
We all know it when we see it of course but here is a wordy definition from Princeton's WordNet: a visual attribute of things that results from the light they emit or transmit or reflect. You can get crazy scientific on your own time, but in art terms I think it is proper to consider color as consisting of Hue, Tone and saturation.

Tone:
A measure of the amount of light (brightness, with it's extreme at white) or the lack of light (darkness, with the extreme being black). I think it is perhaps proper to think, more light = more tone, less light = less tone. There are of course complications, but I think it still remains basically true. I believe tone is the most important factor in the readability not only in form but in an image as a whole. Tone is very important and should never be neglected.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v13/Ragnarok27/PeerProject%20V2/ValueScale.jpg
From Left to Right, White to Black in 10% increments.
Not to be confused with: Brightness, Value and Luminosity. These as I've come to find out all mean different things entirely, and it really does get confusing at times. In fact, you will probably often find me using value sometimes to describe tone :\ It's the term I was taught with haha!

Hue:
Again from WordNet: The quality of a color as determined by its dominant wavelength. Again, get crazy scientific on your own time - I do recommend doing so. Check out the link to howstuffworks.com on light in the Links Archive. With any level of saturation will come hue, and at any value level with the exceptions of white and black hue will exist. Hue can often be a bit hard to discern at lower saturations and lower values, for example - ever seen a dark yellow? A good way to discern hue that I recently learned is a bit of a deduction game. You will of course have a decent idea of what hue any given color is - from here I think it is helpful to ask yourself is it more of this hue, is it perhaps an orange with a tendency towards red, or perhaps yellow? If yes, chances are you have a yellow-orange or red-orange to some degree, if you are positive in saying no - then you have orange. Seems simple but it was a neat revelation to me at the time ;)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v13/Ragnarok27/PeerProject%20V2/HueScale.jpg
From Left to Right: Yellow, Orange, Red, Red-Magenta, Magenta, Violet, Blue, Blue-Cyan, Cyan, Green-Cyan, Green, Yellow-Green and finally white. The white symbolizes that in light these will combine to make white, that and I wanted it proportional :P. This selection may seem a bit odd to most of you familiar with traditional color wheels, here I have based my choices on the primaries of Red, Green and Blue - Secondaries of Cyan, Magenta and Yellow and Tertiaries as the remainders. I believe this is the most correct representation of light, but again - I'm still working on pinning this all down. I think it is also important to note that violet could perhaps be more properly named as blue-magenta, but what's in a name really?

Saturation:
A measure of how pure a hue is. If a hue is mixed with any other hue it will loose saturation. There are exceptions but only if you are mixing say a low saturation color with a high saturation color - but you will still loose the saturation in your original color. If you say your object is at the absolute maximum saturation possible you are in effect saying that the object is reflecting only one hue and absorbing all others.
Not to be confused with: Intensity and Chroma. I suppose we'll go into these terms later.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v13/Ragnarok27/PeerProject%20V2/SaturationScale1yellow100.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v13/Ragnarok27/PeerProject%20V2/SaturationScale2yellow60.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v13/Ragnarok27/PeerProject%20V2/SScale3yellow100100to00.jpg
Top Bar: From left to right, 100% value 100% saturation Yellow to 100% value 0% saturation Yellow in 10% increments. It is important to note that with 0% saturation it is a misnomer to actually call it yellow, it is in fact no longer color - simply value, white to be exact.

Middle Bar: From left to right, 60% value 100% saturation Yellow to 60% value 0% saturation Yellow in 10% increments. Again, with no saturation it is actually no longer color only value, we can not properly call this yellow.

Bottom Bar: From left to right, 100% value 100% saturation Yellow to 0% value 0% Yellow in 10% increments. Again, it is no longer color once we have removed saturation, in this case it has become pure black.

Local Color:
The color we percieve an object to truly be, usually this is under bright sunlight without any interference or the effects of shadow and reflections. I.e. An orange orange, yellow banana, white eggs (I must be hungry...) It is important to note that this perception can cause trouble in many instances, can you picture say, an egg under a bright red light? Do you picture it as white, or do you picture it as red?

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Using Color with our Digital Medium:

Do note how confusing it is to have to use Tone, Brightness and Value ... but don't let it it bother you haha!


Adobe Photoshop's Color Picker:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v13/Ragnarok27/PeerProject%20V2/Photoshopcolorpicker.jpg

A: The Selection Window - From here you can visually choose the color you want. Top to bottom of the entire square is a scale of brightness, top is white being 100% and bottom is black being 60%. Left to right is a scale of saturation for the entire square, left being 0% saturation and right being 100% saturation.
B: Note the radial dial is selected in this box under H, for hue. This controls object D, the slider. If I knew practical uses for the other radial dials I would go into them at this time.
C: The Hue (H), Saturation (S) and Brightness (B) input boxes. Note that brightness is a not exactly a synonym for tone. The Hue box is measured in degrees, as if on a wheel - D, the slider bar is perhaps more accurate as a band or wheel. In this case both 0 degrees and 360 degrees are Red, add 30 degrees incrementally to recreate the hue bar post in the above section. Again, concerning the other input boxes - I have yet to determine a practical use for these for painting.
D: The slider, currently depicting a full hue range with each hue at 100% brightness and 100% saturation.

Corel Painter's Color Wheel:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v13/Ragnarok27/PeerProject%20V2/paintercolorwheel.jpg


A: The Selection Window - From here you can visually choose the color you want. Top left corner represents white, 100% brightness 0% saturation. Bottom left corner represents black, 0% value 0% saturation. The right corner represents a pure hue - 50% value 100% saturation (In Photoshop this is 100% value 100% saturation, I think - perhaps this makes more sense but is much harder to calculate).
B: The Circle shape surrounding A is in fact a color wheel. In Painter this is how you select your hue.
C: Inside the box are H (Hue) S (Saturation) and V (Value) scale measurements. When I used painter I never really bothered to look at any of these, relying only on visually picking the colors I needed. So, as such in never using them - I have yet to wrap my head around hue being a percentage haha. Saturation makes sense of course, but value is complicated by the triangular geometry, and as we all know artists generally hate math :)
D: Same story here, I never used these - you can switch this between HSV (Hue, Saturation and Value) and RGB (Red and Green and Blue). Don't feel bad if you don't understand why RGB would be of any use, it's a long story. :) hehehe!

[Idiot Apathy]

Exercise One: Simplified Construction of a Sphere
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Intro:
In the last volume of the Peer Project we all sort of had our own idea on what a sphere was supposed to look like, briggsy@ashtons set us all straight in this post here: http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=699669&postcount=175.

Our first exercise is a simple one, but will be useful because I think a sphere will be valuable in later exercises.

I will post my results below to be used as a loose guide/reference. I would prefer you not look at these until you are done, or unless you are confused/stuck.
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Exercise Guidelines
a. The exercise will be set up with a goal in mind, sometimes specific, sometimes fairly loose. Focus on the concept, not on the final product.
b. As you do the project I want everyone to keep notes of their thoughts and reasoning. Why did you do what you did, that sort of thing. If for whatever reason you can't keep notes I still want you to think explicitly about what you are doing and write something down afterwards. In your notes and thoughts I want to take the key ideas and post them here. With this insight into your thought process we all can both learn and teach each other much more effectively.
c. Spend as much or as little time as you need to understand the concept. This is only a race against yourself.
d. All exercises are of course optional, feel free to pick and choose if there are activities you would rather do or rather not do. I will however note in the exercise if they are somewhat concurrent or if I believe it would be best to do a previous exercise before hand.
e. People who are too embarrassed to post their results will be shot on sight, you're here to learn not to show off.
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Step One:
Sketch in a light tone circle, woo! Also if you so choose draw a light value for a table surface for the sphere to rest upon.

Step Two:
Decide upon the direction of your lightsource.

Step Three:
Determine your form shadow, this will speak largely about the direction of your lightsource.

Step Four:
Determine your cast shadow, this too will speak largely about the direction of your lightsource.

Step Five:
Choose appropriate flat values for each of these areas: Full light, shadow-side of the sphere, cast shadow, and background/background with a table if you so choose. You may also want to choose a value for light half-light and dark half-light if that makes sense to you ;). Refer to the link at the top of this post if you get lost!

Step Six:
Determine the proper strength of edge for all areas. See Elwell's magnificent post on edges in the links section of this thread.

Step Seven:
Add ambient light into the shadow side of the sphere.

Step Eight:
Depending on the surface quality of your sphere the highlight may be rather intense and concentrated or perhaps dull and spread out. Add whichever you choose. For more thoughts on this, see Prometheus|ANJ's tutorial in the links section of this thread.

Optional Step:
Think about what other reflected or ambient light may be present. Is the table or background reflecting light? Or perhaps is the sphere itself reflecting light onto the table?

Finishing Steps:
Save your results to a JPEG format at an appropriate size for web viewing. Along with your image please post your thoughts/notes while doing the exercise and/or on the exercise itself.

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I strongly recommend you read the discussions and analyses within others posts that will occur between these pages and exercises. In the past volume I saw and personally repeated the same advice over and over.

This being said, sometimes advice or critiques will be given that may be incorrect, or misconceptions; I most likely am not innocent of this either. If you spot mistakes be sure and correct them! Don't confuse these with opinions however, which are never wrong only different.
- - - - - - -
My results to prevent confusion and for reference: (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1025218&postcount=37) click it foo!
I would prefer you not look at these until you are done, or unless you are confused/stuck. I do hope you kick my ass and show me how it's done in these exercises :D

[Idiot Apathy]

Exercise Two: Tone with Color
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Intro:

This is a bit of a rehash of from Vol. One - Exercise One so I apologize to those of you who have already done this.

I feel that when many people start out trying to work with full color they have no idea where to begin, I feel confident in saying so because I had no idea where to begin.

It is important to understand how tone is connected to light and how important it is to color. I'm hoping that this exercise will open some peoples eyes and get others thinking about it even more.

This exercise is also rather simple, but I think perhaps it is fairly effective.

I will post my results below to be used as a guide/reference. I would prefer you not look at these until you are done, or unless you are confused/stuck.
- - - - - - -

Exercise Guidelines
a. The exercise will be set up with a goal in mind, sometimes specific, sometimes fairly loose. Focus on the concept, not on the final product.
b. As you do the project I want everyone to keep notes of their thoughts and reasoning. Why did you do what you did, that sort of thing. If for whatever reason you can't keep notes I still want you to think explicitly about what you are doing and write something down afterwards. In your notes and thoughts I want to take the key ideas and post them here. With this insight into your thought process we all can both learn and teach each other much more effectively.
c. Spend as much or as little time as you need to understand the concept. This is only a race against yourself.
d. All exercises are of course optional, feel free to pick and choose if there are activities you would rather do or rather not do. I will however note in the exercise if they are somewhat concurrent or if I believe it would be best to do a previous exercise before hand.
e. People who are too embarrassed to post their results will be shot on sight, you're here to learn not to show off.
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Step One:
Prepare your canvas to have room for two spheres set out side by side. I also recommend that you put a pure gray as the background toning. White is perhaps too brillant and will affect your perception on this exercise. Black is vice versa and will likewise affect your perception. Let's just go with a nice ugly 50% gray ok?

Step Two:
Follow the guidelines laid out in Exercise One to create a simple sphere on the left, we will use the space for another sphere in a moment. This first sphere is to be black and white grayscale only.

Step Three:
Using the same guidelines and reproducing the exact same lighting you will now create a colored sphere. I recommend still doing a lay-in without worrying about color up until the blocking in stage at step five. What I want you to do here is pick a local color and create a colored sphere. I would like you to try and match the tones as close as possible to the first sphere you created, the grayscale sphere. Try not to use digital readouts of tone as your guide, use your own senses please. If you get lost, use digital readouts if you must but recognize them as a crutch in this circumstance.

Consider what will happen to your color as it recieves light. If you change hue or saturation as you add/subtract light what sort of declaration are you making? And if you don't? We can go into this on another exercise.

Optional Step:
As mentioned above, if you feel confident enough feel free to adjust hue/saturation as you add/subtract light, but I would like you to comment on your thoughts.

Final Step:
Prepare this image in JPEG format. Then also make a copy of the original file only this time convert it to grayscale. Do not simply desaturate, I believe converting to grayscale is much more accurate to real tones. Prepare this image in JPEG format as well. Post both images as well as your important thoughts and comments for this exercise.

Do note, that convert to grayscale isn't perfect but should let you know if you were close or not. The concept of this exercise is not to match tones perfectly, it is merely to force you into thinking of tone with color.

- - - - - - -
I strongly recommend you read the discussions and analyses within others posts that will occur between these pages and exercises. In the past volume I saw and personally repeated the same advice over and over.

This being said, sometimes advice or critiques will be given that may be incorrect, or misconceptions; I most likely am not innocent of this either. If you spot mistakes be sure and correct them! Don't confuse these with opinions however, which are never wrong only different.
- - - - - - -

My results to prevent confusion and for reference:
I would prefer you not look at these until you are done, or unless you are confused/stuck. I do hope you kick my ass and show me how it's done in these exercises :D

[Idiot Apathy]

Exercise Three: Light and Color
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Intro:
Ok, let's get dirty with color now.

So, if something is visible it is either reflecting light or actually emitting it. (Maybe there are exceptions, but we're not scientists today ok?). Now, not all light is the same and not all things reflect light the same - thank god, life would be pretty boring without colors I think.

For this exercise we are going to use a hypothetical 'perfect' white lightsource. To break it down layman style - within this lightsource is every color - specifically every hue at it's maximum intensity! I'm unclear on exactly how many hues there are, how many we percieve and all that jazz so I'm not going claim anything here (again, we are not scientists today, we are just looking for a workable tool as artists). So, when this lightsource is shined on any object the result should make the object more 'colorful' than before. Technically speaking, if our object is of say a pure red variety it is absorbing all the other hues (so we won't see those, wave goodbye!) and it is reflecting all the red transfered from our lightsource. Now, I don't think much exists in the way of 'pure' hue objects or anything - in life an extremely red object is more than likely absorbing some red and reflecting some of the other hues.

Ok, quick primer and now you're going to work - thinking that is, not too much painting to be done here.
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Exercise Guidelines
a. The exercise will be set up with a goal in mind, sometimes specific, sometimes fairly loose. Focus on the concept, not on the final product.
b. As you do the project I want everyone to keep notes of their thoughts and reasoning. Why did you do what you did, that sort of thing. If for whatever reason you can't keep notes I still want you to think explicitly about what you are doing and write something down afterwards. In your notes and thoughts I want to take the key ideas and post them here. With this insight into your thought process we all can both learn and teach each other much more effectively.
c. Spend as much or as little time as you need to understand the concept. This is only a race against yourself.
d. All exercises are of course optional, feel free to pick and choose if there are activities you would rather do or rather not do. I will however note in the exercise if they are somewhat concurrent or if I believe it would be best to do a previous exercise before hand.
e. People who are too embarrassed to post their results will be shot on sight, you're here to learn not to show off.
- - - - - - -
Note: The notetaking is vital in this part! I want others and myself to be able to read your thoughts (not literally, just what you've written). Besides, it's too easy to fake this if you've seen results :P

Step One:
Read the Introduction if you haven't already - it's vital to the setup (always is :P!)

Step Two:
Get yourself set up to produce seven (7!) spheres - it's not necessary to have them 'perfectly' constructed as before; however it would be good practice, and practice makes perfect and you want to be perfect yeah? These don't really need to be big or anything, your objective here is to 'calculate' the correct color. Oh, no reflected light on any of these, just our one lightsource ok?

Step Three:
Ok, taking our perfect white lightsource imagine that your sphere is absorbing every hue except for red. Paint this sphere! Think about the shadows and highlight - but don't stress too much; get the general idea!

Step Four:
Again, taking our lightsource imagine that your sphere is absorbing every hue except for blue! Deja vu? Don't stress the shadows and highlight too much, get the general idea please!

Step Five:
Take our lightsource again, this time our sphere is absorbing nothing and reflecting everything! Oh man, how are you going to paint this? Shadows? You tell me! :)

Step Six:
Take our lightsource again, our sphere is now absorbing all colors and reflecting nothing! Eek, don't let it suck you in too!

Step Seven:
Ok, here's a fun one - our sphere (do I need to say same lightsource again?), our sphere is now absorbing every hue except yellow and red! Woo! Don't stress shadows and highlights, get the general idea!

Step Eight:
Next up! The sphere is now absorbing exactly 50% of all hues and reflecting 50% of all hues. Huh? Now what?

Optional Step:
Ok okay, bonus! Sky blue! You tell me what the sphere is doing! :D (edit: write instructions for this one like I have above :) )

Final Step:
Prepare your results into a decently presented file (nothing fancy!) that is easy to see and suitable for web sized viewing. JPEG's please, and watch your filesizes :P Don't forget to post your notes!

Important notes:
I think perhaps there are several answers at times to these - not the resulting color but the reason for the color, I dunno yet - perhaps not? Probably not...

- - - - - - -
I strongly recommend you read the discussions and analyses within others posts that will occur between these pages and exercises. In the past volume I saw and personally repeated the same advice over and over.

This being said, sometimes advice or critiques will be given that may be incorrect, or misconceptions; I most likely am not innocent of this either. If you spot mistakes be sure and correct them! Don't confuse these with opinions however, which are never wrong only different.
- - - - - - -

Compound Reply and Answer 'Key':
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1051503&postcount=97

[Idiot Apathy]

Exercise Four: Light and Color Part B!
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Intro:

Alright alright alright, how was that last exericise?

Ok, going a step further - our lightsource my friends is now changed! No longer have we the luxury of every hue, we now have .... dundundun colored light!

Think you can handle it?
- - - - - - -

Exercise Guidelines
a. The exercise will be set up with a goal in mind, sometimes specific, sometimes fairly loose. Focus on the concept, not on the final product.
b. As you do the project I want everyone to keep notes of their thoughts and reasoning. Why did you do what you did, that sort of thing. If for whatever reason you can't keep notes I still want you to think explicitly about what you are doing and write something down afterwards. In your notes and thoughts I want to take the key ideas and post them here. With this insight into your thought process we all can both learn and teach each other much more effectively.
c. Spend as much or as little time as you need to understand the concept. This is only a race against yourself.
d. All exercises are of course optional, feel free to pick and choose if there are activities you would rather do or rather not do. I will however note in the exercise if they are somewhat concurrent or if I believe it would be best to do a previous exercise before hand.
e. People who are too embarrassed to post their results will be shot on sight, you're here to learn not to show off.
- - - - - - -

Step One:
Spheres again, get set up and ready to go! Let's see, how about 7, 8 if you can do the optional step! Do these nice and quick as there are many, shadows - highlights? Who cares, unless you do! Oh, no reflected light on any of these, just our one lightsource ok?

Step Two:
Lightsource one, pure blue. Object is a white sphere, what does that mean you say? Well, it's going to reflect all colors equally, or at least it should. In what quanitity you say? Up to you, just don't make it a mirror!

Step Three:
Lightsource one, pure blue. Object is a sphere that reflects all colors except blue, now what? Oh noes!

Step Four:
Lightsource two, pure red. Object is pure blue! Meaning, it will only reflect blue. Hmm hmm, tricky?

Step Five:
Lightsource two, pure red. Object reflects just a little bit of red, how are you going to calculate the saturation and value? A bit trickier no? I'm going to leave this a little vague to get your gears going.

Step Six:
Lightsource three, pure red and pure yellow. Our object reflects only yellow! Oh noes, what will happen to red?

Step Seven:
Lightsource three, pure red and pure yellow. Our object is green... muahahaha. You do the math. (Correct me if I'm wrong later...)(Seriously I'm not picking these randomly! they all have a point!).

Step Eight:
Lightsource four, see lightsource four didn't eat it's Wheaties you know? Grew up weak - it contains, oh let's say 30% of all hues. Our object reflects all colors equally and just about all of them! (Well, I didn't want it to be a mirror you know.)

Optional Bonus Step:
Look these aren't always optional, you should do them if you can :P
This time the lightsource contains all hues but is not white, let's say all the hues except blue are at 30% of their capacity and blue is at 100%. Our object reflects 80% of all hues except red, of which it reflects all red it recieves. So if our lightsource was instead perfectly white you could say our object was probably a dull red. What is it going to be now? Hell that's kind of hard, don't worry about exact math or anything - just think about it.

Final Step:
Prepare your results into an easy to view (web appropriate resolution and file size), and post it up! Don't forget your notes!

- - - - - - -
I strongly recommend you read the discussions and analyses within others posts that will occur between these pages and exercises. In the past volume I saw and personally repeated the same advice over and over.

This being said, sometimes advice or critiques will be given that may be incorrect, or misconceptions; I most likely am not innocent of this either. If you spot mistakes be sure and correct them! Don't confuse these with opinions however, which are never wrong only different.
- - - - - - -

(If I ever get the time and motivation to do them, what? This or another exericise :P)
My results to prevent confusion and for reference:
I would prefer you not look at these until you are done, or unless you are confused/stuck. I do hope you kick my ass and show me how it's done in these exercises :D

[Cup of Joe]

Two words- Fuck yes. I may not have enough time to commit to one of these for a while (I'm currently devouring Bamme's and re-reviewing Loomis. Plus school), but I will make a serious effort to get back in on these. Thanks for doing this man!

[Idiot Apathy]

My pleasure homie,

I'm trying to keep them a little more self contained, quick and efficent. Hopefully they won't take you too long and for the most part I think you will be able to spread them out if you need too.

Cheers dude, glad to see you on board.

[romance]

Yay, congrats dude on becoming an 'official' community activity. I've said this before... and didn't hold my word,... but I 'll say it again, hopefully I can find time to get back into this stuff, it was one of the things that got the ball rolling for me here on CA.

Keep up the great work Idiot and thanks for your dedication to making a better CA.

-Rob

[j a k e]

Hey man. I don't have time to participate in this at the moment, but i just popped by to say that you really are a dedicated chap. Love what you do, and you really have helped me in pretty much every aspect of colour. Great to have you around.

[Idiot Apathy]

@Rob: Hell yeah man, I want you to know that you were the cause of a lot of my drive for the first volume.
Any time that you've got to participate or contribute (wink wink) is much appreciated my friend.

@J a k e: Thanks bro, glad to have you around too! You're a cool dude and a personal inspiration. I'm trying to make the exercises quick and efficent so pop on by if you're bored sometime mate.

[MattGamer]

yay! i cant wait to do these

[Zaknafain]

good to see that pp2 is finally starting. I will try to participate more than in the last one. I promise! :D
One of CAs best learning threads.

[AdamDillabo]

heres my go at the first one. very 80's miami beach :D

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b321/adam278/Untitled-1copy-1.jpg


thanks for getting this started IA.

[AdamDillabo]

this one is way off i think im going to give it another stab later.

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b321/adam278/colorballs.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b321/adam278/blackandwhiteballs.jpg

[AdamDillabo]

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b321/adam278/balltest2.jpg

not sure if i did this right. on ball 4 the black one, i used c,k, and Y at 100 and k at 0. i dont like to use pure black.

[Idiot Apathy]

@Mattgamer: Haha, get to work then you bum :)

@Zaknafain: Hey Tobi! Thanks for the encouragement - hope to see you participate or contribute *cough cough*. :D

@Adam278: Hey man, thanks for participating. You're all gung ho already, makes me happy. Thanks for participating!
ExOne:
Haha, didn't expect people to go full color on this one exactly let alone all miami vice. Cool that you did though, feel free to create your own take on these as long as you get the general idea! Ok, sphere looks great - that's quite a lot of blending, which is fine - but if you check out the post by Briggsy@Ashtons at the top of the exercise you'll see it's not entirely necessary. Anyways, the only point of the exercise was to get people making 'nice' spheres and fast - so you're cool! Something for you to think about, would light reflected off the sphere have an effect on the table? Please remember to write down any thoughts you had on or during the exercise ok? It is in part to not only improve the exercise, but to give others a trail to learn from what you have done as well as a means to check your thinking.

ExTwo:
Good, the point of this exercise was to start people viewing color and color selection using a measurement of tone. Matching them perfectly wasn't the point although evaluations like that are important I think. Now, if you want to challenge yourself go a little more saturated and add a little tone and try violet and yellow - muahaha. Again, please remember the notes portion if you had any.

ExThree:
Great, I didn't expect anyone to do this one so soon! I had to write up an answer sheet just now haha. Please write down your explanation for the optional step, sky blue sphere. I'll send you a link to the 'answer key' after you do.

[bumskee]

you freak.. :) I swear I will follow this one through.. it's so hard...coz I get lost... *Cries*

[DieOxin]

I am going to be in this one .. you are dedicated ..
I love you for that ..

[Idiot Apathy]

@Bumskee: Hehehe, I'm doing my best to simplify stuff! Just try it out, don't be afraid to mess up!

@DieOxin: Ha! Thanks bro, hope to see you in here soon. I'm only as dedicated as long as it's in use and worthwhile.

[Cup of Joe]

Got started on this one. I'm fairly satisfied with it, though I think my shadow shape is a little off. I'll probably do ~1 a day, since they're fun and don't take long.

Notes taken during project-
Decided on a tilted background, to break up the blandness. Looked kind of like a corner, so I decide that having a wall and floor may be good practice for shadows. I’m also doing the whole thing free-hand, so expect some fugly outlines.

Decided general light source, set up shadows.
THOUGHT- Would the shadow appear darker against the wall then against the lighter floor? I’ll just have to see.
NOTE- Remember that light (and therefore shadow) always covers HALF of the form (with one lightsource).

Blah blah, set in cast-shadow, refining form shadow. Laying in flat values and such. Also zoomed out and flipped to make sure everything looked good so far.

Mostly spent the rest of the time polishing up.

http://img133.imageshack.us/img133/5500/pp2excersise1kl0.jpg

This was more of a warm up, so next time it'll be in color.

[Idiot Apathy]

Cup of Joe:

Great Joe. Really appreciate the thoughts and notes! (In bold to inspire others hehe!)

The point of the exercise was to be able to efficently 'spit' out a sphere so I hope you're working on speeding up your process.

Some thoughts, forgive me if you've heard them before:

Process wise you might start out with a brush as large as your sphere to get that down quick. Then perhaps 1/3 the size to get your form shadow in the right place. Then if your shadow went out of the border you'd clean that up with the largest brush possible as well. I'd probably do all of this with a pretty hard brush. I'd then use a soft/softer brush to get the edges I want for the shapes. Rinse and repeat for other shapes.

Seems to me you've blended a lot, which is fine of course - but you might be surprised at how effective (or even I suppose it's more realistic, I dunno) the method Briggsy@Ashtons demonstrated. Basically for your sphere you only need 3 shapes with the correct edges and a highlight, diffuse or not.

Now, I think your highlight is in the wrong place perhaps. Have you ever played billiards? Pool? See, imagine the light as a ball - when it hits an object (to keep it really simple here), when it hits it's going to reflect at the same angle it is hitting. Now if you've ever looked at an shiny object like this and moved around you'll notice that the highlight moves! See, the highlight is really just an acute reflection of the lightsource. Ugh, having a hard time putting this into words - long way of saying try putting your highlight higher and to the right - perhaps right in the middle of where you imagine the lightsource is hitting. That make any sense at all? Ok ok, I've thought about it some more - picture looking into a mirror, whatever you are looking at imagine that as your lightsource and the spot on the mirror as your highlight. That work?

Brush settings: It's a little curious to see some edges that are 'wavy'. What program are you using and what sort of brush?

Cheers Joe!

[Cup of Joe]

Edited the highlight, and as for the wavyness, I've been really confused by that. It's been going on for a while when I use a big-medium brush zoomed out. I use PS, and the waves were mostly using a hard brush either with opacity set to pressure or with no settings at all( I use no settings to block in so I can keep hard shapes). Smoothing is on. Suggestions?

[Idiot Apathy]

Hmm hmm, I would check your spacing setting in the Brust Tip Settings (should be above shape dynamics). See if reducing the percentage will work.

[Form]

Glad the activity is in its proper place, and as promised, from herein i will be a regular contributor ;)

Heres my stab at exercise 1, with comments.

[Cup of Joe]

Form- Real nice! I think it would be even better though if you put the cast shadow on all of them, to orient it in space a little better.

Thanks for the brush help IdiotApathy! The waves are gone.

Redid Proj. 1, but faster this time. I probably did this one ~5 min.

For proj. 2, I was very surprised by the outcome, since I checked the values while still in color and they're fairly close. Although as IA said in PP1, the point is not to match them perectly, just to get you thinking about value in color.

No notes this time.

Proj 1 take two.

http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/4163/091206pp1zz5.png

Proj 2 take 1

http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/5377/091206pp2fg7.png

http://img167.imageshack.us/img167/7552/091206pp22zo6.png

Gotta vary my lightsource more.

[Idiot Apathy]

Crit & Comment Disclaimer: Yatta yatta, I'm not infalliable and I really don't know jack - I hope I come across here as only giving my opinion and trying to help :)


Form:
Nice buddy! Glad you're in!

ExOne:

Also glad to see you've found the value of stroke economy on the 3rd sphere, sweet lord isn't that so much easier? Ok, the point of this exercise as I've said before is for quick and proper sphere construction. It's really only necessary (I believe and based off of briggsy@ashtons post linked in the exercise) to create only 3 - 5 shapes. Full light, half-light, shadow, highlight and reflected light. Briggsy went further to split the half-light into light half and dark half-light. The rest are really just edges.

The rule you've given that your lightest light in the darks can't compare to the darkest dark in the lights is pretty good - just be aware it can be 'broken'. Probably not good to ever break it though... you might have to buy it.

I like the 'lightsource breaching the horizon' sphere, pretty cool - though I'm not entirely sure that will work as far as shapes, dunno. If it's the sun the sphere should be lit basically 50% light 50% shadow I believe.

Metallic Surfaces: Can't say I've really done much into thinking about metal, however I think it's safe to say the only big difference is they should reflect more and more 'acutely' - so highlight is sharper and brighter and closer to shape as the source I suppose. Reflected light should also show off it's 'parent' shape as well, depending on how shiny. Overall though the 'shading' shapes shouldn't change on the sphere - minus reflected and highlight as per above.

Cheers bro!

-Cup of Joe:
Great, glad that worked for you! I can still see it happening a little bit though, just less frequently. If your CPU can handle it you might lower it some more, what setting is it on?

ExOne:
Great Joe! If you spend a little time 'studying' how to improve your process and technique I think you will find you will be better able to study other things and with greater satisfaction. (Jez, I sound... old or something.) Keep it up, always room for improvement!

ExTwo:
Nice Joe~! Hehe I see red tricked you a bit, see I think you might be checking things out via th (b) brightness in PS, not the same as tone! Try and use your eyes and develop a sense for it, it's hard I know but I think it's pretty important if you are going to draw/paint from life. Anyways, like you know - you've got the point down, practice is all you need.

Something to think about, see on your white sphere where you haven't softened the edges of the 'half-light'? That's one of the parts where it would actually be one of the softest area's due to it receding away from us - so it's pretty important. If you can't get your brush in there without mucking things up you might do the softening as best you can on a seperate layer and the use the eraser to clean up.

Cheers Joe!

[Cup of Joe]

Thanks Apathy! (I'm going to call you that now, since I don't feel like typing it all out, and 'Idiot' sounds like an insult. Or was your name Dave?)

Anyway. Tone, hmm, I'll study into that sometime. Doh'! Don't see how I missed that hard edge. Actually, I'm getting a little better at using big brushes, so these are also going WAY faster. I can do a simple sphere in 5-ten strokes now instead of 50 with a tiny brush. Definately makes these things easier.

I'll redo project 2 later, but for now,
PROJECT #3

Notes- Took a bunch

Okay- Main goal for the first part is getting a good basic sphere down fast. 2 min. Tops.
Basic process- Big brush at 100 opacity and no pressure to block in shapes, then using a softer brush with pressure set to opacity to clean it up. Fast and easy.

Keeping my lighsource the same-ish, but still trying to work in a little variety. Keeping Briggsy’s post up on the side as a reminder. Wait, Idiot said no reflected light? Shit…
What about shadows? I’ll just guess no.

Trying to remember that light covers half the form. Trying to keep the terminator soft but still easily recognizable.

Whew, done with my base spheres. Okay first color one. Not too hard yet. Thinking about saturation. Did a sharp saturation dive at the terminator, but then decreased mainly value in the transition to the shadow. Trying to keep my values rather uniform.

Okay, second one basically the same, not too bad yet.

Ummm, #3. Hooo boy. I guess the light-side would be all white and the dark side a blackish color. I think. I guess there would be no specular than? Wait, that doesn’t look right….

#4, I know this seems lazy, but if it reflects nothing, wouldn’t it just be black?

#5, Let’s see here, yellow and red. Orange? Is that right? Wow, that looks baaaad.

#6, Ummmm, what? Okay, in 50-50, wouldn’t the complementary colors cancel eachother out into a grey? Or is my subconscious just lazy today?

#7, Almost done! Let’s see, sky blue. Is that reflecting blue light and a little bit of everything else? Actually, it might be reflecting quite a bit of everything else.That sounds right.

Grey-

http://img247.imageshack.us/img247/2976/picture4qg2.png

Color-

http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/2528/picture5xt6.png

[Idiot Apathy]

Crit & Comment Disclaimer: Yatta yatta, I'm not infalliable and I really don't know jack - I hope I come across here as only giving my opinion and trying to help :)

Cup of Joe:
Awesome Joe!

You can call me Dave if you want, name's Tom though. Idiot, Apathy - hey you work just fine too. Glad to hear you're getting quicker and more efficent! Hope ExOne had something to do with that. Thanks again for the great notes, I think it will really help some people out and it helps me see what you were thinking too. You don't need to redo project two! Unless you want to of course, practice is always good I suppose. It's cool that you want to experiment with lightsources, keep in mind that could complicate learning other things too. Sometimes when I want to mess around or practice a new idea or technique I go with really easy lighting to make it easier to focus.

ExThree:
Going to PM you this reply for now; give others a chance to do it 'blindfolded' so I can get some more 'test samples' hehe. I'll post it up later too.

[AdamDillabo]

in the bonus step for level 4, what color is the ball? white? am i dumb?

[Idiot Apathy]

Heheh sorry dude, that's written like an SAT question isn't it? I'm going to send you a PM in a second, I'd just post it but I'd like to see some of the other 'blindfolded' results.

[Idiot Apathy]

Exercise Five: Light and Color Part C!
- - - - - - -

Intro:

The Point: Dealing with different 'colored' objects in the same space that react to the lightsource, well differently.

Ok, bonus round here. I hope you don't mind more of these simple sphere and lightsource exercises, I think they are quick and get you thinking pretty good. If you're sick of them, well - I'm not forcing you to do this exercise or any other exercise for that matter.

Ok, turning it up a notch again - various colored lightsources but this time with two spheres. Keeping it at the theoretical extremes again - objects that are 'pure' so to speak. Not exactly true to life but better for the exercise I think.

Notes: Ok, taking this too much further is going to hurt everyones heads. I think I mentioned somewhere that this becomes more an interest in physics than it is exactly useful/necessary (or efficent) in art. Think of it instead as merely a vessel to communicate the concept and get you thinking.


- - - - - - -

Exercise Guidelines
a. The exercise will be set up with a goal in mind, sometimes specific, sometimes fairly loose. Focus on the concept, not on the final product.
b. As you do the project I want everyone to keep notes of their thoughts and reasoning. Why did you do what you did, that sort of thing. If for whatever reason you can't keep notes I still want you to think explicitly about what you are doing and write something down afterwards. In your notes and thoughts I want to take the key ideas and post them here. With this insight into your thought process we all can both learn and teach each other much more effectively.
c. Spend as much or as little time as you need to understand the concept. This is only a race against yourself.
d. All exercises are of course optional, feel free to pick and choose if there are activities you would rather do or rather not do. I will however note in the exercise if they are somewhat concurrent or if I believe it would be best to do a previous exercise before hand.
e. People who are too embarrassed to post their results will be shot on sight, you're here to learn not to show off.
- - - - - - -

Starting Step:
Get yourself set up for 4 groups of two spheres each. Keep it simple like before, ignore highlight and shadow unless you want some extra practice. Don't forget to write down any notes and/or thoughts/comments that you have while doing this exercise. This will help me help you and help others who follow (I hope!)

Step One:
Lightsource is pure white, all hues at maximum intensity; Sphere A reflects all blue light and absorbs the rest. Sphere B reflects all blue light and a large amount of all others (rest is of course absorbed). (I've cut out the math jumbo as well - who am I kidding we're artists remember?)

Step Two:
Lightsource is pure blue at maximum intensity and only blue. Sphere A reflects only red light; Sphere B you would call 'pure' violet in a white light situation.

Step Three:
Lightsource is a weak yellow light. Sphere A is white - as white as it gets, (not a mirror). Sphere B is 'pure' yellow.

Step Four:
Lightsource is hot pink! Sphere A is white, Sphere B is 'pure' red.

Optional Bonus/Lunacy Step:
Lightsource is strawberry flavored. Sphere A is actually a strawberry. Sphere B is a banana. (Sorry, look I'm not sure this even makes any sort of sense, I need sleep.)

Final Step:
Prepare your results into an easy to view (web appropriate resolution and file size), and post it up! Don't forget your notes!

- - - - - - -
I strongly recommend you read the discussions and analyses within others posts that will occur between these pages and exercises. In the past volume I saw and personally repeated the same advice over and over.

This being said, sometimes advice or critiques will be given that may be incorrect, or misconceptions; I most likely am not innocent of this either. If you spot mistakes be sure and correct them! Don't confuse these with opinions however, which are never wrong only different.
- - - - - - -

[EtaCarinae]

Dear Idiot Apathy (and all),
I drew most of these without having thought to much about the purpose of the excersize. The last one I concentrated on getting the best result in the least possible stages also thinking more about the 5 areas of tone. Even so It still took me many strokes cause I kept fiddling around with the reflected light and cast shadow.

For instance if the ball is sitting in a pool of shadow the reflected light would begin hitting the eye at an angle equal to the angle it approached the ball from. Does that make sence? This is as opposed to reflecting light from a section of ground pooled in darkness.

The other thing I kept worrying about was 'how dark should this core shadow be compared to the cast shadow?' Thinking about it logically it would be equal, + or - the value of the surfaces in shadow. Is that right?
Anyway for what it's worth here are my doodles.

BTW I've noticed on a few illo's I've seen about (specifically you can see examples in some of the excersizes on Bumskee's website) a few colour dabs off to the side of the painting. I've often wondered if these are just for colour mixing, but do you think this could be a way of establishing the tonal areas first?

Regards,
EtaCarinae
http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h90/_EtaCarinae/spheres01_small.jpg

[Idiot Apathy]

EtaCarinae:

No worries bro, the thread is set up with things like this in mind - please feel free to post your thoughts and questions!

Ok, I do think you might get something out of Exercise One; the point of that exercise is simple (yet I believe accurate) sphere construction. I hope it's set up fairly logically and easy to follow, but I guess that remains to be seen haha.


For instance if the ball is sitting in a pool of shadow the reflected light would begin hitting the eye at an angle equal to the angle it approached the ball from. Does that make sence? This is as opposed to reflecting light from a section of ground pooled in darkness.

Yeah good, ever played pool? Same principle, The angle of return is the same as the angle of uhh, the first angle. (Geometry, hmm...). Now, same is true with every 'shape' on your sphere, probably most noticable with specular highlights. Find something shiny and walk around it while looking at the specular. Or or, here is a fun one - find something really shiny, a metal bowl perhaps and get another person to help you out. Have them stay at one spot and you move to a position to where you can see their face as a reflection, now have them take a pointer of some sort (finger, pen whatever works) and point to where they see your head. Hehe, it's the same point. It makes perfect sense of course, but imagining a different reflection on a surface you are looking at is a bit spacey.


The other thing I kept worrying about was 'how dark should this core shadow be compared to the cast shadow?' Thinking about it logically it would be equal, + or - the value of the surfaces in shadow. Is that right?

Hmm, well you would have to factor in what the 'resting surface' is made of - what light does it reflect and absorb? If it was exactly the same as the sphere I think it is safe to say it would more than likely be at least a little higher in tone than the core shadow - depending of course on ambient and reflected light. In the case of the sphere it will get darker as it has 'less and less access' to the light. I think I've heard it called trapped light perhaps.

Here, read this I think it will help:
http://www.anticz.com/drawing1.htm
A tut by Ron Lemen, oh Ron - where have you gone?


BTW I've noticed on a few illo's I've seen about (specifically you can see examples in some of the excersizes on Bumskee's website) a few colour dabs off to the side of the painting. I've often wondered if these are just for colour mixing, but do you think this could be a way of establishing the tonal areas first?

I call these paint swatches - things that people set up in order to paint quicker. I've never really liked usuing them - requires you to pick your colors in advance which doesn't seem very uhm - wise or efficent to me. It is of course completely viable to do if you understand color well enough, but I'd recommend you work one color at a time and build from there as your reference point. If you are looking for something to speed up your process in learning anything but color - work in grayscale; tone is vital, I'm working a lot in grayscale or monochrome these days too.

If you are looking to establish your tonal areas, do just that - a quick sketch in grayscale. It would really be good for you. If you were talking about establishing large masses of color, you should do that too - but I'd also recommend at least a quick thumbnail of the values.

Cheers dude, glad to see you participating and hope to see more of you.

[HunterKiller_]

I don't think i've ever attempted to render realistic colours without reference in the past, so here are my attempts.

I'm surprised at how they turned out, especially when i placed the sphere in an environment. It looks quite decent to me and is better than what i expected.

Look forward to your critiques! :)

Colour
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v465/HunterKiller_/Sketch%20Book/drill-coloursphere.jpg

Greyscale
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v465/HunterKiller_/Sketch%20Book/drill-graysphere.jpg

Little sphere in the big bad world
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v465/HunterKiller_/Sketch%20Book/drill-sphereenviro.jpg

EDIT: Ew, i just noticed that the shadow is making the sphere appear levitated slightly... =\

[purb36]

Yeah good, ever played pool? Same principle, The angle of return is the same as the angle of uhh...


peer project vocabulary, lesson 1.
"incidence".

remember it; itll be on the test...

[Idiot Apathy]

Purb:
Hehehe, right incidence - :P How you been dude? How was your B-day? Ack, I mean; Genki? Tanjyobi wa dou? Ano ne, atarashi kotoba wo narata, kusotare da. Emi wa akarui hito da na? (shinpai shinaide, jodan data)

Hunterkiller:
Great, glad to have you in here. I hope that learning some of the underpinnings of color will help you even with reference and from life work.

------ExTwo:
Good, looks like you got the values well. The point of this exercise was to think of color in terms of value. Now, if you really want to challenge yourself go bold and saturated, keep your highlight very colorful and see what happens.

My only concern is your construction. I might recommend using a softer edged brush to blend with and working with less shapes. Check out ExOne and the example I'm going to post below.

Little Sphere in Big Bad World:
Great to see you thinking hard! :). Little concerned about the structure again, basically you should have half in light and half in shadow. I like the colors and the set up, good thoughts in the reflected light. I think you might be right about it levitating hehe.

Cheers dude, hope to see you continue on!

[Idiot Apathy]

Exercise One Example:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v13/Ragnarok27/PeerProject%20V2/1.jpghttp://img.photobucket.com/albums/v13/Ragnarok27/PeerProject%20V2/2.jpg
1. I drew a circle! It's lumpy!
2. This is how I decided to determine my lightsource. Some people use those wierd '3d' arrows, but I uhh don't get those. So, simple enough here just to place an indicator of my full-light and my shadow.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v13/Ragnarok27/PeerProject%20V2/3.jpghttp://img.photobucket.com/albums/v13/Ragnarok27/PeerProject%20V2/4.jpg
3. Yup, that's a shadow - yesshir.
4. Something I just figured out to figure out my cast shadow. Looks familar... hmm. hmmmmm.... not sure how to explain this yet. Shadows are tricky business.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v13/Ragnarok27/PeerProject%20V2/5.jpghttp://img.photobucket.com/albums/v13/Ragnarok27/PeerProject%20V2/6.jpg
5: "Defined" my edges, well the one between the full light and shadow at least. I think this only works with grayscale perhaps, as the blend wouldn't be too flattering to color maybe? So you'd probably have to put in the right colors 'manually'. Ugh, lil' messy.
6: Added some reflected light and played with my core shadows edges.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v13/Ragnarok27/PeerProject%20V2/7.jpghttp://img.photobucket.com/albums/v13/Ragnarok27/PeerProject%20V2/ex1.gif
7: Oh wow, I'm so fancy! Uhh, long story short: Multiply layer with CA.org sepia - highlight above that - same hue (monochrome I suppose). Cheap background, some tweaks.
8.Animated Gif! (Hell why not!?)

[HunterKiller_]

Here's my result for excersise four.
I really enjoyed it. I never knew colour could be so fun. :)
EDIT: Oh yeah, thanks for the previous critiques. I didn't actually notice them until now. =S
I didn't really know a technical approach to determine the placement of the meeting of light-side to dark-side. I will use your technique next time.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v465/HunterKiller_/Sketch%20Book/drill-spheres1.jpg

Great thread, keep up the awesome work!

[Idiot Apathy]

Uhmumum, you mean Exercise Three right?
Glad you enjoyed it, I'm going to send you a PM in a minute with the 'key' and a more specific response as well. I'd post it but I still want others to be able to do the exercise 'blindfolded'.

Cheers.

[Prometheus|ANJ]

Very generally: Saturation in the edge to light and light, less saturation in the shadow. The shadow can often be dark-cold-desaturated whilst the light is warm and more saturated. If you do the shadow more saturated than the light it might look strange. I'm mentioning this because I saw it in a few of the pics above.

Excercise idea. Come up with a simple shape figure based on primitives.
Render it in greyscale (let's not involve color yet). First make a Dull one. Then copy it 2 times and try to make these version look gloss and metallic.
In this case, I used a butt shape because it's a very 'grateful' shape for adding little neat speculars on, then killing them off near the cleavage for contrast as the next shape/gradient starts. I kinda fessed up with the chrome guy but I hope it conveys what's going on with the values atleast. Sorta jumpy. Not as much transitions.
24103

Then, maybe using the same design, go ahead and render it in color using different materials for different parts.

Slightly related, here's a way of thinking in layers and render passes. I normally do this in my head, but I made some illustrations of some of the layers I imagine when painting. Fog (towards distance to convey depth). Specularity map (dull or gloss). Illumination/lightsourcing. Top planes for adding sky reflections.
24104

[HunterKiller_]

Prometheus|ANJ: I love the buttocks, haha. :D

[Idiot Apathy]

Prom, you're such a stud man. I'm going to get that exercise up asap. Thank you so much for this.

[crdf]

[B][COLOR=Red][SIZE=3]

"Additive Color Theory can only be done with actual light, for example a movie projector or your monitor. If you've ever gotten a drop of water on your monitor you've probably seen large spots of Red Green and Blue.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v13/Ragnarok27/The%20Project/additive-color.jpg
Combining one of these additive primary colors with another in equal amounts produces the additive secondary colors cyan, magenta, and yellow. Combining all three primary lights (colors) in equal intensities produces white. Varying the luminosity of each light (color) eventually reveals the full gamut of those three lights (colors)."

Ok, First Hello. I want to ask a stupid quiestion. I am still in the begining of reading "peer projcet vol.1" thread, so maybe i mised somewhere some important info. I don't know. I just do not understand why i cant make this white color whit photoshop by mixing those three main colours. What i have to adjust? Hue, Saturation? Couse not white is what i get, but something .... dark.

Uuum ok. i do not see the atachment manager? Where is it. It was here?!

oooo ok, here is a link.

http://aycu12.webshots.com/image/2731/2000189940249875558_rs.jpg

edit: Is it becouse the colours do not mix and when i add a new color it does not change the one below, but only put new pixels above it, which number (of the pixels) depend on the translucent value of the brush? If it is correct, it there a way of mixing the colours .. actually that is quite pointless, ha? :) Weeeell stupid me. Always asking ....

[Lieblos]

CRDF, to answer your question... I'm not quite sure but I don't believe that that is supposed to actually work in Photoshop. The theory that was posted works with light, like if you were to actually shine red, green, and blue lights together then you should be able to produce a white light. Photoshop's colors work more like ink. If you were to put red, green, and blue ink together on paper you definitely would not get white out of that, hence why it does not work in Photoshop.


Anyway... here's my take on exercise number three. :D

I encountered many problems with this exercise although I really did enjoy doing the ball that reflects only yellow and red light, and the sky blue ball. I tried to make the sky blue ball look like it was made of glass, although I think I failed miserably at doing so. Also, on the ball that absorbs all color, I added a slight glow around the edges hoping that that would make it look a bit more true to life, but I'm not sure if that's what would even happen to it in real life. Lol. This was a really great practice exercise and I will definitely work on some more stuff when I get time. I'm also quite interested in doing some of the older activiteis from the first peer project thread. Hope you guys don't mind. ;)

Critiques always appreciated. :wink:

http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l7/_lieblos_/exercise3.jpg

[Idiot Apathy]

crdf:
Hey man, thanks for joining us. No such thing as a stupid question, indeed it would be stupid to not ask.

Ok, the reason you can not mix white or get any mixture to increase in overall tone and saturation is because photoshop is not additive color. You need to have actual lights to do that. You ever seen those old projecters with red green and blue lamps? No?, try this - put a drop of water on your monitor screen; what do you see?

I'm not sure that photoshop (or even painter etc. for that matter) mixes 'paint' with subtractive color either. Subtractive is like actual paint, based on what the current paint mixture will reflect, when you mix paint you are mixing their properties of reflection and absorbtion, but reflection can never be increased overall so your mixture can only overall go down in value and saturation. I say overall because you might mix an intense color with a dull color and think you have increased the value and sat but really you have only increased the dull colors value and sat.

Photoshop acts like a bit of a cousin to this I think, combined with something else - optical mixing I dunno. Maybe I'm just thinking too much. I should do some research.

Now it's entirely possible to have a program with additive mixing built in and our monitors can handle it, I believe I've even seen a program with it. However it's not of much use on a computer as we have 'every available' color well, available. It would be pretty nice if oil paints had it though :)

Hope that has answered your question, feel free to ask any follow ups - or any other questions you may have. Cheers!

Liebos:
Glad you could join us! First post even? Welcome to CA! Or is it a new screenname? Thanks for answering crdf's question, you are right of course - you need light.

---- Exercise 3:
I'm going to send you a PM with the 'key' and a more specific response as well. To get a PM click either the Private message link in the top right or the User CP link in the top left. I'm sending this as a PM to allow others to be able to still have a 'blindfolded' approach. Cheers!

[Idiot Apathy]

Project One (Beta): Simple Shape Rendering, emphasis on different materials!
- - - - - - -
(Oh, what's that? It's a project and it's in beta? Yup, it's a bit more intensive than an exercise and it is in need of some refinement; that's uh - that's where you come in!)


Based upon concept of my personal hero Prometheus|ANJ! Thanks Prom!

Intro:
Wow, how's that for a title. I swear the language center of my brain is in rehab.

I asked Prom for a little advice on the Project, and he thought it would be important to distinquish the differences in surface materials. Specifically we talked about the use/misuse of highlights and a way to remedy that. I think it's easy to over-exaggerate the shape of the highlight as well as the intensity. The purpose of this exercise is a simple introduction to some of the terms and reasons for how different materials 'react' to light.

Forgive me for over-simplifying here but let this stand only as a foundation to build upon. Keep in mind it's not quite so black and white, but nothing really is anyways :P

Diffuse Highlight: You would probably think of this as matte, dull. Clay, rough paper that sort of thing. Generally what is happening is when light hits an object it is scattered in many directions. Think perhaps a bouncy ball on a cobblestone path. No area really reflects a high enough concentration of light to stand out; this would probably create a larger yet subtle highlight. Now, can you think of the reason(s) why the light would be scattered once it hits an object?

Specular (Gloss?) Highlight: You would probably think of this as shiny, and who doesn't love shiny things? Communists - that's who. Anyways, Generally what is happening here is when light hits an object it is reflected without interference - 'cleanly'. A bouncy ball on a basketball court. For example, a lightbulb might retain it's general shape, warped only by an objects surface. Ok, technically specular reflections are 'perfect', an extreme. So, what would the causes of a concentrated highlight be perhaps?

I think it might be important to note it is of course possible to have a very bright object with a diffuse surface and a very dark object with a specular highlight. It's not so much the lightsource as it is the reflecting material.

- - - - - - -

Exercise Guidelines
a. The exercise will be set up with a goal in mind, sometimes specific, sometimes fairly loose. Focus on the concept, not on the final product.
b. As you do the project I want everyone to keep notes of their thoughts and reasoning. Why did you do what you did, that sort of thing. If for whatever reason you can't keep notes I still want you to think explicitly about what you are doing and write something down afterwards. In your notes and thoughts I want to take the key ideas and post them here. With this insight into your thought process we all can both learn and teach each other much more effectively.
c. Spend as much or as little time as you need to understand the concept. This is only a race against yourself.
d. All exercises are of course optional, feel free to pick and choose if there are activities you would rather do or rather not do. I will however note in the exercise if they are somewhat concurrent or if I believe it would be best to do a previous exercise before hand.
e. People who are too embarrassed to post their results will be shot on sight, you're here to learn not to show off.
- - - - - - -
Reference Image Courtesy of Prometheus|ANJ: Click to go to his Website!
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v13/Ragnarok27/PeerProject%20V2/attachment.jpg (http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/)

Preperation Step:
Get yourself prepared to draw three simple objects, the shape will remain the same however the 'material' will change. Don't forget to take notes/observations and/or any comments you have on this project during or after this exercise.

Beginning Step:
Read the Intro! I want you to list and post three things that you would consider as being diffuse/matte/dull, and three things you would consider that has concentrated highlights/is shiny.

Step One:
Decide upon the shape of the object you wish to paint. I would recommend keeping it fairly simple as you will be painting it three times and as this exercise is not an exercise in shape creation :P. Your object does not have to be representation of course, however I would like to see some 'perpendicular' shapes, I don't know - think more like 'buttboy' posted above than a sphere or an apple. If you don't feel comfortable or don't have the time for a more complex shape that's fine too :)

Step Two:
After you have designed your object I now want you to paint it as if it were made of of clay - rough clay, no glaze or anything. Think of how this material would affect how light is reflected - specifically the highlights.

Step Three:
Your object is now made of plastic. You might consider this specific plastic to be the 'middle' ground. How would this affect how light is reflected? And the highlights?

Step Four:
Render your object now as if it was made of metal. What is happening now and how is it affecting what we see?

Finishing Step:
Save your project at a resolution and file size appropriate for web viewing. I suggest a JPEG using PS's save for web function. Post here along with your thoughts/notes. Pat yourself on the back and buy that pet monkey you've always wanted.

- - - - - - -
I strongly recommend you read the discussions and analyses within others posts that will occur between these pages and exercises. In the past volume I saw and personally repeated the same advice over and over.

This being said, sometimes advice or critiques will be given that may be incorrect, or misconceptions; I most likely am not innocent of this either. If you spot mistakes be sure and correct them! Don't confuse these with opinions however, which are never wrong only different.
- - - - - - -

[ChrisMayernik]

going to post some stuff later but for now I reccomend everyone use this photoshop set up.


concept art member Red alert first brought to my attention the idea of mapping the F keys to switch brushes. He made a fantastic tutorial but I can't find it, so if you have the link please post it.


first off you need photoshop cs or higher. Go to actions and you can record a action then assign a key to play that action. here are the steps

1. Actions- create new action
2. click on Brush icon. Very important so no errors come up
3. select custom brush.
4. stop recording and assign F key.

now I have F4 as a erasor, F5 is Sharp brush, f6 is Soft, F7 is textured, and F8 is undo. this is a great set up and you can still use the middle alt for color picking and then use the number 0 9 to change opacity when needed. I also use o for smudge tool ( set to O ) which I use as a brush and L for lasso to quickly pick out shapes. photoshop does not allow you to rotate the canvas and to solve this problem I assigned F9 the horizontal flip to help in drawing accurate lines.

Now, go to control panel and click the wacom icon. change the function of the intous pen buttons from down and up to {{{ }}} Remember to put 3 {{{ . Now in photoshop instead of having to keep clicking the button to change size it will go in steps of 3 brush sizes and this is all you need. Any special size brush can be adjusted 1 step at a time by press { or } .





Use the hard for putting down your base value then the soft for form shadows. Remember form shadows are always soft ( gradual ) while cast shadows are always hard compared to form shadows.

One Super important rule to remember is that you don't paint a object the same way at different distances. Your eyes opticaly mix colors ( Value, Sat, Hue ) and naturally things get blurry farther away. Learn to group planes as things get farther away. To paint well and fast you must learn to think according to the distance you are painting at. So study a lot of things close and far and build your own understanding.

Get a object and look at it from five feet away and write down how many main values it has. There probaly are four including highlight. now view that object at twenty feet and you will see that alot of the planes become one plane and now the values are just three or two. Anything not in direct light is very simple. Think 10% difference in value from light to shadow. then you add 20 30 40 and so on as the light becomes stronger.


ok I am going to post a process of a simple object soon so you can see the process of painting something out of your head.

[Idiot Apathy]

Thanks a bundle Chris, that's really great; I'm going to make use of that right away even - and map things to my intuos as well hehe. Like I said before, please make yourself at home here, I want your brain.

---
Added a link to Chris's 'demo' and this link to the header post:

Detailed Lighting Tutorial (You will read this or die!)
http://www.itchy-animation.co.uk/ (Click Tutorials>Light)

[Cup of Joe]

Ugggghhhh. I feel like crap. Not enough brain power to do an exercize today, so I tried out some ideas I had.

Shadow-Disclaimer- These are all assumptions.

1. Okay, Shadow. Draw line from the light source’s point when dropped to the ground through the bottom of the object. Draw a line from the light source itself through the top of the object. The intersection of these two lines is the edge of the shadow.

2. If the shadow is being cast on the object, would the shadow go up to the corresponding point on the diagonal line? (Since that made no sense, the cast shadow would be the black line on the white block. Hopefully you can see what I’m getting at.)

3. More rendered diagram.


http://img172.imageshack.us/img172/8269/picture4ta2.png

Notes-Spheres-
1- Greyscale
2- Value only
3- Saturation decrease in shadow, increase at terminator.
4- Added a teeny bit of blue to the shadow. Added highlight.

http://img46.imageshack.us/img46/7233/picture2vx8.png

Comments later.

[EtaCarinae]

Dear Idiot Apathy and all,
Wow, this thread is really going off. I already feel like there is enough material here to contemplate for sometime. Thanks for the Ron Lemen link. I've seen it before and it's timely that I revisit it.

Here is my excersize 2.
I spent probably way to long on it fiddling around with core shadow and reflected light again.
Felt like I was cheating a bit with having such a low saturation (especially after seeing Joe's great results with his red sphere in excersize 3) but I just couldn't see any other way to get to the light values I'd already created in my Grey.
Resorted to making some swatches so I could directly compare the values.
Was a bit suprised to see how closely the lit sides matched, but disappointed in the shadow side. I should have spotted it when I couldn't get the reflected light to pop like on the grey. I guess it's all about comparing regions.
Also spent lots of time squinting hard to 'block' the colour and concentrate on tone and even made a little telescope with my fist in order to see small sections at a time. Also put a touch of green in my cast shadow... not sure if that's how it works tho'.
Still need a lot of practice.

Btw Hats off to all you guys for sharing your knowledge, it's really great!

Regards,
EtaCarinae

http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h90/_EtaCarinae/excersize2.jpg

[Lieblos]

Sorry, guys... I'm in a bit of a rush so I'm gonna have to make this quick.

I decided to try the latest project because it looked like a lot of fun. It actually was. I enjoyed it very much.

Ok, first of all...
3 matte materials: wood, drywall, paper
3 high-gloss materials: chrome, alluminum, and glass/mirrors

I found the very first and last items in this project the most difficult. Matte items are always hard for me to paint because I always get bored while painting these types of items. Don't ask why, but I just do.

I found the middle duck the easiest to paint. I guess this shiny style comes a bit easier to me. I also thought it was the funnest to paint and enjoyed it very much.

Finally, the chrome looking duck was hard for me to paint mostly because of the sharp transitions between light and dark. It was still fun to paint and I found that it entertained me the most out of all three ducks.

Anyway, here is my image. Constructive crits, of course, are always appreciated. ;)

[EDIT] Oh yeah, and I think I want to try this project again but next time in color. I hope you don't mind. Working in color is very difficult for me when it comes to making objects appear to be made out of different materials so I think this would benefit me a lot. Please let me know if this is all right, and as a note to Idiot Apathy... perhaps you should make that a new activity?

http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l7/_lieblos_/ducks.jpg

[Idiot Apathy]

Cup of Joe:
Mm, I can relate. Nice disclaimer, I'm thinking of tattooing that on my forehead. Ah, P.S. Added your post to the 'front' page.

On the Diagrams:
Great, I'm pretty sure that's how it works. I think perhaps you might be better off drawing the lines from the corners of the block then connecting the pairs. Oh and believe it or not, this has helped me think about some things too :)

On the Spheres:
Neat. I think I might be cautious with accentuating the saturation near the terminator however. I can think of a few situations where this is certainly applicable - most of which would be due to really strong light and exposure, over-exposure I imagine. Well, anyways - I'm not positive on this, but I think it's safe to say it's not always applicable you know? Keep thinking about it though of course.

Get some rest dude, I'm headed to bed early today; sheesh.

EtaCarinae:
My pleasure dude, you're making it worthwhile. I'd like to propose that 'spending too much time' is only too much and only a problem if you didn't learn anything.

----Ex2:
Great dude! Don't worry about going 'too light', you matched the values you saw and in truth there isn't really a way to get around that with the color you chose. Perhaps with a 'brighter' color such as yellow. If you want a challenge create a darker ball, or do this exercise backwards and start with a colored ball and match it in grayscale.

Good analysis about not matching up the reflected light, that sort of thing is key.

Green in cast shadow? I can think of a few reasons why something like that would occur - one there is some green light being cast there, two perhaps you are thinking about mixing paints traditionally, mixing green with red to dull it down. (technically speaking, removing saturation).

Cheers man, great to see you kicking ass!

Lieblos:
Kudos on being the first to tackle this, thanks a bunch for the feedback - I'll put it to good use. 'And yes! By all means, please do this again in color; I'd love to see it. If you ever want to take anything further in here, please do! Ah P.S. you should start up a sketchbook.

----Project One:
Great results man! I'm impressed.
I hear you on rendering matte objects, it's true they are boring! Nothing to look at, however this could be a great tool to accent something nice to look at.

The high-gloss, chrome duck doesn't read quite as shiny as I think you could go. Right now it looks a bit like rougher metal, like it's been sanded or something. I might expect to see some more concentrated highlights and more powerful reflected light. Go extreeeeeeeeme! Also, did you forget to render the eyes? Anyways, I love the irony that is a metal duck.

Cheers dude, thanks for joining us.


- - -
Will post a new exercise in the early evening tomorrow.

[Idiot Apathy]

Exercise Six: Color Recognition Part A: Hue
- - - - - - -

Intro:
This is probably of more use if you are painting from reference or life, however I also think it is a good way to become familar with color. This is going to be a fairly simple 4 part exercise - the first three will seperate Hue, Tone and Saturation and the last will be a combination.

Ok, this is pretty simple so let's get to it.
- - - - - - -
Exercise Guidelines
a. The exercise will be set up with a goal in mind, sometimes specific, sometimes fairly loose. Focus on the concept, not on the final product.
b. As you do the project I want everyone to keep notes of their thoughts and reasoning. Why did you do what you did, that sort of thing. If for whatever reason you can't keep notes I still want you to think explicitly about what you are doing and write something down afterwards. In your notes and thoughts I want to take the key ideas and post them here. With this insight into your thought process we all can both learn and teach each other much more effectively.
c. Spend as much or as little time as you need to understand the concept. This is only a race against yourself.
d. All exercises are of course optional, feel free to pick and choose if there are activities you would rather do or rather not do. I will however note in the exercise if they are somewhat concurrent or if I believe it would be best to do a previous exercise before hand.
e. People who are too embarrassed to post their results will be shot on sight, you're here to learn not to show off.
- - - - - - -

Preperation Step:
Download the template below. You will use the empty spots next to the color swatches in an attempt to match the color. Brightness and Saturation will be given all you need to do is determine the correct hue. This is going to work best with Photoshop, I don't think it matches up with Painter's scheme but you are welcome to try haha.

Step One:
Guess at the hue! A good method of determining the hue is to ask - is this hue say, more yellow or more orange? If you truly are unable to discern between yellow and orange then it just might be a perfect yellow orange! If you use the color picker (eyedropper) at any point during this exercise I'm going to cry (but seriously you're only cheating yourself, oh but it's ok to use it to check when you are absolutely sure you are done/completely confused)

Step Two:
Is it right?! If not, correct yourself the same way - compare to the swatch, have you gone say, too yellow? Too orange? You didn't just cheat and use the eyedropper did you? Don't make me come over there.

Step Three:
Is it right? If not keep trying!

Step Four:
Rinse and repeat for each color swatch.

Notes: I did my best to try and trick you towards the end there... and uh, the one with 0 sat is to check if you've been paying attention :P

A Hint: This is easier if you also compare the tone when you are off, perhaps you have a 'yellowish' hue that is too dark, try 'adding' more yellow.

Template: File is a PNG so you should be able to open it, create a new layer underneath and paint freely in the open space. I wanted to make a layered .tiff but couldn't host it properly.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v13/Ragnarok27/PeerProject%20V2/ex6template.png
- - - - - - -
I strongly recommend you read the discussions and analyses within others posts that will occur between these pages and exercises. In the past volume I saw and personally repeated the same advice over and over.

This being said, sometimes advice or critiques will be given that may be incorrect, or misconceptions; I most likely am not innocent of this either. If you spot mistakes be sure and correct them! Don't confuse these with opinions however, which are never wrong only different.
- - - - - - -

[Lieblos]

Thank you, Idiot Apathy. I plan on starting a sketchbook but only in the future. I feel a bit timid to just jump in and have one right now, so after some more drawing practice I will hopefully feel better about that. (Plus, my scanner doesn't seem to be working at the moment.)

After reading some of your commentary I decided to fix the high-gloss duck. Hopefully this is shiny enough to your liking. The wings gave me problems. Hope they look ok. :S

http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l7/_lieblos_/ducky.jpg

Oh yeah, and I redid exercise number three because I was unhappy with my results. Hopefully these are better. I tried to make the sky blue ball a glass orb once again, and I failed miserably once again so off to the side I just drew and colored in a small sky blue ball. Hahaha, I'm so weird.

http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l7/_lieblos_/exercise3_take2.jpg

I'm going to start a colored version of Project 1 (with a different object as well) tonight and hopefully I'll be able to finish that tonight as well. Wish me luck! :^^;:

Crits always appreciated. ;)

[ChrisMayernik]

Here's a little example piece to help some people understand things. I'm not saying this is perfect but these are the basics.

Think of objects having " base" values. Usually you are going to paint the shadow part of your object because the color is not as effected as it is in the light. For whatever base value you paint in the shadow you will know exactly what color to pick to paint the lighted part of that materal. Think of how strong the light is and the color of it because these two things will effect both the shadow and the lighted areas.
Think about how light might bounce off different materials. Remember that light travels in a straight line and that it leaves at the same angle it hit. The structure of a object is important because it is what you are painting light overtop of. Angles are Very Important. The most important thing you could possible study is reflections. You don't want to guess where a highlight goes on a ball you want to Know exactly where it is depending on where the light is. That Is power. And with that kind of information you are going to paint much better and much faster.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v59/designnrg/lighting-a-scene.jpg

[young paddy1]

Chris made a good point but you must also remember the final reflection, the one to your eye, the light can bounce all over the place spreading the colours around but if that light wont reach your eye you wont see the reflected colours.

[ChrisMayernik]

young paddy: Your right about reflections. I thought we went over this enough that everyone knows the difference between a lighted plane and a reflection. Reflections are all about the relationship of your eye, the object's planes that are reflecting, and the lightsource or source of reflection. While a lighted plane is just angle at which light hits.

[Cup of Joe]

Hot damn! I did a demonstration and didn't even know it!

Very tired, just scribbled basic ideas on the latest one without worrying about rendering much. I'll be back tomorrow as by then I should be out of my virus-induced haze.

Also just want to give a huge thank you to Prom and Chris. Fantastic stuff.

Project one beta- scribble, no notes this time.
If you can't tell waht my shape is, I scribbled a top-down version. It was supposed to be sort of a half-donut, but ended up looking like boobs.

http://img165.imageshack.us/img165/466/picture6tj4.png

[Onir]

gaah I'm stepping into this one a little late, so I apologize for only having exercise one done; I'll try to (do and) get the rest up asap!

I had peeked in the thread before I actually did this and I remembered the way your little demo went Apathy so I did some of the steps you did. I sketched out the circle, put an arc around where I wanted the form shadow to be, picked a point and drew two lines hitting the edge of the circle where the form shadows edges were, and then drew out the cast shadow from those lines. I also put a little ball I have under my lamp just to observe how the form shadow and cast shadow actually looked; wasn't the same point or color or anything, mostly was just a visual reference of sorts.

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a237/jemanjiman/sphere_1.jpg

[Master 25 Days]

I probably should have read some mroe after doing this because I still can't determine the exact value of the reflected light and the position of the highlight which I know isn't the point closest to the light source anymore. Also did everything freehand so its all wobbly.

Exercise 1

http://img226.imageshack.us/img226/5984/921xy5.jpg

[young paddy1]

What I was meaning was that a lit plane and a surface coloured by light reflecting off a colour are two different and distinct things. The lit plane will work for whatever view point only because the colour from the light is direct and almost covers the object like a blanket, whereas a reflected light depends very much upon the viewer. If you set a book standing on a table and you were sitting, maybe half the book is tinted by the colour of the table, but if you stand much more of the book will covered and the closer to the table the more so.

The thing that was confusing was the little sketch of the grass and the wall on the right. It's reflected light, not coloured light, so it would depend on the viewer.

cheerio

[ChrisMayernik]

young paddy:

I think you are confusing reflected light ( bounced ) with reflections. It's best to think of it this way.

Reflections are based upon your eye , the light source, and the plane reflecting. Reflected light is light hitting a object picking up it's color and transfering some to another plane. It does not involve where the eye is. Honestly you will only see this in Very strong light or direct light. An example would be some light hitting some red clothes and spreading a red hue nearby, or skin reflecting onto skin and raising the saturatione because it's the same color. Another example would be reflecting green light with a mirror onto the wall. The wall will have the green hue and will have a highlight ( reflection) from the green lightsource.

Many many times will you have reflections and reflected light overlayed ontop of eachother. But it's best to seperate these things for painting because it's best to approach step by step. An example of this would be painting light and shadow and THEN once that is done you have your Core shadow because this is the "line" where the light and shadow meet. Then you add reflected light, then reflections, And so on. start with a base and then add on.

[MisterStrum]

Okay howdy, first post:dead:
I'm pretty nervous about learning digital colour, but here i am!
For the most part i don't have too much experience with colour so i hope i do something right.><
Exercise 1
http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/9059/sphere1copyuv8.jpg
Not much to say, i did the shadow opposite the light source, highlight smack dab in the middle of the true colour and a short cast shadow because of a raised light source.

Exercise 2
http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/448/sphere2copykw6.jpg
Did two spheres, like the first step, one grayscale and one the colour i thought was the same tone.
http://img243.imageshack.us/img243/115/sphere2copygmo7.jpg
I found out i did okay execpt i should have made my shadows darker on the coloured sphere. When I was doing the colour sphere I had readjusted the shadows to be darker already when I was making, so I saw something wrong there.
Err i hope that covers that>< I'll keep working on it. Any help is good help!:dead:

[Master 25 Days]

Mister Strum, your form shadows are incorrect. I made the same mistake on my part. But after I looked at some more examples it was clear where I messed up. I was keeping the shape of a circle in mind and not of a sphere.
You can see what I mean with this demo:
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=699669&postcount=175

This also explained how highlights are not in the middle of the true color.

[Master 25 Days]

Exercise 2:

http://img159.imageshack.us/img159/8914/exercise2gk2.jpg
http://img180.imageshack.us/img180/9458/exercise2greyxs4.jpg

I can't explain exactly why the yellow light would alter the hue of the blue ball but I held an object of the same color under my lamp with yellow light and the blue was now more of a phtalo blue.

I also theorize that the yellow light when reflected off the blue surface would be white since the blue object is already reflecting blue light so when you add in yellow light(which is red+green) you get red+green+blue=white. But that wasn't the case when I observed in real life. Can someone clear this up for me? Was the hue shifts because the object doesn't have a perfectly smooth surface?

I also tried to picture the light as a single ray hitting the ball and then bouncing off to your eyes to get a better idea of where the highlight should go.


Edit: I just read up some more and I think I can answer my own questions. The yellow light contains no blue so in a dark room, if you shine a yellow light on a blue object, the object would have no color since there is no blue light to reflect to your eyes. In that case, the yellow light I'm observing from isn't perfectly yellow therefore it still has some blue, but not as much as a white light. There isn't enough blue light to reflect to our eyes off of the blue object therefore under a yellow light, the hue of the blue object will be less true as if it was under white light where it will have more blue light to reflect.

[mir]

I am posting without any spheres but I am held up from Perspective.I figured out that there is a relationship between the core shadow and the cast shadow and I want to know how exactly it works because in that way I will be able to chose a lighting direction and build the rest.The more I read, the more I find out that I should go back to basic things like ellipsis and their axes and how to put them in perspective.These things are important .
If I chose the light direction then I don't know how to build the exact ellipse which will define my core shadow an which I will be able to project on the ground plane to get my cast shadow.I don't mean to be very technical but I think if I know how this is working I can easily build my spheres correct.
Sorry for these messy thoughts :(

[MisterStrum]

Thanks 25, i really need any help i can get>< The link is great so I tried it again.
http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/6594/sphere1gq5.jpg
I think i should have made the highlight a bit lower and my blending is a bit messed up. Anyways I guess the light source is closer than on your spheres 25.

[EtaCarinae]

Dear all,
Here's a couple of questions about the edges 101 tut posted by Elwell. I posted this over there but as he posted that stuff a year or so ago I'm posting it here too. Idiot Apathy, if I'm in the wrong place please tell me.

I don't really understand some of the latter edge rules. I.e;

Harder on hard forms, softer on soft forms
Can anyone give an example of this? I'm confused. Lead would be a hard form with a softness to it's edges, but jelly (or jello) would be soft with a hard edge. Or am I getting this confused with spectoral highlights and does form here refer only to the shape?
Harder on flat forms, softer on rounded forms
Like a cardboard box compared with a ball? A d20 compared with a marble?
Harder on thin forms, softer on thick forms
Like a thin straw compared with a thick pipe or barrel?

Also, (and this is going to sound stupid but...) what is the definition of an edge? Would it be safe to describe an edge as,
'A transition caused by either light hitting adjacent surfaces of a single object or adjacent overlapping objects/surfaces'?

Regards,
EtaCarinae

[Idiot Apathy]

Lieblos:
Bah! If you don't start up a sketchbook within a week I'm sending this after you /m\. Seriously though, it will be good for you - it will help you improve and keep you motivated. New chrome duck looks great. Just a thought, you might keep your pure whites or at least the concentrations of pure white to the more 'direct' reflections of the lightsource - I think it's good to have one highlight that wins out over the others sometimes. Exercise three redo looks great as well, I think perhaps one of the reasons you can't quite wrap your head around the glass sphere might be tranlucentcy - that perhaps you would be seeing something behind it. Cheers dude!

Chris:
Thanks for another great demo mate and the discussion with Paddy1 afterwards! I hope you feel at home in this thread! Keep laying it on us man, I really appreciate it.

Young Paddy1:
Thanks for the discussion mate, that sort of thing is always welcome here. cheers!

Cup of Joe:
Haha, yup; you sure did.

-----Project One:
Looks a bit like a bean to me really. I think you've done a pretty good job on all of these, but I do think you could tighten up your rendering a bit. A lot of this is going to deal with technique in PS and how you go about things - try to get faster and more efficent. Start with harder shapes, block in all shapes hard really - and then you can blend between the shapes. I might expect to see quite a lot more definition in the highlight shapes in the chrome, also the way you have it right now the ends don't feel rounded - well I guess it is a cut in half donut so that works. Hmm, I think I could 'help' you more if you could do a line drawing of this using primitives, show lines that are covered up with dotted lines. I'm babbling because I'm tired, but I've got work to do and this is a 'break'. Cheers!

Onir:
Nah, there is no late in here mate - start at anytime anywhere. Anyways, thanks for joining us! Major kudos for setting up a prop in real life to study, that's the sort of thing I want to see more people doing. Ok, your sphere - glad you followed some of my steps; why didn't you follow them all though? Now, the method I used to determine the shadow edges - not sure if it works or not yet but basically it's the center point of the ellipse I drew earlier, then the two lines I drew around the edges (parallel by the way) meet up with where that point hits the ground. Ok anyways, babbling because I'm tired - sphere looks pretty good, pretty defined full light and half light and minimal blending. Blending is something you should do between two shapes. Highlight is too high I think, it should be further away from the edge. Imagine the route a beam of light travels from your lightsource - this beam has to hit the sphere at the same angle that it will then travel to your eye. Picture a flat plane instead of a rounded sphere if that helps. Anyways, good results - cheers! Hope to see more from you soon.

Master 25 days:
Hey man, thanks for joining us!

-----ExOne:
Good man good! I do think you overblended or could use some stroke economy. Blending should be used between two shapes, try doing this again if you can with two shapes first, full light and half light and then blend those two shapes together is all. Highlight looks good, but I'm not sure it matches up entirely with the cast shadow. I need to study that sort of thing some more. Kudos for the freehand, good design on the comp too.


Ok, sorry guys - I'm just taking a 'break' from work right now - need sleep too. I'll try and get to the rest of you tomorrow if not sooner.

[Lieblos]

Thank you so much for the feedback, Idiot Apathy. I so want to learn how to paint a glass ball. Perhaps I should try painting from real life references. It's so difficult! :blahblah:

So, I *tried* to do Project 1 in color, and um... let's just say that it turned out REALLY horrible looking. Lol. I'm going to restart it and try to create something that I think is worth posting. So until then, I decided to work on exercises 1 and 2. Hope they are ok.

I honestly don't have any thoughts on these, only because they are so similar to projects that were worked on in the first peer project thread.

http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l7/_lieblos_/exercise1.jpg

http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l7/_lieblos_/exercise2.jpg

Oh yeah, and here is a very old image that I worked on when the older thread was active. I honestly don't remember whether or not I posted it over there but it was from the exercise where we were supposed to paint a picture from reference. This is the only glass ball that I've ever painted that actually turned out at least somewhat realistic looking. Let me tell you, it took me a VERY long time to complete. :uzi2:

http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l7/_lieblos_/glass.jpg

[Lieblos]

Dear all,
Here's a couple of questions about the edges 101 tut posted by Elwell. I posted this over there but as he posted that stuff a year or so ago I'm posting it here too. Idiot Apathy, if I'm in the wrong place please tell me.

I don't really understand some of the latter edge rules. I.e;

Harder on hard forms, softer on soft forms
Can anyone give an example of this? I'm confused. Lead would be a hard form with a softness to it's edges, but jelly (or jello) would be soft with a hard edge. Or am I getting this confused with spectoral highlights and does form here refer only to the shape?
Harder on flat forms, softer on rounded forms
Like a cardboard box compared with a ball? A d20 compared with a marble?
Harder on thin forms, softer on thick forms
Like a thin straw compared with a thick pipe or barrel?

Also, (and this is going to sound stupid but...) what is the definition of an edge? Would it be safe to describe an edge as,
'A transition caused by either light hitting adjacent surfaces of a single object or adjacent overlapping objects/surfaces'?

Regards,
EtaCarinae

Ok, I'm not so great with the technical art terms so I'm going to try to explain this as best I can with my poor english skills. Haha. Sorry... hopefully I won't give you any wrong information. I'm sure that there are others who participate in this thread who can give you a LOT better feedback than I.

Harder on hard forms, softer on soft forms
This does refer to shape, I believe. Remember that art is about what you can see, not what you can feel. A soft form would probably refer to a cotton ball or something that physically looks soft, not to something that feels soft. Jello, in this case, would have a hard edge when doing a painting or drawing because the form and shape of the jello itself is very sharp.

Harder on flat forms, softer on rounded forms
Comparing a cardboard box to a ball is a little extreme because of the fact that a ball is a circle and contains no inner curves. A carboard box will almost always have sharp edges, depending on how far away it is from the viewer. Take a look at the image of the cushions below. As the cushion edges become flatter and taper to the ends, the edges themselves become harder looking. If you take a look at the inner space and inner edges of the cushions, however, (such as the areas where there is a lot of padding) then you can see that the curving of the edges is much softer than that of the outer edges.
http://www.cnb-exports.com/pcat-gifs/products-small/cushion-covers.jpg

Harder on thin forms, softer on thick forms
Honestly, this one confuses me too. I think this is just a general statement because if you think about it, large forms have more surface area than small forms. In this sense you have more "space" to draw/color an edge on a large form than you do on a small form if you think of surface area to edge area in terms of ratios. I did a quick example of what I mean in Photoshop. Set one is based on the theory, and set 2 is done oppositely, with the small form having soft edges and the large form having hard edges. I personally think that set 1 looks more natural, but I guess that this sort of analysis is more subjective than it is objective.
http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l7/_lieblos_/edges.jpg

Hope that helps you out. I'm sorry if any of the information is incorrect. I based most of this off of my own knowledge (which could be quite twisted) and also off of my own assumptions. (Which are definitely twisted. Lol.)

[mir]

The attachment manager doesn't show for me in this thread.
Anyway,here is a visual explanation for edges done from Kevin Chen,I hope it is ok to post it here:

http://www.characterdesigns.com/bandaid/content/tutorials/1/8/tutorial_000_0007.jpg

I also found this information about light and shadow on spheres,the link is from PP1:

modeling form with light & shadow (http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/tech27.html)

[Lieblos]

Alright, here are my colored versions of Project 1 beta. Honestly, I do not have many comments on this image other than the fact that I absolutely failed at making a metallic looking pig. UGH. If someone could help me out with figuring it out, that would be really awesome. ;)

http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l7/_lieblos_/proj1_color.jpg

[Idiot Apathy]

@MisterStrum:
Welcome to the thread man! Glad you're joining us!

----ExOne:
Woot! That's got a nice feel to it. I think perhaps you've cheated yourself out of a little full-light real estate so keep an eye on that in the future. I would also expect to see the edges of your sphere a little softer as to describe the rounded form. Also, come one man, you make this nice sphere and you plop a shadow on it with multiply like that :( You can do better :D! I'm not sure but I don't think it proper to think of a highlight as smack dab in the middle of the 'true color' as highlights are relative to the viewers position as well. Anyways, good job! Cheers!
----ExTwo:
Great, again the idea of this exercise is merely to make sure you are thinking of color in terms of tone. It can be very tricky with different colors especially saturated colors. Now on this one I think the only thing lacking is a little bit of construction - your full light doesn't make it your subject feel like a sphere nor does the placement of your highlight. These two combined sort of make it feel like a top down view of a gumdrop or something. I apologize if my wording isn't as diplomatic as it could be tonight, I suffer in that category when I'm tired; I'm actually just taking a break from work right - just know that my intentions are always and only to help :) Cheers!
----ExTwo redux:
Great! Some really good thoughts in here and I enjoyed the highlight diagrams - glad to see you're getting it! Ok, yellow light on a blue ball changing the hue? Ever mixed crayons or markers together? Same thing, can't get too far right now into color theory as that would take up the whole page but keep asking specific questions in your search and I'll do my best to help you out. Now, the theory that yellow light reflected off a blue surface would be white? See, the surface is passive - it can only react to the active lightsource, if there is no blue light in the lightsource then there is no blue to reflect. A blue object is really just reflecting a majority of blue light (most likely among other hues) it recieves from a/many lightsources. Ah, well I just saw your edit and I think you did a brilliant job of deducing your question! Also think that perhaps your 'blue' sphere may even reflect a little yellow light - so it could even appear yellow at times. Now you have a pure yellow highlight - feels a little funny huh? I can't say I've really ever seen such a think - I suppose it might be possible, no probably not - as such a reflection would indicate that the lightsource was indeed quite yellow and wouldn't contain much in the way of blue. I think it would perhaps be possible to have a duller yellow (less sat same brightness) as the highlight in some cases but it would still be hard to keep such a vibrant blue. Do keep in mind it can be benefical to mess with highlights even if it isn't 'realistic'. I also noticed you had some 'gray' reflected light on the blue sphere - is that on purpose? Cheers, great job!

@Master 25 Days:
Thanks a bundle for helping out around here, can't tell you how much I appreciate it.

@Heartbeat:
Ok, if I interpreted your question properly you are looking for a way to determine your lightsource? I've really never liked the idea of drawing those '3-d' arrows to determine things, they don't make much sense to me @_@. What I would do, and is convienent in this exercise is to actually start with an ellipse indicating where the core shadow would be. This should/will actually be perpendicular to the lightsource so this can become a standard for determining everything else. Now if you check out my demo I did for ExOne, I sort of stumbled on a way of determining the center of the ellipse created within the sphere. From here you just need to determine what angle the lightsource is hitting your sphere and then re-create that angle (parallel if it's the sun) where it will hit the two most extreme edges and where they will hit your ground plane. Good lord that is probably impossible to follow, let me know if it/when it needs clarification and I'll try to do a demo or something. Ok, now as an extra thought - doing this is not just useful in one sole exercise - you might find it useful in any situation. Use a sphere as your guide to any complicated subject, create it and use it as your standard. :D!



Huff Huff, ok break time over - back to work for now; I'm going to have to leave the rest for tomorrow I guess. Cheers guys!

[Idiot Apathy]

Well, it's technically tomorrow right? I decided to call it a night but wanted to wrap this up first. So, ~night!

@MisterStrum:
Hey, how come you missed that link the first time around? It's posted in the exercise @_@, no seriously - I tried to make it obvious; give me feedback! Anyways - love the sphere; good job. Highlight is bit oddly shaped though. Kind of reads like one of those spotlights with the flaps on each side - but shouldn't really as I don't think it would be nearly powerful enough or clear enough in this sphere judging by the more matte surface. Ok now I'm babbling, kudos! Thanks for being gung ho!

@EtaCarinae:
Yo! This is the perfect place for such a thing - well, elwells post is probably the perfect place but I'm not sure how much feedback you'd get there. Anyways, yes! This is an important facet to the project I want everyone to come here with specific questions just like this! See, not only will you hopefully learn from it but many others as well you know? Ok, as for answers to your questions I'm going to compile that into a post below this so as to efficently compile it for postage on the front page.

@Lieblos:
Yeah dude, my pleasure. How's that sketchbook coming? :er: And yes, you should try painting from reference, you really can't make up anything from your head - even if you operate akin to a 3d program calculating light and whatnot you are still only mimicking mothernature. Lots of complicated stuff going on with glass, Mothernature is queen! Learn from her example!
Also, can't tell you how much I appreciate you helping out the other people in the thread! :)

-----ExOne:
Wooooo! That sphere is shweet! I might expect to see the cast shadow show up a little more on the right perhaps, not entirely sure where your lightsource is. Also I think you might soften the outside edges of your sphere to show the turning of the form perhaps? Nice highlight, shinnny.

-----ExTwo:
Nice, uhmmmm need I say more? I know you know the point, so this looks like further practice in 'exact' matching, good job.

-----GlassSphere from PPv1:
Nice! NICE~! Well done! Tones colors and drawing seem extremely well done. Some of the edges could perhaps be cleaned up a little just to really polish this gem but hot damn, well done - that's purdy.

-----Project One; Colored Version:
I think these look good. I do think perhaps that your 'matte' piggy better represents a inbetween 'plasticy' piggy and that your inbetween piggy is closer to a glossy chromey piggy. (Yay for the letter Y!). So, you might take your inbetween piggy and concentrate the highlights a bit more and make it a bit more reflective throughout. What were your thoughts in going yellow on the last piggy? Making him a metallic gold I'd assume right? It's not entirely necessary I don't think to change hues, you could have a really shiny piggy of the same hue I think.

@Heartbeat:
Yeah, I think the attachment manager is disabled because it complicates the polls for the ~Of the Week competitions and as we share the same section we share the same affliction. Good links, I think it's ok to post things like this - can never be too careful though; I would make sure and basically do as much of a bibliography as possible making sure at least to post the original URL. Handprint, man that guy is nuts - part rocket science part art, always hard to follow and poor site design @_@.

WOO! I'm all caught up for now.

[Idiot Apathy]

Question: Some Specific Edge Questions!

Question by EtaCarinae:
Harder on hard forms, softer on soft forms
Can anyone give an example of this? I'm confused. Lead would be a hard form with a softness to it's edges, but jelly (or jello) would be soft with a hard edge. Or am I getting this confused with spectoral highlights and does form here refer only to the shape?

Answer from Lieblos:
Harder on hard forms, softer on soft forms
This does refer to shape, I believe. Remember that art is about what you can see, not what you can feel. A soft form would probably refer to a cotton ball or something that physically looks soft, not to something that feels soft. Jello, in this case, would have a hard edge when doing a painting or drawing because the form and shape of the jello itself is very sharp.

Comments from Me:
Yup, great answer Lieblos. Elwell I believe made sure to use as many descriptors to address as many things as possible so not to leave anything out. It can be a little redundant and confusing I suppose, but hey such is the fallacy of language :P. He mentions at the end of his tutorial that these rules are additive - most are probably found in conjunction for sure.


Question by EtaCarinae:
Harder on flat forms, softer on rounded forms
Like a cardboard box compared with a ball? A d20 compared with a marble?

Answer from Lieblos:
Harder on flat forms, softer on rounded forms
Comparing a cardboard box to a ball is a little extreme because of the fact that a ball is a circle and contains no inner curves. A carboard box will almost always have sharp edges, depending on how far away it is from the viewer. Take a look at the image of the cushions below. As the cushion edges become flatter and taper to the ends, the edges themselves become harder looking. If you take a look at the inner space and inner edges of the cushions, however, (such as the areas where there is a lot of padding) then you can see that the curving of the edges is much softer than that of the outer edges.
http://www.cnb-exports.com/pcat-gifs/products-small/cushion-covers.jpg

Comment from Me:
Woo! Another great answer. I think it might be easier to instead imagine a paper cut-out of a circle held up next to a sphere.

Question by EtaCarinae:
Harder on thin forms, softer on thick forms
Like a thin straw compared with a thick pipe or barrel?

Answer from Lieblos:
Harder on thin forms, softer on thick forms
Honestly, this one confuses me too. I think this is just a general statement because if you think about it, large forms have more surface area than small forms. In this sense you have more "space" to draw/color an edge on a large form than you do on a small form if you think of surface area to edge area in terms of ratios. I did a quick example of what I mean in Photoshop. Set one is based on the theory, and set 2 is done oppositely, with the small form having soft edges and the large form having hard edges. I personally think that set 1 looks more natural, but I guess that this sort of analysis is more subjective than it is objective.
http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l7/_lieblos_/edges.jpg

Comment from Me:
Hmm, yup - confusing. Perhaps this isn't exactly a rule depending on how you interpet it, more of something to check if thinks start to look wrong perhaps. It is more of a combination of a few rules I think, but also a bit of an illusion at times. It could also refer to the inside 'shape edges' or blending I suppose.

Question by EtaCarinae:
Also, (and this is going to sound stupid but...) what is the definition of an edge? Would it be safe to describe an edge as,
'A transition caused by either light hitting adjacent surfaces of a single object or adjacent overlapping objects/surfaces'?

Comment from Me:
Yeah, sounds pretty good. Don't worry about sounding stupid, not asking questions is stupid. Another way to think about it is, ever done a line drawing? Of course you have, for the most part those are your edges.

Ok, now I of course defer completely to Elwell who had this to say in the original thread:
I thought that even if my thoughts are wrong they can still serve as stepping stones towards 'ze truth'. (If I can learn from my mistakes why can't you learn from my mistakes too?)
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1035380&postcount=16


Quoted from Elwell:
Harder on hard forms, softer on soft forms
Can you give an example of this? I'm confused. Lead would be a hard form with a softness to it's edges, but jelly (or jello) would be soft with a hard edge. Or am I getting this confused with spectoral highlights?

If you had to show the difference between lead and, say, steel, you could use a softer edge on the lead because of it's duller surface texture. Jello doesn't necessarily look different than colored glass or plastic, but you might want to soften it's edges to convey the fact that it jiggles.
In painting the figure, areas where bone is close to the surface (nose, collarbones, kneecaps, etc) are handled with harder edges than fleshier forms.

Harder on flat forms, softer on rounded forms
Like a cardboard box compared with a ball? A D20 compared with a marble?
Harder on thin forms, softer on thick forms
Like a thin straw compared with a thick pipe or barrel?

Exactly. In both cases it has to do with how "fast" the form turns.

Also (and this is going to sound stupid but...) what is the definition of an edge? Would it be safe to describe an edge as,
'A transition caused by either light hitting adjacent surfaces of a single object or adjacent overlapping objects/surfaces'?
Not bad. Painters tend to use the word edge to mean both the physical boundaries of actual objects and any place where two "pieces of paint" meet. Look at the plane diagram in Greg Pro's paintover. Wherever you have a plane change, you have an edge.

Remember, these aren't hard and fast rules! If something has to be harder or softer than it "should" be to do it's job in the picture, good! The main point is to think about and design your edges with as much care as you would put into any other aspect.

[mir]

I feel quite terribly with these attempts with figuring out perspective.I think I didn't explain what exactly I don't understand.I had seen the demo before writing my questions but I still have them :).
I will try first to understand what exactly I do not understand :\
I did a little drawing from life.
The sphere is almost top lit.It is a matte surfuce.The surface on which the sphere is sitting is light so there is visible reflected light.I tried to place some dark paper and the reflected light is not visible anymore.I should have made the edge near the light less sharp cause it's less visible and this part is merging into the background when I am squinting.Sorry it is not digital but I wanted to find out how to cast the shadows first.So then I'll do it in Photoshop.

http://www.filelodge.com/files/room20/521305/PP2_01.jpg

[MisterStrum]

Exercise three
WARNING: LONG ASS NOTES
http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/1237/sphere3copyls5.jpg
Alrighty so I did the next exercise and it wasn't too diffcult. Starting on the top right:

Sphere 1: If it only reflects red we only see red. The highlight is where the light reflects off the object to our eyes..so we see more of the light colour there..? I'm always confused about the highlight, I guess I'll start fully reading the links in the first post apathy since I missed something important already:dead:

To the right is...
Sphere 2: Same thing as above excpet with blue.

Below sphere 1 is..
Sphere 3: Okay so.. it reflects everything.. which is white..and their's shadows because of reflected light..and the light source can't reach the other half of the sphere as much...??

To the right...
Sphere 4: Absorbs everything is the opposite so it's black, again, I'm not sure completely how highlights work, so i thought since the highlight is white-ish, and black abosorbs everything, you wouldn't see it>? I'm also now thinking there should have been reflected light.

Diagonaly left is..
Sphere 5: Reflecting red and yellow...red+yellow=orange right?

To the right...
Sphere 6: Black is absorb/reflect 100/0, white is absorb/reflect 0/100 so the midway point between black and white must absorb 50/50...so gray.?

Down on the corner..
Sphere 7: So Sky blue has blue in it for sure, but it is whiter than pure blue, and if it's whiter that must mean it reflects the other hues aswell, just not as much as blue.

Thanks for the help Apathy!

Ughh notes..><:dead:

[MattGamer]

hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
here's exersize 1 and 2, but i called them step 1 and 2 for some reason

i painted them by first doing the stuff that tom tom the military man did in his little post up there and then filled in the shadow then blended.... and highlighted. for the color i just got a blue base and added white or dark to it to make it "pop out". uhh that's it. bahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh my balls SUCK!
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v77/MattGamer/092406_proj2.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v77/MattGamer/092406_proj2_grey.jpg

[seth1]

Some very imformative imformation here thanks guys... Just trying some thing out then I will set up a still life to see how it really works.
http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/593/nananany9.jpg

[Idiot Apathy]

@Heartbeat:
Nah no worries, use whatever media you want - pen, penci, oils - digital or crayon - doesn't matter. I'm still not entirely sure what you are after, what you are having problems with. I think that the cube diagram you are working on could help - but I think you may still be better off constructing the world around your sphere rather than constructing a world before your sphere you know what I mean? If you have any specific questions let me/us know and we'll do what we can ok? Also check out my reply to MattGamer below as I go over some things that might come in handy.

@MisterStrum:
Thanks for the notes, it makes my part a lot easier and I think it will help those who follow in your footsteps. I'll send you the 'answer key' I wrote up and a more specific reponse via PM in just a minute so be sure to check that out. I'm sending it via PM so others will still be able to do the experiment 'blindfolded' but I think you're probably the last 'guinea pig'. Cheers!

@MattGamer:
Hey mattmatt, glad you could join us. I know I don't have to tiptoe around with you because we've talked and your serious so I'm going to just go here: Sphere, I want you to think of only two shapes on this sphere - the full light and the shadow. Let these shapes be just as hard and solid as the rest of the sphere for now, the full light is where the light is hitting the sphere; if the lightsource is sunlight then it should cover 'exactly' half of the sphere and the shadow with the other half. Now, with this in mind you can draw an ellipse seperating the sphere into, get this - hemispheres! With a hemisphere you can then figure out where the ball sits on the table as well as the lightsources direction. Now, the only blending you need to do is between these two shapes - the full light and the half light, that is after all what a blend is a mixture of two or more things. This doesn't usually work in color but is fine in grayscale, with color you will have to manually mix your colors for the blend I believe. Highlight, right now I think your highlights are way to large which would imply that they are diffuse, very diffuse however they are also very powerful/concentrated/white implying that the object is quite glossy. It feels a bit odd to have both you know? I want you to get a matte object and a shiny object out and look how they react to the light - specifically the highlights. P.S. Use some harder edges brushes and then use softer edged brushes to blend the harder edged brushes edges @_@. If that makes sense... Cheers buddy.

@Seth1:
Informative information? hehehe... Not entirely sure what you are experimenting with in your picture, but it appears to be radiosity and the like; I'd recommend checking out Prometheus|ANJ's tut on the first page for some great thoughts on that. Cheers! Oh, and please elaborate if you want any input/help.

[Nerahla]

Ok hello everyone! I've been lurking in this thread since way back when it was volume 1... I did a couple of the exercises there but it was after the thread was dead and I didn't really realize it. Heh.

Anyway, since this one is active I've decided to give it a go. I've started with exercise 1 only so far.

http://www.aequinox.com/paintings/sketchbook/exercise1.jpg

I winged this, though I did scan over the precise directions, I just wanted to get right to it. I"m impatient -- probably my biggest flaw.

The only thing now that I'm looking at it is I think the values could be stronger. But all in all, I'm really glad it looks round! lol :)

Also, I'm so new at this (it'll be a year from stick figures in November) that I really don't have any real advice to give anyone, but I read everything, if I think of anything at all constructive at some point I'll mention it :)

[Nerahla]

Okay so I went ahead and did exercise 2. I just pulled the sphere from exercise 1 into a new document and chose a color and began to paint a brand new sphere sitting next to it.

http://www.aequinox.com/paintings/sketchbook/exercise2.jpg


Then I converted it to grayscale when I was done. I did make adjustments and check along the way. My biggest problem was not going bright/less saturated enough with the color to match the value of the grayscale sphere. Through checking, I learned that you really need to be bold with your colors sometimes to achieve the proper values. This is something I know I need practice in! it was good to see it like this, it really helped me 'see' the tonal/value relationship.

http://www.aequinox.com/paintings/sketchbook/exercise2_gray.jpg

Pretty fun and thanks for putting something like this up for us beginners :)

[mir]

Runecaster-I will try to give some feedback.Someone stop me if I am spreading wrong information,please.I think that your sphere will pop out by adding some reflected light.The surface on which the sphere is sitting is very light so the reflected light should be there to light up the shadow.You can see this for yourself if you place a ball on a light surface.Then put a dark paper under the ball and see how the reflected light changes.I tried to lit a ping-pong ball in a similiar lighting as yours.So the darkest part of the shadow is not the sphere's edge we see because it will take some reflected light.The darkest part of the shadow should be located near the edge of the light.(Think of the sphere as half in shadow and half in light).
Hope it is not much confusing.
M.

[Nerahla]

I added what I could -- it's way way easier with a side lit sphere, but I did it a little differently and did mine front on with a /tad/ bit to the right. You can tell from the cast shadow. The reflected light comes from the bounce back towards what is not lit directly -- and since we cannot really see that side (it's behind) there isn't really any reflected light that we can see.

I did add some on the left side of what you already are seeing. Sorry you can't clearly see it. Like I said, my values should be stronger - would make it easier to read.


Looking back at yours, you used a ball then on a table? I just did mine out of my head. Reference is always preferable - I thought the exercise was just to 'draw a sphere' out of our head though. Oh well. I don't even think I have a ball in my house that I could use, nor a decent surface to place it on near my computer.

You know, the funny thing about all of this is that everyone's monitor is different. >.< You never know what you're gonna get!

[romance]

I was asked by Mr. Apathy to post this here as information for you guys & gals. Just a little example as to how you can show surfaces on abject without really having to paint much. You'll have to pardon some on the instructions if they don't make sense or they are difficult to understand, as English is my first language :P

http://www.artofromance.ca/ca/axis/romance_specular_tutorial_types.jpg

Top Left - This frame represents a surface that is unaffected by light. Pretty much looks like a silhoutte, which is all the more reason to add light to accurately describe the form.

Top Center - This frame contains the same object as the first, but has light to describe its form. The light spreads evenly over the objects surface allowing for the object to appear dull (matte).

Top Right - In this frame, the object is given a smooth glossy look. This can be achieved by reducing the spread of light over the surface into focused points where the light strikes the surface most directly.

Bottom Left - Same glossy surface as above, but the increased amount, changed shaped, and uniform distribution of the highlights gives the object a vertically ribbed surface.

Bottom Center - Again, same glossy surface, but by placing tiny hightlights scattered in roughly the same area as the smooth surface highlight, an bumpy look can be achieved.

Bottom Right - Glossy again, this time with horizontal ribs. To accomodate them a little better, the silhoutte of the shape has been altered slightly. Because the ribs all have angles that will be affected by the light source, each bump will need a highlight that spreads slightly in a horizontal direction.

These were the most easy to understand samples I could give, but they can get alot more complex. You'll also notice that I'm not just adding the highlights, but bounced light as well. These aren't necessary, but they do help achieve a more realistic result.

Hope you enjoyed this. I learned some shit, hope you did too.

-R

[Jtho]

awesome examples romance, it really is striking how just changing your highlights affects the surface texture so much.

Anyways, here's my exercise number 2. I originally just started #1 in color but I read two so I decided to merge them.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v229/Scosglen/IAstudy1.jpg

Holy hell did I screw that up. They're completely different :S
Goes to prove how much help I need with color, I've been struggling with this ever since I really started to try incorporating color into my work a year or so ago. I'm too comfortable in my grayscale domain, I really need to do stuff like this. Anyways, i'm gonna dive right into number 3, thanks for this helpful thread Idiot Apathy, even though you're very humble about it you're doing something great here by prodding us noobs into shape!

[Jtho]

Exercise three! I feel very clever. Or perhaps I'm about to feel very wrong, we shall see. The sky blue extra credit scared me so I didn't try :S

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v229/Scosglen/IAstudy2.jpg

I forgot to mention this, but a black sphere has a highlight because no matter the color of the object the light that appears at the highlight point is bouncing off straight into your eye anyways right? I mean the sphere isn't a black hole.. Am I correct?

[Jtho]

And Apathy's beta project too!

Rough Surfaces: Rough surfaces like clay, a cement road or a paper bag do not reflect light very well because at the microscopic level their surfaces are very uneven and chaotic, thereby chaotically spreading light every which way when it comes in contact, so less light is sent to your eye.

Glossy/Metallic Surfaces: These have much "cleaner" surfaces when examined up close, so light that hits this surface bounces back more "evenly"

Wet objects: Wet objects can make most things look glossy because the water fills the imperfections of a rough surface and creates a temporary "clean" surface for light to bounce off of, i.e. a wet sidewalk can be shiny despite being rough normally.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v229/Scosglen/IAproject1.jpg

I like how it turned out.

Also, I have no clue how to do Exercise four, the colored light is throwing me off big time.

[Jtho]

Exercise six, complete with Hue degrees as close as I could get them

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v229/Scosglen/AIstudy3.jpg

[EtaCarinae]

Dear Idiot Apathy and All,
Thanks guys with the clarity on edges. I can't stop thinking about edges and planes at the moment... They're everywhere!
Lieblos that picture of the cushions really helped me a lot. I didn't know what you were talking about the first time I looked at it, but the second it dawned on me. The edge running from corner to corner is changing. Duh!
I think there's a couple of things stated by Elwell thats really helped to galvanize (or at least improve) my understanding of edges.

1. "...it has to do with how 'fast' the form turns."
and
2. "...(an edge is) any place where two 'pieces of paint' meet."

Is this not ALL you need to know about edges?!
I think my big problem with 'edges' was that it does not have an exact translation between it's lay meaning and painting. In painting it's means something slightly different, bigger, deeper! (Can you tell this has really opened up my mind?)

I also want to thank ChrisMayernik for the PS2 setup. I had just been using all the keyboard shortcuts before and thought, 'bah! seems a bit unnecessary'. But then curiosity got the better of my ego and I gave it a try. I'm using a much simpler set up all round now allowing me to concentrate more on painting and less on the tools.
Regards,
EtaCarinae

[EtaCarinae]

Addendum
Dear Idiot Apathy and all,
To answer my own question... "No, that is not all you need to know."
I was just rewritting my notes and realised that you can't leave out it’s composition, lighting conditions and it’s position in space.
Here's what I've got on edges now based upon other peoples words and my own thinking.

The 2 things you need to know first about edges in painting are,
1. An edge is where 2 'pieces' of paint meet.
2. The strength of an edge is dictated by how ‘fast’ the edge is turning, how near it is to the viewer, what it’s made of and how much light is on it. These factors are additive.
So what this means is, an edge is a transition from one surface to another surface. The tonal gradation rendered on an edge indicates how quickly the form is transitioning from one surface or plane to another.
We tend to think about edges in the physical world as an objects concrete ‘stop’ and ‘start’ point, but in painting we are talking about how the transition from one piece of paint too another looks, and what that says about the form, it’s composition, lighting conditions and it’s position in space.
There are a range of edges as there are a range of values between black and white, but for starters all you need to remember is; hard, firm and soft (with the possible addition of the extremities; sharp and lost). Once you start looking for them you will see planes and transitions everywhere and will begin to be able to categorise these transitions as one of the above types of edges. Just as reality uses a variety of edges to indicate form, so too should you.

Regards,
EtaCarinae

[Jtho]

I went back and did exercise five from the first peer project thread.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v229/Scosglen/iaexercisec.jpg

I used H:200 Blue and H:30 orange as my starting colors. Every other color on the canvas was made by either taking those base colors and manually moving the value or intensity sliders (the sky, and the dark blue interior), or the two base colors mixing with low opacity (basically everything else)

[Nicko]

Awesome thread. I have so little patience and much procrastination with this learning process but hopefully this thread will keep me on my toes.:blah:
http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l307/NickoGrand/ball1.jpg
http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l307/NickoGrand/ball2.jpg

[Primordial Flame]

Hey All, been floating around here for a while but finlly decided it was time to start kicking myself back in to shape. Great thread BTW :)

Anyway here we go!

http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d119/Hellboy555/Concept%20art%20forum%20stuff/Excercise-01.jpg

[Idiot Apathy]

@Runecaster:
Hehe, sweet; glad you could join us for v2! No more lurking :)
---ExOne:
Don't worry about values too much for this exercise - understand that your object can be many value ranges in many different lighting situations, what it looks like means a lot. Now, do me a favor and read the 'precise' directions - that's what they are there for ok? :) Your sphere, I think you've overblended - you really only need to define two shapes at first, full light and shadow and blend between those. Keep in mind it's a little more complicated in color as you have to figure out the light halflight and dark halflight as well. Highlight - you need to think of highlights as reflections; they aren't going to be smack dab in the middle of where the lightsource contacts the object. Walk around an object with a glossy highlight, it moves because it is linked from your eye to the lightsource. Read some of the other posts or do a thread search for more. :) Cheers, thanks for joining us.
---ExTwo:
Oh hey, didn't see this post. Great, this is exactly what I designed the exercise for - seems you are seeing color in terms of value and saturation and what that does to the color. Sweet. I would check your construction again, same as ex1 - you're making it too hard on yourself. Glad you 'got' it, cheers.
-in reference to a later post; Try and find a sphere or something nice and round from life and take a peak, you'll learn a lot mate. An orange even. Don't worry too much about monitor differences, it shouldn't matter that much.

@Heartbeat: Thanks for helping out mate! The darkest part of the shadow, located near the edge of the light that you are refering to is probably best known as the terminator. Something else for you to check out is 'trapped-light' look at where an object rests on any surface and usually you'll find it's really dark at that point. Cheers!

@Romance: Thanks man, I really appreciate it - something I've been thinking about a bit lately too. Cheers Rob.

@Jtho:
---ExTwo:
Heheh, don't sweat it mate - that's why the exercise is there, to catch people from making that sort of mistake. Start seeing color as having the properties of color and you're on your way. Try some monochrome paintings for a bit perhaps? I like the scratchy design you added btw, kind of neat. Cheers man.


Ok, more later when I get a chance - cheers!

[Idiot Apathy]

Exercise Three: Compound Response

Ok, first up is the generic key I wrote up when I wrote the exercise; after that is a specific response - you might just want to switch back and forth. Cheers and any questions let me know!

Using Photoshop terms for this so you can visualize it on the color picker better perhaps,
S = Saturation B = Brightness

General:
3: Pure red, since our lightsource has the 'maximum' amount of red and our object reflects the 'maximum' I think 100s and 100b (PS) is appropriate. Shadows, if you chose to include them, would be less B but same S. Highlights if there were any would technically be 100s 100b so perhaps you would leave some room in the full light for them.
4: Same as above, only replace the hue with 'blue'. Trying to get the idea across here.
5: Technically speaking I suppose this should be a mirror :|. But a white sphere is good too! Shadows still be grayscale, highlights even whiter if possible (probably not in this situation).
6: Ok, this I suppose would be akin to a blackhole - technically we wouldn't actually 'see' it - we'd see nothing. Remember, if you can see it it is either emitting light or reflecting light, don't forget that even shadows are visibile.
7: Should be orange right? And the shadows? Less B same sat. Not too different from steps 3 or 4.
8: This one is a bit tricky, it should of course be a shade/tint of gray - I would think 50% percent gray, but I need to think about that.
9/Optional: Oh noes, so? What is the sphere doing with sky blue? Well, that's a little bit of a vague name for a color - open for interpretation however generally I see a mix of blue and a little cyan as the hue - the saturation is fairly low and the tone very high. Very close to white, so if we are close to white that should mean we have a mixture of all colors, however we should also have more of this sky blue (blue with a lil' cyan in my case). How much more? How saturated is the sky blue you envisioned?

Notes: If it isn't at 100 s I think it is safe to say you have other hues mixed into your light. So, more hues less saturation, more of the same hue more saturation.

If it isn't at 100b I think it is safe to say you either have a weak lightsource or your object is absorbing the remainder. More tone more light, b for brightness isn't exactly the same.

Jtho:
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1042941&postcount=88
3: Yay!
4: Also Yay only blue! Something to consider on both, the shadows should technically be 100s as well. Highlights would be white depending on gloss/matte properties of the sphere.
5: Yup! Good, no highlight or rather not visible like you'd think. Keep in mind, this probably won't be the case very often.
6: Technically speaking, no highlight at all - it's a black hole. However say, look at a bowling ball. I think this could happen with say a glossy coat over an object like this - it can't absorb what it can't reach.
7: Yay!
8: Mmm yup, I think so.
9: Hey, ... you should do this one...

MisterStrum:
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1037214&postcount=78
3: (sphere1) Yeah good. Highlights, I'm still struggling to find the exact words I need as well as to understand the whole phenomenon but for now I think it's best to think of highlights almost as a seperate entity. Don't worry you haven't exactly missed anything, I think there is probably some good info on highlights in prom's tutorial though. Anyways, keep thinking about highlights, even if it's abstractly - it will eventually lead you to the answers. Let me know if you have any specific questions about them, I don't want to just babble on and confuse people about thoughts and ideas out of context.
4: Ha took the words right out of my mouth.
5: Yup, good thinking - see the 'key' for more thoughts on shadows.
6: Yeah, pure black - black as black black. Careful now, reflected light is really the 'same' as a 'lightsource' as far as reacting to the surface material (sphere).
7: Yar, orange. "Mixed" orange... err more on that later.
8: Yeah I think that works, your reasoning that is.. only light isn't in grayscale.
9: Yes! Great reasoning going on there, woot!

Lieblos:
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1027074&postcount=44
3. (Ball one, red) Great! Really great, you went 100s100v for your full-light and stayed with the same saturation for your shadows; good thinking. I am curious as you your reasoning for keeping the saturation, that's a tricky thing to understand. Highlights - you don't need to go straight to white, but it works in this hypothetical situation I suppose. Do note that this makes the sphere feel very shiny as you are reflecting the lightsource (that's what specular highlights are really) almost as a mirror. In this case it 'feels' like the sphere is glossy, like there is another coat around it - shiny plastic perhaps.
4. Great, same as #3 only blue, so same thoughts apply as above. Well done man.
5. Yup! Great, pure white - without being a mirror. Shadows are just less white, yet still very high in tone.
6. Hmm, I'm saying great too much. Really good on this one! Not sure about the glow - technically it wouldn't have a glow since it isn't reflecting any light.
7. Ah man, I love orange - got to be my favorite color. Kudos for going so saturated, most of the others have gone really dull. I think perhaps they manually mixed red and yellow? I'm no so sure that the highlight area would become more yellow than the rest of the sphere - what's your thinking on this? Serioiusly I'd like to hear it. To me it either implies a change in surface material or an additional lightsource.
8. Good, nice and gray.
9. Glass eh? That's a hard thing to do, technically it's transparent except for some flaws I suppose. I think this does look like colored glass though. Hehe, everyone seems to have some crazy ideas on this one - how would you have done it as a sphere like the others and what would your reasoning be?

HunterKiller_:
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1025255&postcount=38
3. (first sphere). Good, technically speaking your full light would probably be 100s100v. Your highlight on this one is both very diffuse yet really bright - I can't think of what material is like that if any,not sure. Usually if it's bright white like that it's shiny - which means it will be concentrated instead of diffuse. Also watch your placement, on a sphere the highlight is perhaps on the area that is closest to your eye.
4. Good, same as above but blue so same advice as above
5. Great, pure white - shadows just got gray is all. Probably pretty light gray.
6. Nice, pure black! just what I wanted.
7. Orange, could stand for some intensity (intensity is saturation and value). I think it would probably be 100s100v in this hypothetical situation.
8. Good, good thinking!
9. Hehe, I like your thinking. Nice and shiny. Althought I don't think I'd call this sphere sky blue - I'd just call it really shiny. Try and think what is happening with a matte sky blue as well.

Cup of Joe:
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1021964&postcount=27
3: Is that 100s100b red? Shadows should be 100s just less value. Technically speaking the highlight shouldn't be any more than 100s100b - unless I guess the object is glossy or metallic or something @_@. Then it would be more like a mirror. See how important highlights are?
4: Is that 100s100b blue in the full light? Also see above
5: Good!
6: Hehe, even blacker! blacker than black!
7: Good, I think it's safe to have the orange at 100s100b, just about the same as 3 and 4 I thinks.
8: Good, it's not so much completementary hues canceling each other out - it's every hue. Just like white light, only weaker I suppose.
9/Optional: Great! Good reasoning too. Glad you did the optional one mate!

[Idiot Apathy]

Jtho:
haha, you're all gung ho - sorry it's taken me as long as it has to get through all of these :\. Great thoughts on matte, glossy and wet. Cheers.

---Project One:
Yeah looks great to me! No real crits on this, you seem to know what you are doing. I think the plastic one is a bit shinier than middle but that's cool. On the glossy bugger you might have sharper reflected light as well. As far as rendering I think you might enjoy drawing in a middletone instead of black - gives you more breathing room and looks better in the end I think.
---ExSix:
Can't really crit this one, sort of does it itself huh? How was it? I found this one to be kind of fun actually haha. You get them all pretty quickly?
---PPv1,EX5:
Let's see, If I can remember when I set this up - the idea was to try and re-inforce using saturation for depth as well as temperature use. Not my favorite exercise as it ... well didn't work so great. Your results are a good exception though, kudos!

EtaCarinae:
Yup yup, notes look good to me. Another thing to think about is sharpness and lost qualities of edges are often linked to contrast. Keep on thinking and posting mate.

Nicko:
Thanks for Joining us mate.
---Sphere One:
Good, a good starting point. Now I think you are overblending - check out the example I did and is now posted at the bottom of the exercise. You only need to define two shapes and blend between those on the sphere really. Not only should this save you time but it will look better too. I also recommend you familarize yourself with using a combination of hard and soft brushes and how to quickly change them in PS.
---Sphere Two:
Also pretty good, got a nice feel to it. This is one of the exceptions to the rule that the highlight shouldn't really be in the middle of the full-light as well I think we are looking smack dab in the middle. Though, maybe we would be blocking the light? Hehe. Looks like your process was a bit more efficent this time around, good. Keep working for economy!

Primordial Flame:
Great man, glad to have you here.
---ExOne:
I think you are overblending - think of blending as between two shapes and not the shape itself. Check out the example I posted at the bottom of the exercise header. You should really only need to create two shapes on a sphere and blend between those. It is of course more complicated with color as you will most likely have to determine the proper color for the blend as well. You highlight is also too high - remember that highlights for the most part are actually reflections - they are dependant on the angle of the lightsource and the angle from the surface to your eye. Same angle actuallly, just 'reflected'. Now your reflected light - you are right in thinking that the light coming from the table (in this case the transparent sepia toned of CA's background) would be tinted that color - but the way you have it depicted on the sphere right now would imply that the sphere is a shade of white, meaning it's reflecting just about everything it receives. Treat reflected light the same as all other light.



Yay, I'm caught up. Expect a new exercise or two soon.

[Christian223]

I hope not to offend anyone with my bad painting, i spent too much time on it, maybe an hour, i tried to make it with few strokes but i could make it look smooth with very little hardness because whenever i use a brush with lowq hardness i paint stripes all over the place, i dont know how u guys do it but i obviously need some help, i ended doing it with a 100% hardness brush, varying the opacity with pen pressure only.

Well, i first did the grey background, then the brown table and then i didi a ball with a big sized brush, i want to apply shadow to the ball, i did, but when i tried to make the cast shadow i realized i needed some perspective guides to make it (this after 30 minutes of many tryies of wrong placed shadows), so i started over again and i did a very simple and obvious light position so i didnt have to worry about perspective, and i started doing the blending, alt paint, alt paint and so on. I first did the full light color, then the shadow one, and the the half light, wich is the shadow color applied with low opacity.
Then i thought that since there is light reflected from the table, i though that it should light the shadow side of the ball, just a little, so i did that but a little inclined... also, i thought that the ball should reflect some green light to the table, so thats that green vomit you see standing there. The shadow has a thin edge near the ball, and goes getting soft to the right, i applied a very light green light to the cast shadow since i though that the light reflected from the table to the ball and back to the shadow should go there... I end with saying that all this was very frustrating... oh and many thaniks for making this thread, its very good to us who want to get better :)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v733/Christian223/bolaverd1.jpg

[Idiot Apathy]

Hey Dude, 'bout time you showed up :)

It would help to see your 'failed' attempt at using a softer edged brush perhaps?
See the example at the bottom of the Exercise one header for 'proper' sphere construction.

Try thinking of highlights as reflections, they are dependant on not only the lightsource but the angle of the lightsource to the object and then to your eye. It's the same angle, just like pool.

Had some time so I did a little PO to show you where I thought the lightsource was judging from your cast shadow; even thought I thought perhaps it was parallel judging from the sphere. Think of your sphere as having two hemi-spheres, one is lit and one is dark. Use this to determine your lightsource and from there all else is easier.
http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/480/fortheccf4.jpg

Also, I think your reflected light on the table - the green is probably too strong a green, the table would seem to be white in that area; reflecting just about everything it recieves. The shape as well, light is reflecting off the sphere in many more areas.

Blending, lil uhm demo... try thinking of blending like this:
http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/47/untitled1jz4.gif
1: First shape (lit shape perhaps?)
2: Second Shape (shadow maybe?)
3: Using a soft soft brush now, color picking the first shape and painting right in between the two shapes. You need to be careful however not to mess with proper construction, the terminator shouldn't move. Here the shape isn't as rounded as a sphere; maybe a uhm soft flying saucer.
4: Rounder form, just more blending. On a sphere you need to make sure that the terminator (the edge between light and shadow) doesn't move around. You don't even need to use as many strokes as I did here as long as you have a large enough soft brush. I recommend starting with harder brushes to keep solid form and using soft brushes to achieve the 'proper' edges.

Cheers mate, hope that helps.

[Christian223]

Thanks a lot for your response, it helps me a lot.

I noticed that you made the lines of the light parallel, that means that the light is extremelly far away, what if the light is close to the ball?, it would be more complex right?, thats what i was trying to do at first, but it was too much for me.

I tried to make this one with soft edges, the problem was that i used big brushes, but jut not big enough, so now i used brushes sized like 1/3 of the ball, and 1% hardness. I also tried doing the blending in 3 strokes only, it was imposbile for me, no matter how i tried the edges moved too much and i had to spend many minutes to get the terminator where it was originally. I also had to set the "full size brush tip" cursor to help me see where i was going to paint exactly, it was a little slow though, my computer is not that powerfull... no big deal.

I also notice now that i did a bad choice on colors, i should have more value difference between light and dark, lets pretend its a translucent material :bashful:
The higlight, i did what i could, i think i have some problems with imagining the shape, how to cure this? practice?.
I left the reflection on the table as it is, its just too much for me.
Thanks again apathy, you are a real help!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v733/Christian223/bolaverd2.jpg

Edit:

I made this in like almost 10 minutes, i practiced doing many balls, i think im getting the hang of it, il try doing the other excersizes now i think.

What i did this time regarding values is that like the tutorial here http://www.anticz.com/drawing1.htm i choose for the light something near the whitest, and for the dark something very near the darkest, allways without touching the middle of the bar of greys.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v733/Christian223/bolaverd3.jpg

Edit 2:

Ok, i have done excersize 2 a couple of times, this is the final "best" one i did.

Notice how much the color version changes regarding value, it doesnt seem to be so dark in the colored one does it?, thats because hues have a natural value to them (this is how i understand it at least), for example, in the HSB slider palette of photoshop, hue 240 has a very low value, almost black, but yellow is very light compared to it, so this makes everything a little harder, only trust your eyes.

Also notice how the background changed in the grescale verision, it gets darker by 9 exactly.

So, when the white light hits the surface at right angles, the ball gets whiter at that part because light get multiplied... wrong, i did this and it was wrong, i think it depends on the material, normally, the purple ball will absorb the all the hues contained on the white light except purple, wich makes the ball "throw" even more purple, making that part of the ball more saturated. The ball would seem wihte on that part if it was of a diffused material, like human skin, that way it would have many tiny reflections of the light making it have a whiter zone... am i right?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v733/Christian223/excs2.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v733/Christian223/excs2-grey.jpg

[Cup of Joe]

I'm back! Had some time today so I redid excersizes 1B (twice) and Excersize 4. 4 was just brutal by the way.

Attempts at replies- once again, I may be wrong.

Nicko- I think one of your main problems as far as rendering go is your brush size. It's hard to get used to, but always use as big a brush as you possibly can. Start out with a brush the size of the sphere you want, then move to on about 1/3 that size. For round forms, softer (press shift+{}) brushes can really speed things up. If you have trouble keeping the shpae, use the magic wand tool (or any select tool) to select your sphere area so you don't go outside. As far as I'm concerned, if PS has the tools, no shame in using them. Hope this helps!

Primordial flame- Very good! Perhaps a little more blending, but you definately get the general idea, which is more important.

Christian223- Better shape, but the value range is, as you said, too flat. Try darkening the shadows. As for undersatnding shapes, some life drawing might help, but it probably all come down to practice. Good job on the second and third ones!

Anyway-
Project 1B-
try1

http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/8568/100906pp1b1kt4.jpg

try2

http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/1244/100906pp1b2sd1.jpg

Project 4-
Notes-
1. Okay, white and blue. 100% sat with value changes, I think. That would mean no white highlight, I think, since that would require all colors and we only have blue.

2.Well, it would reflect nothing, which would make it black, right? I thought it might be invisible, but unless it’s floating in nothing, it would block out a little circle of the light coming fom surrounding objects towards our eyes.

3.Black again? Wait, that doesn’t sound right….

4.Okay, this one’s a toughie. Hmmmm, low(ish) value, low(ish) saturation red, with both changing? (Sort of a guess)

5.“Oh noes, what will happen to red?”….. Nothing? Well, if it reflects only yellow, wouldn’t red just not matter? Or am I missing something important. So I’m gonna go with just a yellow sphere, 100% saturation.
- WOW. I think I did something wrong because that is one ugly sphere.

6.That’s just mean.

7.Well, all colors is white, and all hues at 30%, so… Grey?

8.Bonus- 30% capacity red, 80% capacity blue, ~25 % everything else? Okay, red and blue are opposites, so the red acts to grey out the blue a little, so now we’re at 50%blue, 25% others. High value, low sat blue? I really have no clue, this exercise was BRUTAL.

http://img243.imageshack.us/img243/6633/100906pp4px8.jpg

Hopefully I'll be back soon, and sorry for the teeny image-to-text ratio.

[Christian223]

Thanks for your comments Cupofjoe, i remember you from the older thread, i see you are getting much better ;)

Ill try to comment your work on p1b, as i see it, it has an extremelly little reflection from the left side, i think it would be better to add more to make it look like more realistic.

Matte: the lighting is wrong, see you painted the edge in the same tone of gray, it should get darker going to the left.
I see also that it tryies to be the half off an egg, but the shading is very rough, i prefer something more smooth like your second try.
Try to revewi the tutorial made by Prometheus http://itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm
A matte material would be the equivalent of a dull surface i think, having a very high number of little specular reflections of the lightsource, your missing that. I think that there would be a more whitish zone that spreads widely across the surface.

I dont think that there exist a material without the hability to have specular reflections its just that they might be so weak that you dont see it as speculars, but like if it where a more "lighted" zone.
Only in a plane that doesnt reflect light you where not be able to see specular reflections.

Plastic: Gloss surface. Basically its like a mirror that reflects the lightsource only. See my second excersize, it looks like plastic right?, its because of the specular wich is a mirrored reflection of the light, without bumps and without beign spread across the surface, its concentrated, like on a real mirror.
Also is important to have in mind that plastics may have a coat of a transparent material to protect them, that would be like two materials in one, this second material would provide another specular reflection.

Metal: there are many kinds of metal, some look like matter, some other look like plastic and others looks like mirrors, but they all share something in common about how light rebounds on them, im not sure what it is exactly, but ill try to explain it as far as i understand it (oh and get yourself many pieces of different metals and try to comprehend how light rebounds on them compared to matte materials).
In metals, light doesnt spread across the surface, thats why it gets soo much concentrated light in some parts, and gets so dark in others, in metals, there is abundance of both light and dark. Think about it as a polished mirror too and that grey is their most common color (but there are yellow metals, green, orange, brown, etc).

Look at this:
http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00078TTI4.16._SCLZZZZZZZ_SS260_.jpg

Its like a grey mirror.

http://www.galleryjudaica.com/registry/Sed_Bookplate_ROSS.jpg

Kind of an orange mirror, very polished, thats why it like a mirror, if it was dull, with many small bumps, it would not be like a mirror, it would look more like plastic almost, thats why some plastics appear to look like metal.

http://www.tablelegsonline.com/images/Furniture-legs-metal-225Pix.jpg

See this one, it doesnt look like a mirror because its dull, light gets more spread, but as soon as the light reflections goes off, its gets very dark in comparison, i wonder why is that??.

http://www.uhren-und-schmuck-shop.de/pierrecardin/images/items/4145828.jpg
http://www.paascheairbrush.com/img/accesl.jpg
Another nice example, see that there is high values and also very low ones, and the edges, all because its very polished.

http://www.furthers.com/images/BRB12.jpg

This metal is very polished, but doesnt absorb much orange, or red and yellow.

http://www.atlaschrome.com/PHOTOS/Plastic%20LIGHT%20BEZEL.JPG
This one is polished plastic, very metalish right?, all because its polished so that it reflects like a mirror, it reflecs all the hues.

So allways think on how much polished a material is. The more polished, the more mirrorish, the more hard edges it will have.
Oh and forgive me if i am wrong in something, correct me if possible :)

[Eyebrow Guy]

I actually laughed out loud when I saw just how much more dark the colored version was. I had such dreams.... Ah well, at least I like the blending. BTW, awesome thread idea, I think im gonna have a lot of fun with this for the next few days, maybe even weeks.


http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d112/Zeriechal/Project-Onecopy.jpg
http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d112/Zeriechal/Project-OneGray.jpg

[Cup of Joe]

Christian223- Thanks for taking the time for that!

Thought I had today to explain near-black and white next to eachother on metals-
Light is reflected off of matte objects from lots of little bumps. This means that light hitting any part of the object is reflected in many directions, so a little light from each part of the object is reflected back to our eyes.
As you go into plastic and closer to metal, there are fewer bumps, so light is reflected in a more concentrated direction when it hits the object, so only the light from a small section of the object reaches our eyes, while the rest appears dark.

Also- Did you have anthing to do with THIS (http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/1458/tomfrontlf5.jpg) Tom?

[Idiot Apathy]

@Christian223:
Great dude, my pleasure - keep the questions coming. Yup, I made them parallel - thinking of the light source as the sun. Technically speaking the difference would be something like 1/2 a degree but yeah ... no one will notice including you. I'd say stick with this for awhile, tackle artifical lightsources after you get this down.

Brushes; ran across this quote the other day: "A pretty good brush rule of thumb is to find the largest brush for the job, and then put it aside and use an even larger brush." -William Whitaker. Looks like you are doing great learning some stroke economy - it's pretty hard to do it in 3 strokes haha - the terminator is going to move too. Just keep economy in mind and work towards efficency. Full size brush cursor? So it's like a circle right? Yeah that's pretty important I think, that's what I use. Work smaller if it's too painful. Sphere looks pretty good man - I think the terminator could curve a bit more to show off the roundness of the form perhaps. Highlight is ok, it's a hard thing to get right and to describe - like you said, keep practicing and just as important keep observing. Check out how mother nature does it :). Don't worry about getting everything right, I like to tackle things one at a time too.

---Sphere#2: Hot damn, that's a nice sphere. Nitpicky crits - I think the curves at the very edges of the terminator could 'smile' a bit more. And the spheres edges themselves could be a little softer to show the turning of the form. Good thoughts on softening the further bits of the cast shadow.

---ExTwo:
Yup, colors do have an inherent value to them - pretty important, photoshops brightness measurement is not value. And yup, convert to grayscale isn't perfect :(, but I think it does keep the relative values ok. Squint and compare the two spheres on the colored pic - there is a subtle difference in value. Anyways you got the point of the exercise - your questions now;

Light hitting at right angles? @_@, not sure I follow. Your purple ball would reflect the light yup, all light we see that is not an actual lightsource is basically reflected light. Not sure I follow you on the next part, but diffuse surface etc is more in relation to the highlight - so yes, if you had a white lightsource and the highlight was really concentrated (glossy) it could look white. More than likely though it would be less than white. The more diffuse the highlight the less 'powerful' of an effect it has, more spread out than concentrated really.

Ok, more replies later - stuff to do!

[Idiot Apathy]

Cup of Joe:
Hehehe, sweet dude. Glad to see you back and kicking - ex4 made your head explode then? Hehe.
---Project One:
Try one, nice - pretty good man. Nice contrast between all three. I think perhaps you could have used some more defined shapes in all of them, in the metal one especially. Also, don't be afraid to 'exaggerate' the effects.
Try two: Yup, real nice. Could use a little definition again, but don't worry ;).
---ExFour:
Hrm, I think you are the first one to do this? Sweet, sending you a general key and a specific response via PM to keep things 'blindfolded' for the rest. cheers dude!


Okay doke, more later - these take awhile @_@ (short post but it was writting up ex4 keys and what not...)

[Christian223]

Finally got some time to do this excersize, but i must go to sleep fast, or else...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v733/Christian223/excs3.jpg

So, notes:

Red ball, reflects all red hues, basborbs all others and thats why we dont see them.
The shadow part just gets less red, because it recieves a little of reflected white light from the oposite direction, thats why we see a nice blacker line in the middle.

Blue ball, the same than the other.

White ball, reflects all hues mixed together, wich in results form white, the shadow recieves less light and thus reflects a lower quantity of light thats why its darker...

Black ball, its absorbs all light, and since we see light, it means we can see it... its like a black hole, it doesnt even has a highlight because such light gets absorbed too... reflected light gets absorbed too so we can see any values or tones, because the ball eats them and doesnt share.... :P

Orange ball, its like that because the yellow and red hues mix together, since light its additive, they mix in that way...

Grey ball, since its absorbs all other hues in equal quantities, its reflects little light, getting closer to the black ball, and beeing less white. It relfects a little reflected light too, not too much.

Sky light, well, this one i added some speculars i think, it has a yellowish white reflection on the top (the sun), and reflects the blue light of the sky, some of it only, in fact, thi ball is white, thats why its very white on the top, wich is "closer" to the light and facing it, and while the the face of the ball faces away, the light it reflects gets mixed with the light of the sky. It doesnt have a reflection of light bellow the ball because there is no surface to bounce the light and reach that part.

Ok,. thanks for the excersize, now to sleep

[Idiot Apathy]

Christian223:
Good thoughts dude. On your pictures, 'a grey mirror' and an 'orange mirror' it is what they are reflecting that determines the color. The grey one most likely reflects quite a bit of each hue and obviously much more light and much more predictably in the highlights. The orange one, is really just reflecting something orange in the enviroment or perhaps indoor lighting. On the third, I think it's probably helpful to think of the highlights more as reflections and keep that a little more seperate from the general lighting. On the others, polished would mean that when light hits the object it stays relatively 'intact' and reflects cleanly so to speak. On the pipe example, I'd have to think a bit more to be sure - but I think the dark spots are either just reflections or perhaps without the sheen of the metal it would be a very dark object, I dunno. On the plastic, I don't think it's because it's polished - that is of course what we are seeing to effect, however I think the plastic is coated with something you know? I'll have to get your last post tomorrow mate, cheers.

Eyebrow Guy:
Hehehe, well this is why I designed the exercise after all :). Glad you could join us. On sphere construction - do make sure and check the example link at the bottom of exercise one(?). I think you may be overblending to a degree - it looks pretty good but I think you're working too hard ;). I also think that perhaps your highlight is too near the sphere's percieved edge, hurting the form. Remember that you are actually seeing the sphere curve away from you near the edges and it covers more ground than you would think. Try it out with a baseball or something to convince yourself. Cheers!

Cup of Joe:
Good thoughts mate. And nope, wasn't my idea - I think even though the wording is a bit ambiguous it's a good thing and has started some good discussions. Hope they continue it. Btw, I have no idea the answer as I have no idea the proper question @_@.



Almost caught up, anyone ready for a new exercise yet?

[Idiot Apathy]

@christian223:
Hey man, sorry it's been this long @_@. Check this thread for the general response; here is a more specific response.
These are good! Colors are nice, shape is good too. I would note how the sides of the terminator might curl up a bit more. Your last one, the skyblue - feels a little more like a beveled surface than a sphere; I think this is probably due to the shape of your highlight - or rather the position. #2 feels a bit more cyan than I'd expect - but the definition of blue is a bit subjective ;). #5 feels a bit more yellow than I'd expect as well, on this one I think orange is fairly universal and this would be perhaps more yellow-orange? Good job keeping the saturation pretty much the same, in this situation only the amount not the purity changes.


Ok working on a new exercise - nothing too big right now... trying to remember where I was going with this...

[Idiot Apathy]

Exercise Six: Color Recognition Part B: "Brightness"
- - - - - - -

Intro:
Ok, been thinking about this - going to simplify it; tone we can't really do digitally - going to settle for brightness here - should still train your eye a bit as well as hammer in the concept that it's different ;). After this one, moving right on to the full shibang, blind recognition.

Ok, this is pretty simple so let's get to it.
- - - - - - -
Exercise Guidelines
a. The exercise will be set up with a goal in mind, sometimes specific, sometimes fairly loose. Focus on the concept, not on the final product.
b. As you do the project I want everyone to keep notes of their thoughts and reasoning. Why did you do what you did, that sort of thing. If for whatever reason you can't keep notes I still want you to think explicitly about what you are doing and write something down afterwards. In your notes and thoughts I want to take the key ideas and post them here. With this insight into your thought process we all can both learn and teach each other much more effectively.
c. Spend as much or as little time as you need to understand the concept. This is only a race against yourself.
d. All exercises are of course optional, feel free to pick and choose if there are activities you would rather do or rather not do. I will however note in the exercise if they are somewhat concurrent or if I believe it would be best to do a previous exercise before hand.
e. People who are too embarrassed to post their results will be shot on sight, you're here to learn not to show off.
- - - - - - -

Preperation Step:
Download the template below. You will use the empty spots next to the color swatches in an attempt to match the color. Hue and Saturation will be given all you need to do is determine the correct Brightness. This is going to work best with Photoshop, I don't think it matches up with Painter's scheme but you are welcome to try haha. Don't forget, brightness is not the same as tone. See #1 and #2, same brightness but which looks higher in tone?

Step One:
Guess at the brightness!

Step Two:
Is it right?! Compare with the original, too light too dark?

Step Three:
Is it right? If not keep trying!

Step Four:
Rinse and repeat for each color swatch.

Template: File is a PNG so you should be able to open it, create a new layer underneath and paint freely in the open space. I wanted to make a layered .tiff but couldn't host it properly.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v13/Ragnarok27/PeerProject%20V2/ex6btemplate.png

- - - - - - -
I strongly recommend you read the discussions and analyses within others posts that will occur between these pages and exercises. In the past volume I saw and personally repeated the same advice over and over.

This being said, sometimes advice or critiques will be given that may be incorrect, or misconceptions; I most likely am not innocent of this either. If you spot mistakes be sure and correct them! Don't confuse these with opinions however, which are never wrong only different.
- - - - - - -

[Christian223]

No problems, thaks to you for taking the time to correct me and thanks for the excersizes, they are really good in helping me improve :confident :confident

Ex 4B
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v733/Christian223/exc3b.jpg

So, from left to right, up down.

Ball 1: Pure blue ball, reflects the blue light of the lightsource because its a white ball, reflects all hues, so... doesnt absorb almost anthing thats we see a blue ball.

Ball 2: The ball absorbs only blue hues, what a coincidence! the lightsource is blue too!, so we see no reflected light.

Ball 3: A back hole again because the ball only reflects blue hues, and since the lightoursce is red and there is no blue hues in red, then no light is bounced because red gets absorbed.

Ball 4: It bounces just a little of red light, wich means we see only a little of light, thats why its so dark, the absence of light.

Ball 5: If it reflects only yellow, then red is absorbed, wich means we see only the yellow hue of the reflected light.

Ball 6: I got this wrong, i dont know what i was thinking... but lets see, if the ball is green then it means it reflects green only, but yellow is a mix between red and green, so if we throw red and yellow light the red hue will be absorbed, and the yellow too because there is no red to bounce and mix with the yellow, both get absorbed and we see a black ball, we see no light.

Ball 7: its a weak light, so we must see little light, more darkness, wich means a grey.

Ball 8: Ok, blue is at 100, so we add a little of green and a little of blue, wich will make the blue a little cyan and a little magenta, wich will result in the color we see in the example i made but with a little red added, because wee take out blue and green, making it a little more darker red...

Thats it. Thanks a lot again.

About the metals, i think that it can be thaught as being a surface wich has a very diffused reflection, if you stand in front of a metal plate like in a mirror, you will see a very blurred version of yourself, the degree of blurryness and clearness depends on the grade of polishness of the metalness :P What you think? its good or im totally wrong?.

[Henrikg]

Last night I found this great link site here on CA. I read a couple of tutorials on color theory, probably the ones by Ron Lemen mentioned above. He talked about chroma and the color wheel. There also were alot of other tutorials on light, value, perspective etc. However today I am to my extreme annoyance not able to find this page with the links again. Can anyone help me? I think this was the link. It is actually situated in the beginning of this thread but it doesn`t work

http://url=http//www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=630020&postcount=32

[Idiot Apathy]

Uhm, not entirely sure what it is you are after - but the problem with that link is just a 'typo' or two;

Try this; http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=630020&postcount=32


@Christian223: Give me a bit to get to this mate, cheers.

[Henrikg]

Thanks! - That helped.Anyway, just recently I contemplated about all the different ways you can light a ball. I also have been thinking long and hard about partly contradicting information I have read here on CA. I will post some pics and my comments +questions below. I feel that I need to clarify these things, and hopefully it will be of benefit to others as well. ( I hope it is ok that it isn`t directly related to the assignments above).
In the pics below I have consentrated on direct lighting, but I have worked with the following information.( some comments are noted on the pic to clearify things.)

All the puple balls have been illuminated by a white light, except for the third which has been illuminated with a reddish light ( just because I wanted to test it out) .Anyway:

In the first ball from the left I have tried working with a shadow that has the complimentary color of the ball.Since the ball is purple the shadow should have a yellowish tint, but I could not make the core shadow to look realistic+ it all looks like to much reflected light in stead of a shadow area.

Anyway- over to my main question(s): I followed Briggsy@Ashtons "ball tutorial" - the red ball. According to him, under white direkt light all of the red area will have the same saturation and hue, only the values will change. + I hope I placed the specular reflection at the correct angle.

Anyway. In Promotheus ANJ`s tutorial I`ve read and noted the following:

the shadows are usually less saturated
then the lit areas, wihch is logical, however that does not eem to be the case with the red ball, anyway.

-GRADIENTS ARE SATURATED IN THE MIDDLE.

The sentence I wrote out in capitol letters have really troubled me. How would you relate this to the ball?

In Briggsys tutorial you do not have to bother with saturation because it stays the same ( Also in the shadow part of the ball ) .+
According to the concept og gradients saturated in the middle. - The middle tone on the ball shold be the most saturated?

Please do help me out. As you can se I am probably confused by TMI!( To much information)

(Oops! I just noticed that I have thrown down the cast shadow without thinking about the direction of th light which is shown by the specular reflection!-my fault:)

http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h286/Henrikg/kulerogsprsmlCA.jpg

http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h286/Henrikg/kuleettertutorial.jpg

[Idiot Apathy]

That's awesome dude, probably the best coloring I've seen you do even. Small crit as I'm not a fan of asspats ;), You might consider curving the shadow caused by skullkid's leg to follow the form of the ballon a bit more.

Christian223:
Great man, I'm glad! Sending you the 'key' to ex4 via PM as well as a more specific response. About metals, blurry relfections - I'm not entirely sure. Polish is really just how smooth something is, so how intact a reflection will be. I think perhaps, not sure - but perhaps a blurry reflection like you might get off of metal is caused still by a high degree of gloss but an uneven surface therefore an uneven reflection.

Henrikg:
Great, glad to help. Any and all questions you think I or anyone else active in this thread can answer are of course allowed - promoted even. Ok, just going through your notes here - touching on things. On using complimentary colors - this doesn't have too much use digitally as we don't need to mix colors. With paint complementary colors are used to dull colors, lower the saturation for the most part. Also note the word is complemetary - meaning to complete. Now, onto Briggsy's Jaffa (ball tut), he is of course right - but so is Prometheus. We'll start with Briggsy's. In his set up we have a white light and a pure red object and no real interference and as interference (or other lights etc) is what really creates drops in saturation we have no change in saturation only in the amount of light which can be measured as value or tone. Specular looks fine, I'm still looking for a mechanism to calculate where exactly they should be; not sure if there even is one. Just make sure not to make it in the dead center of the lit area or too close to the exterior edges. Now - Briggsy's setup is a hypothetical situation used to reinforce how light works, though I'm sure there are many occasions when it's not too much different in life.

Now, Prometheus's words; Shadows are usually less saturated - is probably right "usually" just like he said. Think of saturation as a measure of purity and interference. In a real world situation you are going to have lots of interference which is more apparent in shadows. Interference could come in light reflected off the resting surface, surrounding objects, secondary lighting, the sky, your shirt even. Do note that said 'interference' could actually add saturation, say a blue background with a blue object. Now, when Prom refers to Gradients - I imagine he's talking about an entire shading scale, from black to full intensity to white. Black has no saturation nor does white, The properties and how your object reacts to light will determine where in this shading scale it will be. So, you may not actually experience a less saturated full-light. Also check out some overexposed photography to see things like this in action.

Your *ahem* balls - #1, mm, looks 'wierd' huh? More like a real acute relfection or secondary lighting. Well first off - you have a purple sphere why would it reflect the resting surface so perfectly? Right now it would almost appear to be white in the way it's reflected. Now, you could have a really glossy purple object that might appear this way perhaps. #2: Something I learned through discussion with Briggsy is that the main or major hue shifts will be between the full-light and shadow - or may really only be between the two. Not much else to say on this one, looks good but perhaps over blended - making it hard on yourself. #3: The whole ball would probably be a bit 'less' violet and more red-violet I think. Shadow would really only be cooler because full-light is 'warmer'.

Let me know if anything needs clarification, it's confusing stuff and so are words... :D

[max xiantu]

I did the first exercise twice (so far). The first time I only read the instructions and Briggsy's post. The second time I also read through Prometheus' tutorial. Which I need to read again (that's a whole lotta good information there). I plan to read all the other suggested articles/posts and try this again, but I think I'll wait for some crits here. And now, without further adieux, my paintings and thoughts ....

1. Notes ::
How much distortion for ellipse of cast and form shadows?
The cast shadow was easy to figure out, using the light source as a kind of 1 point perspective vanishing point.

How do I create the specular without getting an 'eyeball' effect?
How do I get the right amount of dimension in the ball using the value ranges Briggsy articulated?

http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q111/maxxiantu/ex1_sphere.jpg

2. Notes ::
The ball still seems flat and unnatural, even with increased contrast, and a more defined terminator. How do have the ball seem more naturally placed in the surroundings?

A slightly heavier cast shadow, gives a bit more fullness to the ball. How do show the reflection of the blue on the ball in the cast shadow without creating to much mud?

Painting an apple for bumskee's thread helped a bit with the specular, but it still looks really fake. And I tried to follow Briggsy's values, but it still seems like the ball needs more contrast.

http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q111/maxxiantu/ex1_sphere_tk2.jpg

Miscellaneous type question :: Would it be more beneficial to paint everything freehand instead of using selections? Or does that not matter?
And does anyone know how to get PS Save for Web setting to show color mor accurately?

Sorry for the long list of questions.
Thank you thank you thank you for this super helpful thread. My learning curve is becoming crazy exponential thanks to cA :yayca:

[Christian223]

Hey max, instead of using selection try using a really big brush.
To make the specular highlight just add a circle at 3/4 from the center of the "circle" to the edge, just like in the bryggsby jaffa example.
Your ball looks too flat, do this: (read this first or after http://www.anticz.com/drawing1.htm ) imagine an orange, cut it in half, now you have one half in the shadows, and the other in light, now to the example, do the same with your spehere, cut it in half, the upper half will be in light, the higher part will have like 90 of value and goes getting slighty darked as it goes down to the other half, reaching a 70 of value before touching the middle, now the other half is very very dark compared to the other half, it goes from lets say 40, to a 10 of value, see my last excersize to see what i mean, it is lighted at the top and slighty gets darker, but suddenly its very very dark, you sphere would get some reflected light from the table, so light that darker half a little bit.
Ok, i hope that helped.

Thanks apathy!!! u rule!!!! xD, im going to re-read it and maybe ill ask you something later, cya.

[Henrikg]

Hello Again!

I spent 5 hours or something last night reading thru the whole peer projekt 1+2. It gave me a headache to say the least. For a moment it made me more confused. However, I must have thought about everything I read last night subcontiously and felt I wanted to post some schematics here, showing what I have pulled out from all the info. Please do correct it if it is wrong.

Especially the part where it turned " crazy scientific" in PP1. All the talk about HSV vs. HSB , tone, value, brightness bla bla seemed a bit unessesary.
My personal opinion is that it would be a shame indeed when a painter starts relying to much on the computer readouts of saturation,value etc.

Value ( greyscale ) ,saturation and hue + chroma seems to be the things to consentrate on.
I really don`t care how photoshop measures brightness vs. painters v parameter.But of course some people might find it interesting. To me Painter is superior to photoshop because of its advanced brush engine and bleed function, and painter users such as Ryan Church, Feng Zhu,Don Seegmiller etc. should be testament to that.)

Ok exuse me, I didn`t mean to seem grumpy or anything. I just don`t see the point in "badmouthing" painter alright.

I`m interested in hue variations on objects under different light sources, because as it will be possible to read in one og my notes below I find objekts with uniform hue , only varying values dead boring. Would it be correct to say that Hue variations on objekts ( e.g a ball or cube ) are primarily a result of the light source`s color, the "ambient light" , diffuse reflection\reflected light?

http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h286/Henrikg/1.jpg

http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h286/Henrikg/2.jpg

http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h286/Henrikg/3.jpg

http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h286/Henrikg/4.jpg

[Henrikg]

I sincerelly hope that you can read my hand writing. There also are some important questions in there.E.g: " Are the shading scales normally of uniform saturation under white lighting?"

[Henrikg]

Under I have pasted in Promotheus ANJ`s picture + notes on saturated gradients.Picture +text = copyright Promotheus ANJ.

"The gradients between the shadow and light is not just an in-between color of the shadow color and light color. If the shadow and light is just blended, it will look very lifeless. If you look at pictures you will see that the gradients is saturated. It's especially easy to notice if you remove that saturation".

http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h286/Henrikg/middle.jpg

My question is - how would this relate to the ball? It is obvious how it relates to a syllinder.It helps the form turn. As can be seen in the pic. Maybe this is derived form the information in Loomis book succsful illustration where I`ve heard its written that the full light is less saturated than the middle light. This was also discussed inPP1.

[Henrikg]

+ a fast question. The pics posted by BriggsyAshton in PP1 are gone. Why?

[Idiot Apathy]

Max Xiantu:
For sure man, Prom's tutorial has been around for years and only after some time and many re-readings (and study on the side) did I understand it all. On your notes, ellipse for cast and for shadows - I don't really have much of a mechanism to use on this right now, I've really only barely set to work on completely understanding shadows actually. The best I can do is in the example - determine terminator, determine centerpoint of contained ellipse, sunlight is practically parallel so you can trace the edges and 'imagine' where the sides are. Not so hot I know, I'll look into it. Doing this next one a bit out of turn, getting the dimension out of the sphere - is all about putting the shapes where they need to be! You need to have, under sunlight; a full light which is equal to size as the shadow. They 'blend' together, rather the full light slowly dissapates in the half-light. Highlights can either be small and glossy or large and diffuse - glossy vs diffuse depends on the surface texture, size and color depends on the lightsource. The shapes on your sphere make it appear as more of a beveled object than a sphere, especially by having the specular right up against the exterior edges. Keep it away from the center of the full light and the exterior edges. Reflections are dependant upon the position of the lightsource and the position of the viewers eye, think in terms of billards; the ball is the lightsource the bumper you are going to hit is the object and where it hits next is your eye. #2, same advice - try practicing a sphere with only two values one for the the full light and one for the shadow - this is really all you need, that and perhaps a little 'blend' between. Don't worry too much about adding blue into the cast shadow - there would be some but not too much, really it would just desaturated the orange table a little. Focus on the value first. On using selections - yeah I think so; spheres seem to be really hard to get down digitially though. The problem with selections is they leave very hard edges which really hurts a sphere's rounded form. On PS save for web, not sure what your color problem may be - could be your actual color profile but I'm pretty ignorant in those matters. It might be the compression you are using, I usually use 80 as my standard, a little bigger but I never see artifacting. Cheers dude, keep the questions coming.

Christian223:
My Pleasure dude, I'll be ready. Thanks for helping out max.

Henrikg:
Hey man, hehe I've done that with the life painting thread. The "crazy scientific" was meant to be a warning - for the most part I don't think it's all that important to artists though I think it can help in fully understanding light. I don't know, it can lead to some interesting ideas. Though it is important to understand HSV, HSB, tone value and brightness so you don't misuse them - confuse them rather. They are all quite different. Moving on, like I have in the intro - all that is really important is tone, saturation and hue. Chroma is more a measure of value and saturation. The arguement of PS vs Painter vs Parameter was not to pick sides and who really has it right - it was to understand how it relates properly to tone, which it doesn't really. Painter and Photoshop each have their uses and disadvantages - for every Ryan Church et al there are Craig Mullins' and Sparths'. Moving on, hue variations are caused by other lightsources - this could mean a secondary lightsource, 'ambient' light, or any reflected light. I believe it is also possible for a colored lightsource to bounce around a bit and intensify or lessen the differences between lit and shadow. I also think that a colored lightsource could of course be more concentrated in spots and less in others leading to a hue shift. But for basic purposes the majority of the time it is caused by 'interference' from other lightsources. Ok, on to your diagrams - careful when mixing with white and black, with real paint it's not quite as clean. Even here when you have mixed with black you have lost some saturation. Yes, under a perfect white light situation with no interference a shading scale will always have the same hue and saturation; a bit boring huh? Yes, the first color has a higher chroma than the second, 100s 100b is as high chroma as it gets. #2, ball on the top left - technically speaking in a white light situation the ball would not lose saturation on the shadow side. The light is still pure there is just less of it. This is of course in our hypothetical situation with no interference. Ball on the top right - yeah, basically what you are representing here is a ball that is recieving a larger than normal amount of light in it's full light - perhaps there are multiple lightsources or it has a really powerful diffuse reflection - or seperately, perhaps your eyes haven't adjusted to the light or you are using a camera. Bottom left ball; it is not possible to stay the same saturation once you have gone past 100b, it then becomes diluted with white and will lose saturation. Otherwise looks good. Your shading scales, mmm mm mmmm! See how boring the white light looks compared to these two? Now technically speaking both of the colored lights shouldn't be as saturated as the reds in the white light situation. You are messing with the purity of the hue by mixing it with other hues. If the saturation is greater than you are saying the local color is not actually red. On your note in the bottom left, yeah - for the most part the most visible hue shifting is in comparison of the full light to the shadow as interference is more visible in the shadow. Probably next to that is the highlight, especially if it is glossy. Yup, I only had a little trouble reading your handwriting hehe. Concerning Prometheus|ANJ's picture relating to a ball - you've already done this in your past examples! full light less saturated with more light, middle is highest chroma and shadow is less light with less saturation. What he is also talking about is 'mixing' your midtones yourself instead of blending. Concerning Briggsy's images - perhaps his hosting has gone down or is gone. I'll check in a few days and ask him if they are not back up.



Oof, well that took quite awhile... time for food.

[max xiantu]

Thank you Christian and Idiot Apathy for your help. I gave it another go after practicing value bars in photoshop and drawing spheres in graphite.

I left out a background in order to better focus on the actual sphere.
I think the values make sense now, but now I have other questions :teeth:

Here you exercise one, take three ::

http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q111/maxxiantu/peerProject_one_orange.jpg

hokay.
1. Now matter how much I blend with a big brush (the Idiot Apathy Demo brush), it either looks splotchy or smudged. How do I get that smoove touch I'm looking for?
2. I understand the proximity and angle of the light source determines the size of the cast shadow. Do I simply stretch the ellipse to determine the radial distortion? Is there a more accurate way? (Forgive me if I asked this already, it's still bugging me :P )
3. Please crit me hard. ;) Thanks guys. I love this. :yayca:

[Idiot Apathy]

Max -
Looks really good man, nice colors. Highlight could probably come in a bit more and the terminator could be down a bit and round out more perhaps.

On Blending - Use proper edge strength and proper strokes, use the flow and opacity on pressure to your advantage. You won't always need a huge brush but for now stick to as big as you can - but think just bigger than the shape you need to blend. Also, think of blending as between two shapes, create the transition with the values already present and/or use just one middle step.

On Sphere Shadows - I'm not too familar with a mechanical way of positively determining the shadow shape. I just try to imagine where the outermost edges are on the sphere - the one directly facing us and the one opposite of that and use those as my guide. If you really wanted to get technical I think you could perhaps create a cube over your sphere or even start with a cube and map out the shadows that way. Same with getting ellipses if you want. I did see a few things over at that HandPrint(.com?) site the other day that I need to take a look at again.

Cheers, keep it up!

[Wake101]

Okay, I was looking for some guidence in my studies, and I found this. Thanks a ton idiot apathy, this thread really helps. Anywho here is exercize 1 and some additional sphere studies. I also did the surface excersize

http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e261/wake101/nov17p.jpg

http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e261/wake101/nov17p2.jpg

http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e261/wake101/nov17p3.jpg

[le-mec]

All right, I keep bitchin' about being unable to paint, so I'm starting over on the first exercise and I'll work my way up, if that's what it takes.

http://www.moat-dd.com/images/aoe/exercise01_01.jpg


For this exercise, I decided not to use any soft blending brushes -- just a very hard brush to force me to concentrate on what I'm drawing and not to fart around with blending too much.
Okay, first I filled the background with a dark slightly warm gray. Just something that will kill the white background without throwing off my colour sense too much.
Then I filled in a very simple shape for the table. The angle of incidence will steepen as positions on the table approach the camera, eventually passing underneath, in which case they will be perpendicular to the table surface itself. This will result in the background/ceiling colour being reflected with greater and greater strength as that angle of incidence steepens. This is why I have darkened the a region in a radius around the camera.
I filled in a fairly generic pastel fleshtone colour. Nothing too saturated or desaturated just to make things harder. Subtle effects are hard to capture.
I decided upon a light source that was high and to the left, that was producing a warm white.
Then I picked somewhat arbitrary values for the shadows/full-light areas. This is where things get a little hazy, as I'm relying mostly upon intuition. I tried to make the colours a little more saturated in the lit areas, and a bit desaturated in the shadows. I also tried to make the colours warmer in the lit areas and cooler in the shadows.
When deciding on the shape of the shadow, I first imagined a circle placed directly under the sphere. Due to the direction and position of the light, I mentally shifted it in the direction that the light was pointing, and elongated it in that direction as well. I also performed a final mental perspective transformation to make it foreshortened -- putting the bias of the curve upwards, further from the camera, since the widest part of the shadow would lie away from the camera.
A small amount of light was added to the bottom, to simulate a bit of light bouncing down there. The value I chose was again, arbitrary and relies on intuition -- which ain't so great yet.
Simple highlight surrounded by a saturated ring of yellow.
I then blended the regions with a simple hatching technique. I've striven to hatch in the direction of lateral lines, using the highlight as the axis.

[le-mec]

2nd exercise...

http://www.moat-dd.com/images/aoe/exercise02.jpg


I performed this exercise a little differently... Instead of situating both spheres side-by side, I created a separate layer and painted one sphere in grayscale, then filled the top layer with a flat local colour.
Then I began colouring the 2nd sphere, occasionally flipping the visibility off to see how I was doing.
When I was finished, I cut half of the colour layer off to show the result.

[DanielC]

This project is interesting, so i thought i'd join the group.
Here's my contribution.
I haven't written any notes though.. i will next time.
I'm still a bit confused about a few parts but i guess things will get better as i practice.
btw, my spheres aren't very convincing, i know :P

http://pix.nofrag.com/cb/4a/d247a114dfb6c8a11d19a39439d3.jpg (http://pix.nofrag.com/cb/4a/d247a114dfb6c8a11d19a39439d3.html)
http://pix.nofrag.com/8b/2f/403332f67873c7acbcb65f5044df.jpg (http://pix.nofrag.com/8b/2f/403332f67873c7acbcb65f5044df.html)
http://pix.nofrag.com/3c/ef/9fde259367cccc0dd196a6b71b15.jpg (http://pix.nofrag.com/3c/ef/9fde259367cccc0dd196a6b71b15.html)
http://pix.nofrag.com/bb/4f/a97826deecbb312b9fdac6549cd8.jpg (http://pix.nofrag.com/bb/4f/a97826deecbb312b9fdac6549cd8.html)

I'll be back home on monday so i won't be able to post anything until then.
Merry christmas everyone !

[Idiot Apathy]

Wake101: Great man, glad to see you in here. Image1: Overall good, lots of good things going on in here. I think perhaps just to show you can do it you might define your shadow side a bit more. Also I think you are overblending - think of blending as between two shapes, paint the full light and the shadow and then blend the two. When working with color you will have to add a middle step or two however. After blending these two shapes add the highlight and reflected light. Image2: Sticking to just sunlight at the moment for easy talking purposes (artifical lighting has an enormous amount of variables) - your spheres should have basically two hemispheres, full light and shadow. Again, you really only need to define these two shapes and blend the two together. Now, reflected light - feels a bit odd, here I see your spheres resting on a table - the reflected light is bouncing from all parts of this table not just where you have the reflected light. Think that it will wrap completely around, not just in the front. Let me know if that makes sense ok? Project#1: Good! Definetly visualizing different materials. Reflected light on the glossy object is a bit off again. Cheers, sorry it's taken me this long to get back to you.

le-mec: hey dood! sorry I haven't been around. Good on you for not blending like a madman. What I see in this sphere is an artifical lightsource, due to the extra large half-light and irregular shapes for light and shadow. I'm sure you know but in sunlight a sphere should really only have two shapes - a hemisphere for light and a hemisphere for shadow. Where the surface begins to turn away from the light is where the two blend together. If you were blending all you really need to do is seam these two shapes together. Color is of course more complicated as you will have to add in a middle step or two. Now, a diffuse highlight can and will of course mess with that a bit in the light hemisphere and reflected lighting in the shadowed hemisphere but I prefer to 'calculate' that afterwards. I'm not incredibly sure about the position of your cast shadow - the way I like to do it is cut the sphere in half, where the two hemi-spheres meet, that way you know the direction of the light. I have this set up as an example in the sphere construction section. You've got a lot of color theory notes in here that would take me all day to get to - please let me know if there are any specific ones you want me to go over or all of them even. I like how you've 'blended' with broken edges, playing with edges is really interesting - have you read the Alla Prima section on edges yet? Reply to your next post below.

Le-mec: Neat idea. But 'we' still need to see your colored portion in grayscale to compare tone. Here again I think you have way too many steps, at most you really only need full-light, light half-light, dark half-light, shadow, highlight and reflected light. Any more is perhaps stylistic? Cheers homey.

DanielC: Hey dude! Cool to see you in here... you should teach us how to draw :D. Please let me know what you are confused about, hopefully I can help and refine the projects. Spheres: I think the tones are pretty close, that's all the exercise was about anyways - seeing color with tone. #2: is this one of the exercises? I can't remember any more. Looks pretty good, I think you might have a better time if you think in these terms. Cut your sphere in half - leaving two hemispheres. One hemisphere is in light the other in shadow. This is basically how a sphere will be in sunlight. Where the form starts to turn away is the half-light, effectively 'blending' together the shapes of full light and shadow. All that is left to create is the highlight, dull and diffuse or concentrated and glossy - then the reflected light into the shadow shape. That make sense? Here is the answer key to the last exercise you did, did you mix up the sky blue one and the gray?

Using Photoshop terms for this so you can visualize it on the color picker better perhaps,
S = Saturation B = Brightness

3: Pure red, since our lightsource has the 'maximum' amount of red and our object reflects the 'maximum' I think 100s and 100b (PS) is appropriate. Shadows, if you chose to include them, would be less B but same S. Highlights if there were any would technically be 100s 100b so perhaps you would leave some room in the full light for them.
4: Same as above, only replace the hue with 'blue'. Trying to get the idea across here.
5: Technically speaking I suppose this should be a mirror :|. But a white sphere is good too! Shadows still be grayscale, highlights even whiter if possible (probably not in this situation).
6: Ok, this I suppose would be akin to a blackhole - technically we wouldn't actually 'see' it - we'd see nothing. Remember, if you can see it it is either emitting light or reflecting light, don't forget that even shadows are visibile.
7: Should be orange right? And the shadows? Less B same sat. Not too different from steps 3 or 4.
8: This one is a bit tricky, it should of course be a shade/tint of gray - I would think 50% percent gray, but I need to think about that.
9/Optional: Oh noes, so? What is the sphere doing with sky blue? Well, that's a little bit of a vague name for a color - open for interpretation however generally I see a mix of blue and a little cyan as the hue - the saturation is fairly low and the tone very high. Very close to white, so if we are close to white that should mean we have a mixture of all colors, however we should also have more of this sky blue (blue with a lil' cyan in my case). How much more? How saturated is the sky blue you envisioned?

Notes: If it isn't at 100 s I think it is safe to say you have other hues mixed into your light. So, more hues less saturation, more of the same hue more saturation.

If it isn't at 100b I think it is safe to say you either have a weak lightsource or your object is absorbing the remainder. More tone more light, b for brightness isn't exactly the same.

[Night~]

Hey Apathy, I'll post the examples from the Colouring Book here;

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=35582&stc=1&d=1160777821


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v257/mackerman/gob_wip3.jpg

Would the artist have gone over every one of those lines with a 1 px black brush, or would he have set the line art in the layer above with mutliply as a blending option and painted over them without worrying, because they would come out the right colour because of the blending properties? What if the image is shaded? Would you not agree that some drawings look better without such prominent outlines, if so which in your opinion?

The Fire Lizard one as well;

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v230/Ahmedpic/pencils/lizard.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v230/Ahmedpic/computer%20coloring/lizardcolour.jpg

All the shading under the belly etc. Would he have had to totally re-do that, or just used the Multiply blending option?

Thanks for any help you can give.

(The pictures are awesome btw, I don't really know anyone yet so I can't give kudos.) :)

[Idiot Apathy]

Yeah, these both appear to have been done with the lines set to multiply. That's how I do it too. Lines to multiply and then however many layers you need underneath for paint. Often I'll do a quick block in with this method and then work overtop of the line work as well or instead.

Shading - doesn't have to be redone, but I think the color quality will be better. A lot happens to color, or a lot can happen to color as it recedes into shadow. I would still do a block in with the multiply technique but then go ahead and paint over everything with a normal layer on top.

Hope that helps.

[Night~]

Awesome thanks.

And I guess if the line drawing doesn't have any of those details on you have to add them yourself someway.

[Steph]

Im still having trouble with 'Exercise Four: Light and Color Part B'

Perhaps i should of paid more attention to highschool physics classes, but at the time i would never of thought that would help me become a better artist in the futur! haha.

So, in theory, a sphere that only reflects blue light, is basicly just a blue ball, no matter what color light you shine on it? it can only appear brighter or darker and possibly more or less saturated, but it will never change hue? am i right?


It's hard for me to imagine these fictional situations, because things in real life rarely just reflect one pure color. I also find it difficult to relate the science i know and what my eyes can see... But now that i think of it, its starting to make a little more sence....

[Cup of Joe]

Stephh- (Warning: I may be wrong, but it helps me to think about this once in a while)
That sounds right to me, although that assumes your dealing with a pure blue sphere (Which i believe we do, in that excersize).
I real life many colors we see are combinations of different colors, and this might not always be the case. A sphere on your desk may be, say, 90% Blue, but still 10% green. In the white light we see by, this would create the shade of blue we see. But if you shined a pure green light on it, it would appear to be (a however hard to see) green sphere.

Anyway, yes, I believe your right as long as it's a pure color. Hope my rambling helped somehow!

[Idiot Apathy]

Glad you are posting these questions guys, good stuff!

Yeah, it's a very odd situation in terms of real life - not sure you're really ever going to see a pure colored object and rarely if ever a pure colored lightsource. But it is, I think the best way to teach the concept.

So, understand if the hue is not present in your lightsource it can not be reflected by your object. If your object only reflects one hue, in this case blue - but your lightsource does not contain blue; you won't see anything, blackness.

Now, the exceptions I can think of at the moment - and I'm not entirely sure how this works with objects - is mixtures of light. In my understanding there are pure lights of one hue and mixed lights producing a hue - but as I said I have yet to put my finger on this one. But for example if we had a pure yellow object with orange lighting I would say half of that lighting was yellow and half was red - so the object would reflect all the yellow lighting.

Also to note, if the object is a 'pure' hue - then it will never drop in saturation. Think of saturation as interference of a dominant hue - if no other hues are present it's pure. As you add more and more interference you loose saturation until the color becomes achromatic.

Also, with Joe's (thanks for helping out by the way joe! :) ) 90% blue sphere and 10% green sphere you are going to see a reduction in saturation and a hue shift slightly towards green - perhaps blue cyan? And yes, if you had a pure green lightsource upon it it would appear to be a very dark yet highly saturated green.


Cheers guys!

[Re!ke]

am i too late to join this??
this really is alot of help.

[Idiot Apathy]

Never too late to join this, always open. As long as I'm around and haven't started up Volume 3... hehe.

[Re!ke]

YAY! boss, i ll get started on some these exercises tonight.

Greetz~Re!ke

[Okirun]

Hi guys!

Anyway, recently I've realized I've never finished a single decent CG painting, so I thought I'd better get some practice. Here's my (gigantic) sphere:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v342/NuriKitsune/sphere1.jpg

It was harder than I thought. XD Damn core shadow. I think the reflected light came out alright though. (I only just started trying out realistic lighting a little while ago, so reflected light is still lyke sooper kewl to me.;;; ) I really don't know what else to say. (Oh, and sorry if I made any mistakes you've already explained, Apathy.. for some reason page two of this thread just won't work for me. I tried yesterday too.;; )

Anyway, then I tried two more:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v342/NuriKitsune/sphere2.jpg

I.. do not have much patience for cel type shading, it seems. I like the soft one best of all three. I'm not sure if that's really how shadows work though, LOL. Oh well, guess that's why I'm here.

[Idiot Apathy]

Okirun; welcome to the thread mate!
1st Sphere: A great start! I do think however you are overblending. and your brush settings are probably making this harder on you. Please see the end of this post, my results to give you an idea of simple sphere construction. http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1016341&postcount=2
For brushes, I prefer to have a brush that will let me determine the 'amount' and to some extent the edges with pressure sensitivity on my tablet. Try a default round, 100% opacity 60-80% Flow (change flow as you need it, think of flow as a time delay for the same amount of paint a 100% flow brush would put out immediately - so you can have a slower more deliberate touch) Put size to pressure, minimum size maybe 30-50. Too small isn't very good for painting but can be good for drawing. Opacity and Flow to pressure (these are under the other settings in the brush palette). Don't worry about missing anything or page2 not loading, CA.org seems to be having a few problems is all. Do try and make your rounds, it will save me some time and hopefully you as well :).
Spheres 2 and 3: Again, see the link above for simple sphere construction. Also don't be afraid to go back in again and clean up your edges and refine, it's a necessary process that can't be helped a lot of the time.

Cheers! Any questions let me know.

[Okirun]

Thanks for the quick reply and the great tips! :3 I'm really not too good with the technical stuff in Photoshop still.. I'll mess around with all that, and try to refine things more on the next exercise. :D

[Idiot Apathy]

Mm, do so! It sounds odd, but learning your tools even digitally is very important. In doing so you are better able to experiment and in an efficent manner, both of which lead to quicker progression in my opinion. Do let us know if you have any trouble setting this up, or check my demo thread in signature for a brush set of mine that has a good default round brush already set up. Cheers!

[Re!ke]

erm i would post my spheres but i am unable to attach them via the upload link :S:S:S
any help?

greetz~Re!ke

[Idiot Apathy]

Uploads are disabled in this section, something to do with the weeklies and polls - I don't know. Use imageshack.com or photobucket.com. Photobucket requires registration is all, imageshack is ready to go.

[lennon]

Oh man!! It's great to see that someone is doing something good with this great web that our nice Lord and the cheerfull people of the FBI gave us!

I have a question:
In "Vilppu's drawing manual", it says that gesture is about capturing the corporal expression with a few lines. His advices are very zen like, and kind of cool.
In Loomis "figure draw", gesture (don't recall him name in it in that way) seems more about marking the key points of a figure in a simple and quick way. This seems more easy than the last one.
In Bridgman's "complete guide to drawing from life" (that's the only one I have from this author), There is Rythm and balance, and it seem to go pretty near the gesture, but never really does approach the subject either.
Is it about getting a position, balance, or expresion?


So my question would be: What would you people say that is the main objective of gesture? And how do you get to its accomplishment?


There are some drawings at the bottom of my thread, were I try to do some sort of, what I understand, is gesture.

[Idiot Apathy]

Gesture as I know it, and you're probably asking the wrong guy here - is used to capture the expression of form and not necessarily the shape. Think movement of the forms and movement between the different shapes within the forms.

That said I would perhaps also categorize what you describe of Loomis as a gesture, however it may better be categorized as a lay-in focusing on landmarks.

Bridgeman I would say, is more of a combination perhaps? He departs a bit from realism in order to emphasize the things he wants to depict. His technique is perhaps somewhere between recording and abstract if that makes any sense?

So yes, I think you've picked a good sampling of styles. I think you would do well to ask yourself, what is it that I want to emphasize? And then explore all 3 anyways :P

How do you achieve a proper gesture? I'll let you know when I find out :\

[Vaejoun]

Ok, I join this thread ^^ Very inspirating and a lot of nice stuff.

Well, I did this about half past one last night, its not a sphere but I had just read another of the linked threads before. ^^

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c200/Vaejoun/apple.jpg



and the actual topic is light ? so I think this could be useful in some way:
Did it about half a year ago for a class. Was about figure compo and light.

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c200/Vaejoun/kompo.jpg

And this series is an actual work I just finnished:
About the creation of the world. Many reflective areas and a lot of fun.
Acryl, Pastel and pens.

This is a good example that, you dont always have to know every detail. As long as the overall look is correct you have have of the job done ^^

At first he made light and darkness
(Yes, a sphere !!!)
http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c200/Vaejoun/g2.jpg

Then earth and sky
http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c200/Vaejoun/g5.jpg

The mountains and the sea
http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c200/Vaejoun/g6.jpg

The plants
http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c200/Vaejoun/g3.jpg

The animals
http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c200/Vaejoun/g4.jpg

And the human
http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c200/Vaejoun/g1.jpg

Btw: You can arrange all of this pictures so that a complete human figure comes out. ^^ The sphere in the middle.

[Idiot Apathy]

Vaejoun: Ok mate, is there something here you wanted help on or something you wanted to discuss?

Otherwise the only I can really comment on is your apple. At the moment it's reading rather flat, more akin to a beveled object rather than a round object. I'm not sure the process you used but you would be wise to first work the entire form to satisfaction then do the details. Also pay special attention to your edges as they are perhaps just as important as values in conveying form.

[Vaejoun]

@Idiot apathy:Just wanted to share it. ^^
But if it disturbs you, I will delete them.

Well, then: SPEHERES !

When I looked through this thread I understood the part of shadows and light, but when I painted those two I got unsure about some parts.

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c200/Vaejoun/sphere.jpg

----The first one: Matte
Choosing the correct color,value ... for the shadow was difficult and I am not sure If it is really right now. And the part where the sphere touches the ground and the shadow starts... should the edge be more worked out at this point ?

Second one:
http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c200/Vaejoun/sphere2.jpg

----Tried on a more glossy look, with harder light points.
Does an object that reflects the light better have a darker shadow than a matte object ? Or does it more depedn on the strength of light ? Or both ?
And how does a reflective surface react on the light coming from below ?

[cocoumi]

Hey there Concept Art People!

I had been scoping out this thread and decided to crank out one of the older studies from the 2nd peer project of 2005 just before work!

This is the first time I actually picked up my tablet, that I have had for a year, but had not used, to do the study.

I used Adobe Photoshop 6.0 and I shaded my spheres focusing on the value concentrations. I first filled in 8 different values and then filled the breaks with values in between and used the smudge tool to get the desired effects. I then selected the least concentrated value for my light source (the top corner, right).

This was the result:
http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d134/cocoumi/Project2.jpg

Here's the result, transformed into greyscale:
http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d134/cocoumi/Project2Grayscale.jpg

This was a lot of fun! I think I will do the more "up to date" projects that have been explained in this new peer 2 peer thread. Constructive criticism is greatly appreciated!

-Cocoumi

[JAK]

Good to do even these old exercises.....Yep I have started again and gone back to basics
So here is my submission- (why I didn't get on board years ago I don't know).

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v654/Umuntu/Project-Two_JAK.jpg

and Greyscale
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v654/Umuntu/Project-Two_JAK_Grey.jpg
Still-re learning
Cheers to Idiot Apathy for getting these threads going

[Vaejoun]

I am just beginning to understand how values work and how to change them porperly. How value goes along with saturation/chroma and the color itself.

This is what I've done today.
1st the one in grey and then painted the color spheres. Sometimes checking with photoshop and going on until this came out.

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c200/Vaejoun/spheres.jpg

Strange...for some reason the grey-sphere looks brighter here. Or is it just me ?
http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c200/Vaejoun/spheres2.jpg

[Idiot Apathy]

VaeJoun: :) Glad to see you posting. #1: Good to see the sphere divided into hemispheres. Half-light might be a bit big. In this case your cast shadow would stretch out much much further to the left I do believe. #2: Good, definetly a glossier object. I think perhaps the specular highlight is too close to the edge or rather not close enough to the center. Could use a little more contrast to differentiate the cast shadow and the object's form shadow. Your questions; Does an object that reflects the light better have a darker shadow than a matte object? I interpret this as, shadows on a glossy object vs. a matte object right? I would say, the matte object would technically have darker shadows as it will absorb more light however if you have something very dark underneath or reflected in the glossy object it too can be very very dark.
VaeJoun #2: Nice, better form on these spheres and some nice blending. I do think however you are perhaps adding in too many values. You can get away with just full-light, half-light and shadow if you wish. These objects appear to have a large and very diffuse highlight making everything blend together. Values look very close good job on that. Colors seem rather dull and boring though wouldn't you say? Experiment with changing saturation as you add/subtract light as well as shifting hue. Cheers!
cocoumi: Hiya! Welcome to Conceptart.org! Sorry it's taken me awhile to get back to you, hope to see you again soon! The study you chose to do I redid for this volume, most of this volume is from the old one actually. Make sure and read up, I tried to make them better :) Now, your spheres; 8 values? Jez! Use 1 for full light, 2 for half-light, 1 for shadow, 1 for highlight and 1 for reflected lighting. The rest should simple be blends in between. I think I explained this in one or two of the projects, have a look. I don't recommend using the smudge tool, at least not for this. Set your brush up in Photoshop with opacity and flow to pressure and play with hardness and manual flow to blend. Cheers!
Jak: Cool man, glad to see you here. I redid this particular exercise for vol2 so you might check that out, I hope it's written better and makes more sense. Your spheres; I think your highlight is too close to the edge, making it feel more like a beveled object or like an m&m rather than a sphere. I'd like to see a clearer distinction between full light, half light and shadow. Check your values in the grayscale, quite a bit darker in the colored version; let's see another one but this time use the updated version! cheers!

[Henrikg]

Here`s my try at the promotheus surface material excersize:

http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h286/Henrikg/renderedmaterialsPP.jpg

+A question:

http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h286/Henrikg/retningpslagskygge.jpg

This is the problem: - the cast shadow falls in accordance with the direction of the light,and the highlight is a reflection of the lightsource. So this should be correct.However: while it is true that the cast shadow will always fall in accordance with the light source. The speculars ( high light ) follows the eye. So while the cast shadow indicates the directioon of the light source, the specular "doesn`t neceserally".That is-the reflected light inicates the stand point of the beholder-the artist as the light is reflected at the right angle into his eye,while the cast shadow inicates the direction of the light.-So is it reasonable to suggest that the placement of the specular, doesn`t neseseralily dictate the placement of the cast shadow?

+another thing thats driving me "crazy" is the fact that I find it close to impossible to get satisfactory edges and transitions when blending ( both in painter and photoshop).That is unless one wishes to use hours focusing on blending apparently...I did these in photoshop and " blended" with a reasonably soft edged brush set to opacity. - I think one of my problems might have to do with the fact that I ( because of my limited RAM,slow processor) usually paint at a small resolution. This last sphere i did at 600x600pix-which I think should be enough. When I`m doing finished pieces of art I work maybe at 1600x1800pix or something. I guess it would be better ( if I could to paint at e.g 3500x4800) or something bcause then I could zoom alot and even though the edges might look rough way close, this might dissapear when one zoomes out I reckon.

Cred to you idiotapathy for still going strong!

[Idiot Apathy]

Good job! welcome to the thread :)

I think your materials look great so we will move on to your questions.

Cast Shadows and Highlights; find something in your house that has a nice cast shadow and is very shiny - now move around it; which of these moves with you? Cast shadow will not move it is indeed locked just to the direction of the lightsource - or rather the object blocking the lightsource. Highlights are tied to both the lightsource and your eye, you will find that it bound to the angle of incidence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angle_of_incidence. I think it's impossible to see the highlight in the direct center of a sphere's full light as either your head would have to block the light or the lightsource would have to block your head.

On blending; I think you would have greater sucess first with simplifying your shapes. Follow this exercise for how I think you should construct a sphere and simplify blending. http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1016341&postcount=2
And check there if you get confused:
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1025218&postcount=37

Also I think you would do well to use as big a brush as you can - not talking about your CPU or resolution, just as big as you can in relation to the object you are painting, not only is it faster but the edges are more seemless.

Also try setting up your brush to both opacity and flow to pen pressure and even reducing flow to 40% for finer blending :)


Cheers!

[DanielC]

Oh boy i feel ashamed for not coming back earlier here.
Thank you very much for your attention Tom!
Actually the only thing that's a bit ackward to me is a more scientific explanation of how colours work. But what you wrote gave me a good idea of how it works (especially for the brightness and saturation).
But about hues, should i learn by heart all the colour combinations ?
I'll come back with the other exercices done.
Thanks alot !

[Idiot Apathy]

My pleasure dood, please ask any questions you have - and there is no such thing as a stupid question, except if you ask "is there such a thing as a stupid question?."

Anyways, what do you mean about hues and color combinations? Cheers!

P.S. Teach me to draw, HARrrrrrrrr~! :upset:

[DanielC]

:D ... there's no secret, just draw a lot !!
So, about the colours, like red and green make yellow, blue and red make purple, and so on...
I now its the basics and all, but should i know each possibilities for each and every colours ?

Edit: oh and what i mean about colors: i mean those colors http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colors
...it's not a combinations of 3 colors (RGB) that's gonna scare me, don't worry ^^

[Idiot Apathy]

:P hahah then there are no secrets to painting, just paint a lot.
---

Nah, all you need to know are these in my opinion; other systems will simplify it even more: Yellow, yellow orange, orange red, red magenta, magenta, blue magenta, blue, blue cyan, cyan, cyan green, green, yellow green. (what no violet? Cyan?! I guess I'm just a product of the computer age?)

Anything more isn't necessary however there are probably millions of hues.

Ok, the combinations? Yeah, I'd memorize as many of the ones up above as possible. Check this out;
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v13/Ragnarok27/PeerProject%20V2/Photoshopcolorpicker.jpg
In photoshop box D is basically a color wheel, maybe we should look at a color wheel too? The top box in box c is just for hues; measured with degrees as if it was get this a circle (or wheel!). You will find each of the hues listed above are in 15 degree increments. (0 and 360 are the same hue of red). You can use this to visually decide what color will result from a mixture of two colors. So, red and green? If it was a 50/50 mixture (not nearly as predictable with real paint btw) it would then be yellow - and check this out, red is 0 degrees and green is 120 degrees - the middle of both of these is 60, a perfect yellow :)

Now, when mixing different colors it is important to realize that saturation can only go down. Think of saturation as a measure of hue purity - you mix in other hues and that will go down. The further away in degrees the two hues are the quicker and more significant the drop will be.

When mixing light make sure you also add value, adding light will always add value.

What about mixing hues that are 180 degrees away from each other? These are complements, this means to complete and not as is often thought to compliment each other. To complete technically means to complete the primary colors, which for our purposes are Cyan, Magenta and Yellow. So yellows complement is blue, (60 and 240 degrees) 240 is technically a mixture of Magenta and Cyan so now we have "completed" all primaries. Ah, so the result of mixing a perfect complement? To use our example again; Yellow would lose it's saturation all the way to gray, from there it would then gain in saturation towards blue as the mixture becomes more blue than yellow.

That make sense? Let me know if I can clarify and follow up any of this garble.

[DanielC]

That makes sense :)
Now... after a small research in google, i've found many different color wheels... and, well, which one is the "good" one ?
After what you said (by making the red and green becoming yellow) i know that this one would be the one:
http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/b/b6/200px-ColourShading.png
But why are there all those other wheels ?
http://kingfish.coastal.edu/marine/Animations/Images/Color-Wheel.png
http://www.sanford-artedventures.com/study/images/tertiary_triange_wheel.gif
http://www.rentaldecorating.com/images/Articlepic/rddcolorwheel.jpg

...sorry with all the question, but that's the last one :)

[Idiot Apathy]

Nah man, keep the questions coming if you got 'em :)

Those would be the traditional paint based color wheels with primaries of Red Yellow and Blue. Works about the same but the complements aren't true - won't go gray.

I don't like them because they sort of ignore or at least ignore the full potential of cyan and magenta. Red violet and Blue Green are probably dulled down low value Cyan and Magenta.

Cheers :)

[Koto]

Hello All, first post :^^;: , I have been a lurker for ages :bashful:. Idiot Apathy and well everyone else have been teaching some incredible stuff, I need to learn colour and well the Peer Projects look like the best place to do that. I'm so glad that all these 'god hands' take the time to help us beginners out :D Thanks, I really apreciate what's being done here.

Excercise 2 (maybe I shouldn't have skipped Ex1...)
First attempt:
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y180/coolcooltoon/attempt1EX2.jpg

Wow totally got this wrong :D still unsure how to change the values and saturation. I started off with a near pure hue (the one you can see in the middle of the sphere) then choose a darker version (mixing black?) and desaturating a little (hmm not sure how much to desaturate it but I'm guessing the lack of light means that it's becomes less 'pure' in hue?, err no idea what I'm talking about here :)) Hmm the 'highlight' just looks weird, I'm wondering if it get's desaturated because the white light has no 'hue'? :/

Second attempt: done minutes after the first, after reading some tips by Apathy on blending! :D
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y180/coolcooltoon/attempt2EX2.jpg

Blending is a bit better...ahem. Values still way off :/ maybe because I'm not thinking about 'colour' having its own value? (e.g. purple being low in value, yellow being high in value?) Also noticed the specular is in the wrong place after reading briggsys comments. Definitely gona try this again..back soon..

[DreadRok]

here are the first 2 assignments from peer project v1.

1

http://www.lghosting.net/~lucas/Help%20Section/balls.jpg


2

http://www.lghosting.net/~lucas/Help%20Section/boxes.jpg

i kinda messed up on the blue box, right before i saved i hit a low opacity midblue right on the corner.. right where it looks smuddgy.. thats what i get for chatting and painting at the same time
haha


thanks idiot it was fun..

also i used multiply layers for the shadows... is that cheeting?

[DreadRok]

first 2 assignments
http://www.lghosting.net/~lucas/Help%20Section/balls.jpg

http://www.lghosting.net/~lucas/Help%20Section/boxes.jpg

[Idiot Apathy]

Koto Stomp: Welcome to the forums! Hope you stick around.
Definetly try to do the exercises in order haha, I hope I've set them up fairly well. Are you doing the exercises from Vol one or Two? I rewrote this one for V2 to hopefully make more sense. http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1016342&postcount=3

I think you are overblending and have too many tonal areas, Here is exercise one, Simplified sphere construction; be sure and check it out: http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1016341&postcount=2

Understand on your spheres that depending on the color of the lightsource and the local color of your sphere the area that is most saturated can be elsewhere than the middle.

Read over page one; http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=76955
This will explain how to change tone, hue and saturation. Look for the PS color picker.

"I'm guessing the lack of light means that it's becomes less 'pure' in hue?"
A lack of light would lower the tone, interference from other colors of light would decrease the purity of hue - think of saturation as a measure of purity. White light essentially has every hue within it, it's then up to the local color of the object to determine what you see. Check out page one again for a bit more information on this.

Second attempt is better, still too many tonal areas which makes it so you have to over blend. You're right about the specular highlight - as it is now it's a lot like a beveled object instead of a sphere. Remember that highlights depend not only on the position of the lightsource but the position of your eye.

Keep trying to match your values - try a different color perhaps - magenta is a bit tricky ;).


Dreadrok: Get back to you in a bit!

[DreadRok]

ok.. ill be here waiting =D

[Idiot Apathy]

DreadRok: :) Thanks for joining us.
First exercise looks great, good value matching. I think you might be complicating your blending although it's nice and smooth. Check out this exercise for some simplification; http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1016341&postcount=2

Your reflected light also looks a bit odd, more like a bump in the surface, Usually I think you'll find the area of reflected lighting to be a bit broader, and will wrap around the sphere just like the normal lighting. Grab yourself a sphere, baseball anything and check it out in real life :)

2nd exercise also looks great, good colors. Good to keep the lighting simple for the shadows hehe. The blue blocks doesn't seem to match the lighting compared to the green blocks shadow. Some things to think about; inside and outside corners - usually you'll see some corners that are a bit higher on the shading scale because they are more parallel to us, with some corners it can be a bit hard for light to reach them as well as bounce back to our eyes so they can often be darker. Something you said you kind of did unintentionally actually happens - planes rarely have just one light bouncing on them - consider that the table is also reflecting light and would affect these objects - or the green block could be reflecting a substantial amount of light onto the red; the blue block is even reflecting light onto itself. Consider even that the blocks are reflecting onto the table! :)

Using multiply for shadows isn't exactly cheating no, but I would "do it by hand" to get a better feel for it. Multiply isn't perfect either, there are lots of subtle things that go on so the color of your shadows won't be consistent throughout. Mulitiply is a handy tool however ;)

Hope I'm making sense - it's a bit disjointed ... hehe.

[Koto]

Thanks for the help Apathy!

Awesome colouring DreadRok!

These are from vol2 of Peer Project :teeth: Probably still overblending but it's getin slightly easier..

Ex1: (the one I skipped last time like a fool..)
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y180/coolcooltoon/ex1.jpg

Not sure why it turned out like this, I sould have planned it better. I think the light angle is a little too difficult for me :o Was having a tough time with the shadow and reflected light. I picked the colour of the background (grey) and decreased the opacity on the brush so it would 'mix' a bit with the red of the sphere. I tried making the edges of the reflected light a little more 'harder' than normal because the surface was glossy and so, I thought, the light doesn't diffuse as much (does that make sense? doesn't make sense to me :S ). The shadow is just wrong, no idea what angle and stuff it should be so I guessed it :x also the 'value' of it is wrong should have been darker, right? Hmm specular is possibly in the wrong place too, should be a bit higher and to the right. Oh and there's some reflected light coming off the ball on to the table, again I guessed it and wasn't to sure where and how much there should be on the table (should be more towards the light source, right?)

Ex2 (again)

Attempt 3:
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y180/coolcooltoon/attempt3EX2.jpg

Oh dear :$ Values wayyyyy off, was thinking to much about how the green is 'naturally' dark (the yellow/purple thing again..) so I made it brighter to compensate for that..

Attempt 4:
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y180/coolcooltoon/attempt4EX2.jpg

Closeset yet but still wrong :/. This was actually attempt 5, attempt 4 was a different shade of blue but when I converted it over to grayscale it was nearly all black compared to the grayscale! so I deleted it and started with a different blue, still to dark especially the shadow, I want to try excercise 3 tomorrow but don't think I should since my ex 1+2 are baaad. Thanks again Apathy, I know you must be busy creating uber masterpieces :).

[Idiot Apathy]

I see to remember another post here? Did someone get shy and delete it or something? :( Don't be shy.

Koto Stomp:
Fantastic, much better sense of form - really feels round yeah?

I'm still not sure about your reflected lighting - picture what is reflecting light into these areas, what size - how big the shape should be and any other influences. Take a peak at these; http://www.infomotions.com/gallery/manchester/Images/cone_and_sphere.jpg
http://www.imageafter.com/image.php?image=b13nature_food016.jpg

I think the color for the reflected lighting is ok for this sphere as it seems rather glossy - but be aware if it wasn't glossy that usually only a white sphere would replicate the hue like this and you won't always be able to simply mix paint like you did here.

Your thinking of harder edges on reflected light - including the highlight to some extent would be harder - it is a more complete replication of the source; the extreme of which would be a mirror.

Cast shadow could use some work too, it will really help the viewer understand where the lightsource is coming from :) Here is a quick example I did of exercise one; http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1025218&postcount=37

Attempt 3,
Don't let your mind get in the way, use your eyes. Squint to reduce value range and compare. Keep it up!

Attempt 4,
Spheres are looking much better, are you getting faster? :)
Great value matching, keep it up and I say go for ex3; you can always go back if you want more practice :)

Uber masterpieces? Lolz I wish.

[yoitisi]

Hey IdiotApathy, I was scanning through this thread and saw this last post. First of all, great effort here to get the basics right, once in a while it's good to go back at em and practice them (although I am not going to right now, lazy bum as I am :P)

What I noted, the shadow of the sphere in this post: http://www.conceptart.org/forums/sho...8&postcount=37 you made the ellips of the shadow horizontal. This is only true if the lightsource was shining right on the edge of your sphere (for the viewer). Look at the 2 examples in your post above, check their shadows. They're both ellipses at an angle, not horizontal. Shame I can't really remember how to construct it, I should know it...:(

[Idiot Apathy]

Lol, yeah I got nothing either.
I foolishly flattened my thinking on that example it seems.

*goes to research*

[yoitisi]

Spent a couple of minutes figuring out how to construct the shadow, thought I'd show it here. The sketches might be a bit incoherent and dodgy, but I hope its clear enough. If not, feel free to comment and stuff :)

http://i163.photobucket.com/albums/t291/yoitisi/sphere1small.jpg

These three steps are necessary if you want to construct the shadow. The thing with shadowconstruction is to find points which you can project on the ground, so you can find some usefull spots of the edge of the shadow with projected and actual light direction (see below, nr. 4) Therefore you need the two cross-sections of the sphere, which are elipses.

I started with an elips, then with help of the tangent line on the ground (Tangentline 1) I made the orange line in the middle (not the vertical, the other one) to aid me when drawing the second cross-section. Nr. 3 shows the result without shadow, and a quarter of the sphere cut out to make it a bit more clear (hopefully..)

http://i163.photobucket.com/albums/t291/yoitisi/Sphere2small.jpg

Nr. 4 shows a simple pole standing straight up, with its shadow constructed with the help of the projected light direction on the ground and the actual lightdirection through the top of the pole and onto the ground. Basic stuff. 5 and 6 show the constuction of the shadow on the sphere, where in 6 the blue spots are the intersections of the edge of the shadow with the cross-sections from 3. Project these points on the ground (using projected and actual lightdirection and the 2 tangent lines)to find their relative spots on the edge of the shadow and then use these to draw the elips (If you want more information where to draw the elips you can use multiple cross-sections and stuff, you can make more cross-sections than just the 2 in the middle of course).

Some important sidenotes: Although this method can be used as an aid to draw the correct shadow, it by no means is acurate. Drawing the elipses in the right perspective, projecting the points in the right spot etc. are bound to be a little off to say the least :(

Also, it is way easier to just guess the elips as shadow once you know how to construct it, because it saves you time and frustration of getting it right. Most people won't know the difference anyway :)

[Jazz]

Hi!! I've been feeling lonely about the forums, so I thought I'd mingle JUST a bit more so I can really get going on improving my stuff! :D

I tried Project 1 of Vol. 1, actually. Then I saw that you headed to another thread, Apathy. But here's what I tried with the first:

http://www.binomynd.com/Challenges/Project1a.jpg

http://www.binomynd.com/Challenges/Project1b.jpg
I was SO close!! :( ...Okay, not quite so close.

http://www.binomynd.com/Challenges/Project1-1.jpg

Ugh...so horribly off! It doesn't even look like a sphere! XD And I decided to use a light background AND a light surface hue for the sphere. Oy.

I admit that the instructions for volume 2, Project 1 were a tad confusing for me. :( I was trying to follow your example, because the image through that link you gave was broken. But I just couldn't do it. -_- But I'll keep practicing anyway. :) I would like to understand lighting spheres (and everything else) better.

I like this topic very much, Apathy! I'll try to do more challenges.

[n0ireclipse]

Hmmm..I'd love to join but I think I'm really behind here. Do I really have to read three pages? -whine- Or are there just a few specific posts I can read? And..assignment? x___x WHAT IS GOING ONNN

[Idiot Apathy]

Yoitisi; you sir are a stud. I've added this up as a link on the header, thank you kindly. All that is left is for me to understand it :) hehe. Cheers, hope to see you in here more!

JazzW; Lol, lonely on the internet? That's odd. :) Welcome to the thread, hope you can learn some things here. Good try on the first exercise, it's the saturation that's messed you I think. Try it with different colors and with your saturation in different areas, see how you do. Heheh, your sphere looks good though a bit wobbly. You might try using larger brushes or a sketch to lay it in. I think you may also be blending too much. You say the link was broken? This one? http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1025218&postcount=37 Works for me :\ hrm hrm. Let me know what is up. Check it out, hopefully it clears things up for you. Your reflected lighting should be a little more even I think as well. Cheers, hope to see more of you soon!

n0ireclipse: Yeah, you'd do well to read 3 pages and you'd do well to read as much as you can about art in general. For just here and now - start with the introduction on page one and keep reading until you reach exercise one, then do it :) . Cheers!

[n0ireclipse]

xD whoo...thanks for that fun reality check there. Alright, I'll try to get my work in later, after my school work is complete and such. Cheers to you too!

[yoitisi]

Yoitisi; you sir are a stud. I've added this up as a link on the header, thank you kindly. All that is left is for me to understand it :) hehe. Cheers, hope to see you in here more!


:P I'm actually getting paid to teach this to first years over at the university, although most students forget this as soon as they've seen it...(maybe good to point out here I'm not a teacher, just the assistant. So I still make mistakes :) ) Anyway, you're welcome. If there are questions feel free to ask, I am aware that I may have stepped lightly over some important stuff and the sketches were done early in the morning.

[n0ireclipse]

:teeth: And this is where Jessica demonstrates the fact that she knows nothing about coloring! Yeah, I know, extremely messy. I really ought to get over that lazy tendency of mine..
Anyways, enough complaining, here's the...-ahem-..outcome
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v433/n0ireclipse/sphere.jpg

Thoughts while I was doing this? Ahhh..I realized it's a lot more difficult than I thought to color digitally, though I still used the traditional paint xD. And uh...Then I thought "I don't know what I'm doing"
then I thought "I hope the peer project helps" [xD not the kind of thoughts you were looking for?]
And the rest of the time I was messing around a lot. I still have a lot to learn about shadows and colors.



OKAY, DONE RANTING/MAKING EXCUSES, I PROMISE. Please proceed to beat me with criticism :DDD

[Koto]

Oh Emm Gee! *it let me into the thread..

*HAL

Cast shadow practice:
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y180/coolcooltoon/ShD.jpg
hmm o.k. not lookin' too hot right now, guess I need to go through a bunch more of these :\ thanks for the demo Apathy.

Exc3:
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y180/coolcooltoon/exc3.jpg
Sorry for the crappy image..I actually forgot all the stuff I learned on blending :o that blue sphere highlight is wrong, so wrong, makes it look like a flat button :D I got a question, how would you do a white high gloss sphere? would you reserve the 'pure' white for the highlights? arghh sky blue! I had a go anyway :D The spheres are getting easier to make, just nowhere near as fast as you lot.

Cheers for the feedback Apathy and yeah I remember that mysterious post...if your reading this, come back the crits here are invaluable!

Next excercise 4, unless my excercise 3 needs redoing...

[Jazz]

Hey, Apathy! :)

I'm back...on the lonely net. -_- (yes, weird but true!) Hee hee! Well, I don't feel quite as lonely with it today. ;)

Thanks for your advice thus far! I have so much trouble with blending too much and how big a brush to use. I'll attempt to fix my blending, but man, it's so hard! As for making an even reflection, what happens if some of the shadow also sort of "reflects" on the sphere? That's what threw me off about reflecting it. :)

I wanted you to know that I mixed up "link" with "image location" as far as that broken link. I saw your part fine enough. But you also mentioned someone else who was talking about spheres, and I couldn't see that person's image:

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=699669&postcount=175

(I just mention it cuz I wanted to compare both sets of notes and images. Looks like a very helpful read).

Anyhoo, upon finishing exams for the week, here's my next try! :D

Challenge 1
http://www.binomynd.com/Challenges/apr13sphere01.jpg
Okay...it's wobbly still (I sketch wobbly circles. :( ), but I think it's a little better than the last one. Just a little! I did try lessening blends, but when I felt like I couldn't do that, I just tried using larger brushes than what I'm used to.

As for the creepy shadow, I suppose it doesn't have to be THAT pink, but sphere shadow is a tough one!! I so want to learn more about cast shadows!

Challenge 2
http://www.binomynd.com/Challenges/Assign2a.jpg

http://www.binomynd.com/Challenges/Assign2b.jpg

Again I was close!! And once again, I did try to calm it down with my blending! Per your advice on the saturation and colour change, Apathy, I tried a more subtle saturation using reds. I'm afraid I have this terrible habit of always needing to go over my efforts about 20 times. :P Hmph. But, practice!! Yay!

[Sidother]

Hi, I've spent alot of time looking through the forums here; and I wanted to pump up my art skills. So I decided to try these Excercises.

Anyways, here my shot at Excercise 1:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v738/Karlother/PeerProject_Exer_1_Sidother.jpg

Any advice would be appreciated.

Take it Easy.

[BryanYoung]

I've be working through the first few exercises so far. I'm hoping to get a better grasp on color. Thanks Idiot Apathy for putting this together. I've already learned quite a bit just thinking about how color actually works. Here are the first four exercises with notes. I'm sure some of it is wrong. I haven't seen the answer key to exercise four yet.

Exercise One
http://www.bryanyoungart.com/CA/PeerProject/BryanYoung_exercise01.jpg
Notes:
-Made sure I didn’t put highlight exactly in middle of light area

-Used the airbrush for receding/shadow edges softer egdes = farther away

-Maybe should have used a bigger brush when painting

-Softened the egdes of the shadow as it moved farther away from object. Also raised tone.

-Shadow area too dark?

Exercise Two
http://www.bryanyoungart.com/CA/PeerProject/BryanYoung_exercise02_color.jpg

http://www.bryanyoungart.com/CA/PeerProject/BryanYoung_exercise02_gray.jpg
Notes:
-Decreased saturation in shadows, decreased saturation in light as well. Had to add white to achieve the right tone. (I keep wanting to type value)

-Cheated a bit on colored shadow. Copied other shadow and used preserve transparency. Added desaturated and slightly darker version of shadow area hue.

Exercise Three
http://www.bryanyoungart.com/CA/PeerProject/BryanYoung_exercise03.jpg
Notes:
1. Increased saturation on light value since it’s pure white light. Decreased saturation in shadow.

2. Blue still has a fairly dark tone even in highlights.

3. If it’s absorbing nothing and reflecting everything, it must be white. Right?

4. Then the opposite must be true. Black absorbs everything, reflects nothing.

5. OK. Reflects Red and Yellow. I made the shadow a more desaturated hue towards red since it’s a darker tone. Increased saturation and used more towards Yellow for highlights since it’s a lighter tone. Local color is orange.

6. 50-50. Well, if it’s relflecting half and absorbing half, the hues would cancel each other out. The result being a gray
sphere.

7. Sky Blue. Seems pretty straight forward. Had to add a bit more white to the highlights than the others, since it’s a fairly
light local color.

Exercise Four
http://www.bryanyoungart.com/CA/PeerProject/BryanYoung_exercise04.jpg
Notes:
1. If there’s only a blue light source, then there would only be blue to reflect right? Tried to keep the tone relatively the same. Would probably be a little darkerdue to blue being a darker hue.

2. If there’s only blue light and the object reflects all BUT blue, there wouldn't be any light to reflect, so I guess the object would appear black

3. If the object is pure blue, it will only reflect blue. If there’s only red light, there’s nothing to reflect. It would be black.

4. If it reflects just a little red, and it’s in pure red light, then it would probably at least have an overall red tone to it. I increased the saturation closer to the light. Shadows would be darker since red had a darker tone. If it only reflects some red, then it could never achieve pure hue.

5. Hmm..Only reflects yellow, but red light is present also. Not too sure on this one. While it wouldn’t reflect red, wouldn’t it still be effected by the tone of the red light, making it darker overall possibly?

6. I think the green shpere would absorb the red light and reflect some of the yellow light since yellow is a component of green.

7. I’m taking that to mean all hues are present at 30% saturation. It reflects all colors equally, but not all. OK, I used the darker toned hues for the shadows and worked my way up to yellow for the highlights.

8. Red is at 30% blue is at 100%. Reflects all hues other than red at 80%, meaning hues other than blue and red are now at 24%. Blue would be at 80%. Most colors are on their way to neutral. Blue would be the dominant color, since it's at the highest percentage. I suppose if the red is at 30%, it's going to absorb that much of the blue, so blue would then be at 50% max saturation.

[Jazz]

Hiya!! I thought I'd take some time and try Assignment 3!

http://www.binomynd.com/Challenges/Assign3.jpg

I was starting to get into shading the spheres too much. I eventually had to calm myself and just make the things! :P

So, here's the rundown:

1. Pure red...or so I thought! By the end, I ended up with S and B as 97 and 98 respectively. Errrr...well, I'll just not blend so much. But the shadows are just lessing the brightness, really.

2. It's similar, except I got S and B at 98 and 99. :P Sheesh! When I picked the colours everything was RED!! BLUE!! Meh. I did the same thing with shadows as in 1.

3. I should give up and just type "100". Well, the white is supposed to be as white as can be. Just I also thought that there might be a little less darkening of the shadows, at least closer to the sides. Of course, being as there's only one lightsource, there's gotta be some shadow, maybe greyish?

(my spheres look more like soft disks.)

4. Well, assume there's nothing shiny or..."textury" on the surface, I'm letting the black take everything! But even my black has a B of 1. -_-;

5. Red + yellow. I basically looked at what was in the middle. Probably could use more red. Now, I almost started putting more red in the shadows. That was a bit much. It's not like my hand or anything. But...maybe I could've added more red to the hue.

6. Pretty close!! B is about 51! I thought that (actually half, not 51) would be as close as the highlight would get, and the shadow would just go gradually to black. I actually darkened the background so I could make out the grey sphere as well.

7. My sky blue includes a bit of cyan. But the sky blues vary so much, I thought more blue wouldn't hurt! It's pretty much the same as the other colours, except that the brightness is higher. Again, though, I was starting to add more blue to the shadow. I guess I'm not supposed to do that unless maybe the inside of the sphere is blue, and you can see it...or something?

That was fun to try!! I still have much work to do on spheres anyway!

[Idiot Apathy]

yoitisi: Awesome man, teaching is such a great thing to do. I don't have much in the way of questions - well, hey perhaps you have some useful perspective methods? But if you'd like you have free reign to set up anything you'd like in here, I've found it's a pretty nice way to test out some "teaching theory". :)

n0ireclipse: Haha, didn't mean to give you a reality check :)
Sphere looks pretty good, believable shadow. I'd like to see your shadow on the sphere contrast the light side a little more. If you are having trouble with color work in black and white, value is the most important aspect to color. Keep it up, try some of the other exercises :)

Koto Stomp: Nice looking spheres man! I'm a little confused as to the cast shadow and what direction the lightsource is facing on the second but then again, I usually am. I myself need to practice shadows so very much.

To answer your question on the white sphere - yup, you'd have to reserve some of your brightest white to make it appear glossy. Or rely on reflected lighting.

Here is the key for ex3:
Using Photoshop terms for this so you can visualize it on the color picker better perhaps,
S = Saturation B = Brightness

3: Pure red, since our lightsource has the 'maximum' amount of red and our object reflects the 'maximum' I think 100s and 100b (PS) is appropriate. Shadows, if you chose to include them, would be less B but same S. Highlights if there were any would technically be 100s 100b so perhaps you would leave some room in the full light for them.
4: Same as above, only replace the hue with 'blue'. Trying to get the idea across here.
5: Technically speaking I suppose this should be a mirror :|. But a white sphere is good too! Shadows still be grayscale, highlights even whiter if possible (probably not in this situation).
6: Ok, this I suppose would be akin to a blackhole - technically we wouldn't actually 'see' it - we'd see nothing. Remember, if you can see it it is either emitting light or reflecting light, don't forget that even shadows are visibile.
7: Should be orange right? And the shadows? Less B same sat. Not too different from steps 3 or 4.
8: This one is a bit tricky, it should of course be a shade/tint of gray - I would think 50% percent gray, but I need to think about that.
9/Optional: Oh noes, so? What is the sphere doing with sky blue? Well, that's a little bit of a vague name for a color - open for interpretation however generally I see a mix of blue and a little cyan as the hue - the saturation is fairly low and the tone very high. Very close to white, so if we are close to white that should mean we have a mixture of all colors, however we should also have more of this sky blue (blue with a lil' cyan in my case). How much more? How saturated is the sky blue you envisioned?

Notes: If it isn't at 100 s I think it is safe to say you have other hues mixed into your light. So, more hues less saturation, more of the same hue more saturation.

If it isn't at 100b I think it is safe to say you either have a weak lightsource or your object is absorbing the remainder. More tone more light, b for brightness isn't exactly the same.

Cheers man! Keep it up!



More later! Back to work I go!

[n0ireclipse]

Firstly, sorry, I forgot to change the paper color to gray >__> and..yeah..didn't realize until I was almost done.. But I'll try it again and ..uhm..change the paper color this time.

Anyways, here's what I have from the second study.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v433/n0ireclipse/second_color_study.jpg

Thoughts: More color equals..better look? Messier look? A little of both? Grayscale is clearly much better than co--oh shoot..I forgot to change the background color to gray. Now to convert to grayscale :3
((yeah, that was my thought process xD not much going on there))

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v433/n0ireclipse/second_color_study_grayscale.jpg
Thoughts: o____o whoops. Not enough change in color at the top, and too drastic a shadow at the bottom. I'd better redo this.

So in conclusion..this post is..pointless? :/ not sure..I guess I like giving I.Apathy more work. :bashful:

[yoitisi]

Idiot Apathy: :)I would like to, I have no idea where to start though. Any suggestions? I noticed that this project is focused on color, but I'm better at constructing shapes and stuff (cubes, cilinders, up to very complex forms. -they may sound simple but each of them have their own little rules believe me) I could say something about 1, 2 or 3 point perspective if you like (but maybe you all know that already of course) Also, shadow constuction could be usefull. The basic of it is very simple but I know an exercise or two which are quite fun.

[Duq]

Eya, I would love to join, I have always done coloring stuff with gambling values and going by gutfeeling, so I hope following the excercises will change that

excercise 1

the sphere. At the end I'm left with 2 questions really.

How do you determine the reflected light value, just going for what feels good?

And for the highlight, the highlight is created by the light that bounces of the surface towared the viewers eye, right. But I dont really have a clue how to determine the place for the highlight

Thats it, thanks for running this project Idiot :)

http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/936/sphere3bj3.jpg

[pennington]

finally got around to doin some assignments :o
wow so many great studies!!
this thread is amazing. thanks a ton Idiot Apathy and every one else for sharing your knowledge.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v172/colossians323man/427b01peerproject.jpg
things i was thinking about here: edges. the edge between the ball and the ground plane is in the shade and has a lost edge, at least part of it. blended it with only hard brushes. realized later it is so easy just to take a large soft brush and blend it. oh and i used full saturated red so ther was no hue shift? is that right. or is it because the environment is white is because there's no hue shift?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v172/colossians323man/427b02peerproject.jpg
this one. i took a less saturated green (closer to grey) for the full light and shadow. and brought the saturation up as the form turns away from the center light. not sure if that makes sense correctly. anyways, YARR!!

assignment two:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v172/colossians323man/428peerproject2.jpg
for this one i just thought about what color is light like the grey and yellow is pretty light in value.

assignment three:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v172/colossians323man/428peerproject3.jpg
this was so easy. i missed the absorbing all color emitting nothing. oh well. it really started to get easy at sphere 5. orange is nice. sky bleu, uhh not 100saturation because it is a lighter value. therefore other hues are mixed? not sure if i understand that. is that like mixing paint on a pallet?

[Duq]

I started with eyeballing the colors after I did the grey one based on brightness. I figured that every color should reduce to the same values if I picked them right.

first layed in the shadow, midtone and light. Then tried to blend them together, since the thing is round after all. But the blend had less saturation so I upped the saturation higher and I think it came out better.

In the colored one I got a bit confused about the reflective light, still am. I just layed over a stroke of the background color, but not sure if it should be more saturated.

also still not sure about the placement for highlights.

http://img63.imageshack.us/img63/4776/excercise21tk6.jpg

and the second. I'm slightly off with the values for the lighted area I think :>

http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/3549/excercise22yz1.jpg

[Duq]

Excercise 3 already

not much to say really

about the first 2:
Since the balls color is already the brighest red, and the brighest blue. It is impossible for the light to make it more bright, except for a highlight effect. I think

the white ball: if the entire spectrum is reflected we get white. Meaning we wont see any lighting or highlights. Making it a very 2 dimensiol sphere

the 4th ball: All the light is absorbed so we see nothing, thus ending with a black sillhouet

the 5th ball: red and yellow is ofcourse orange. I went for the fullest satuaration, I think it might have been prettier if I lowered the saturation a tad. And raised it for the transitions from shadow to light.

the 6th ball: all the colors reflected for 50% and absorbed gives us ye olde 50% gray I think

the 7th ball: A color you cant get when fully saturated I think. first I just blended from shadow to light with the values used. Ended kinda boring so I added some saturation in the transition spots and looks more happy now :)

http://img235.imageshack.us/img235/3095/excercise3ji3.jpg

in overall, the most important things I learned so far: The importance of creating a pallete, and not just guess colors but think about how it relates to each other.

[Idiot Apathy]

Really pleased with the amount of people in here lately :)

JazzW: Welcome back dood. How big a brush to use? As big as you can :) Just keep practicing and experimenting; you'll figure it out. What do you mean if some of the shadow reflects on the sphere? There is light in a shadow true, otherwise you couldn't see it - and yes it does reflect into the sphere but I don't think it's going to be very noticable; so - don't worry about it too much :) #1: Hehe, just keep at it :) You doing a line sketch first? Sphere is looking much better, good job! Something else to consider are the exterior edges, here they are very sharp - giving it the appearance perhaps of a cardboard cut out. With a sphere we are actually seeing a lot more than you think, parts that wrap around contained in a very small visual area. So rounded objects usually appear a little bit "fuzzy" or softer around the exterior edges. About the shadow - that's fine, I don't think it would nearly as pink as the sphere itself as it's "lightsource" (reflected off the sphere) Isn't nearly as powerful as what is actually shinging on the sphere you know? #2: Great! Real close! Don't worry about doing things 20 times, that's pretty natural I'd say - normally it's called practice :P hehe. Your specular on this one should be lower I think, remember it's not going to be in the center of the full light - it's the spot where the light bounces off most direct and right into your eye :) (err basically). Cheers!

Sidother: Welcome to the forums man! Glad you've decided to post! Keep it up, keep drawing and painting - that's all it takes (+time etc etc :P) Sphere is a little wobbly but that's ok. I think you've blending too much - start with 2 values and blend those, that's all you really need - one is full light and one is shadow. For the purposes of this exercise we are using sunlight so they should each take up 1/2 of the sphere. The blend that is created is the halflight - imagine this as dawn or dusk :) Keep it up! Hope to see more from you soon!

BryanYoung: Good lord! Haha, you've been busy!
#1 looks great! Mayyyyybe you've made it hard on yourself - seems like a lot of time spent blending? Think of blending as between shapes and not shapes themselves. With a sphere in sunlight you've got equal parts full light and shadow, the only blend you really need is halflight akin to dusk or dawn. After that you can play with highlight and reflected light. Shadow I think is fine in tone, though maybe it disappates a little quick - that is comparing the strong directional light on the sphere; who knows ;) I think your exterior edges could be just a little softer perhaps?
#2 Nice! prettttty close. A little brighter than your grayscale though :). I think the halflight would perhaps curve a little more. Specular highlight could maybe come a little more towards the center and should distort a little more I think (here it's too round, think how it would look if you stretched it over the sphere).
#3: Using Photoshop terms for this so you can visualize it on the color picker better perhaps,
S = Saturation B = Brightness

3: Pure red, since our lightsource has the 'maximum' amount of red and our object reflects the 'maximum' I think 100s and 100b (PS) is appropriate. Shadows, if you chose to include them, would be less B but same S. Highlights if there were any would technically be 100s 100b so perhaps you would leave some room in the full light for them.
4: Same as above, only replace the hue with 'blue'. Trying to get the idea across here.
5: Technically speaking I suppose this should be a mirror :|. But a white sphere is good too! Shadows still be grayscale, highlights even whiter if possible (probably not in this situation).
6: Ok, this I suppose would be akin to a blackhole - technically we wouldn't actually 'see' it - we'd see nothing. Remember, if you can see it it is either emitting light or reflecting light, don't forget that even shadows are visibile.
7: Should be orange right? And the shadows? Less B same sat. Not too different from steps 3 or 4.
8: This one is a bit tricky, it should of course be a shade/tint of gray - I would think 50% percent gray, but I need to think about that.
9/Optional: Oh noes, so? What is the sphere doing with sky blue? Well, that's a little bit of a vague name for a color - open for interpretation however generally I see a mix of blue and a little cyan as the hue - the saturation is fairly low and the tone very high. Very close to white, so if we are close to white that should mean we have a mixture of all colors, however we should also have more of this sky blue (blue with a lil' cyan in my case). How much more? How saturated is the sky blue you envisioned?

Notes: If it isn't at 100 s I think it is safe to say you have other hues mixed into your light. So, more hues less saturation, more of the same hue more saturation.

If it isn't at 100b I think it is safe to say you either have a weak lightsource or your object is absorbing the remainder. More tone more light, b for brightness isn't exactly the same.

On the last one; sky blue I wanted people to switch it up a little bit - basically write the instructions you dig?
These spheres look awesome by the way :)

#4
1: Well, it should be a blue sphere of course - the 'white' sphere isn't going to absorb much of any color so all you have in the source is blue - you get blue! Highlight? Blue! You can't make it white as the source isn't white :P If you wanted to 'cheat' a little perhaps you might go a little to cyan.
2: Lightsource only has blue - sphere eats all blue, sphere isn't visible - pure black! Probably not all that likely to see this in the real world though.
3: Hrm hrm, red light? Object only reflects blue? It's pure black again! Woo! I keep hearing that if you shine say a blue light on a banana you'll get a black banana, I need to try that.
4: Reflects just a little bit of the source light and nothing else - which is red, so the value will be pretty 'weak' - now, saturation? Is there any 'interference' from other hues? Nope, this should be 100% saturation I do believe.
5: Hrm hrm, it's like a math problem! Eep. If the object is going to eat everything but yellow then your red is gone, we are left with only yellow and thus we see a yellow sphere.
6: Ok, like a story problem or something; red is out of the equation - green will eat that right up. Now, depending on the purity of the green - let's say it's a pure green it should reflect all yellow as green can be made up of yellow and blue. So I do believe you'll get yourself a yellow sphere this time around; nice and vibrant like.
7: Not too sure if it's as simple/exact as this - but I would think this would be about a 30% gray (0 being black).
8/Bonus: Let's see, it's written like a nasty story problem so I decided to solve it like one.
Lightsource has just for easy talking perposes - 30 of each hue except blue of which it has 100.
Object reflects 80% of all hues except red, of which it reflects 100%.
So, what's being reflected is composed of 80 Blue 30 Red and 30 of all others.
So, I think it's safe to say the 30 percent of all other hues is really only going to weaken the purity of our main hue - which is 80 blue 30 red. I suck at math, so lets just say it's going to be just under a third red mixed with blue - so kind of close to blue-violet. Blue-violet, dulled down by the amount of blue, blue vs red, and dulled by the 30% of the other hues. So I dunno, uhh uhh... 40sat and uh 90b? :\ Ok, let's just say it's going to be a very light and dull blue violet? Math is dumb...
Yeah, not exactly the best way of doing things. Just a generalization.

So small corrections-
#1: Should be nice and blue, I did say what amount of reflectance was up to you - but I think if it was less reflective you'd see a lot lower tone. Also, should be 100 Saturation no matter what. There is nothing to interfere here, nor can it get past 100s100b as you need more than one color to move towards white :)
#4; sat should be full! no interference :) Even in the shadows there in no interference just less light!
#6: Been so long since I wrote these, let me re-read this one: Uhh, yeah I think this should be just yellow! So reading below - your thinking was right - but there was no green light to be found so no green in the sphere!
#7: Should be gray! Ah I see you wrote about hue shifting - that's fine I suppose but it's not technically the case in many situations. (Though it sure looks better most of the time ;) )
#8: Hahah, yeah close enough I think :S
Awesome awesome job on these man!



More later! Work to dooo...

[Duq]

My tries for excercise 4

1: White reflects everything of the pure blue light, so we get a pure blue sphere I think :>

2: If it doesnt reflect we dont see anything, so a black one.

3: Blue doesnt reflect red, so we get a black hole

4: Just a little bit of red translated for to less bright red. So I went for a not so bright red at 100% saturation.

5: I think red will go bye bye, and the sphere will be all yellow. But I'm a bit confused, also tried to set it up in 3D max and the result was an orange sphere with a yellow highlight, what am I missing?

6 I figured that the green would absorb all the reds, and fully relflect the yellow. So I got a yellow sphere again, but with greenish shadow.

7 I think the sphere should be 30% gray, so ehm there it is :)

8 This one was a hard one. I know two things for certain. Blue will be there for 80%, red for 30%, and all the others for less. I remember reading somewhere to keep thinking simple so I just dumped all the remaining hues. And the result is a violet sphere.

http://img82.imageshack.us/img82/9664/excercise4ty7.jpg

[Cavematty]

Hey Idiot,
First up, thanks heaps for running a thread like this, and taking the time to reply so thoroughly to all the posts. Thats a big commitment and Im sure all appreciate it (he says trying to get in on the learning action). Hehe.
I must say I saw this thread a while ago and thought it looked boring. Then I stumbled across your blog, evenetually spotted the same stuff in your sketchbook and went.. :jawdrop:
So here I am dutifully doing the excercises.
I did number 2 first because I was reading your PP1 thread by mistake. But here are the results anyways.

I was basically trying to eyeball it, and trying to ignore changing the saturation with the lighting.
I noticed when I first "finished" the red ball that it wasnt as bright, even tho the red Id used was at the bright end of the red spectrum. Then i went in to my colour picker menu and slid the eye dropper back and ford across the bright end of the selection square. Wow, theres a huge tone difference as you add color. And red isnt the worst. Try it with a ultramarine blue - HUGE tonal difference. So I went back into my red sphere (havnt colourpicked or compared the two Ive painted yet) and added some whiter light to the highlight. It affects saturation, but because of the way Id painted the greyscale sphere its the only way I could match tone.
I guess the lesson there is:
Full saturated colour cannot match the tonal range/brightest bright of a pure white without colour.
Which matches reality, and the way light works, in that to get colour you are subtracting some light waves, and reflecting only a portion, whereas white is the lot.
Hope that is not too much of what everyone else has said.
As for the green sphere - after being happy with my red one (which i think turned out quite close tonally) I went at this one with confidence. Maybe with the same compensation I used for the red sphere. Regardless it is significantly darker than the first two... Humbling. Must practise :P

http://cavematty.com/Sketchbook/peerproject/PeerProject_Spheres_colour.jpg

http://cavematty.com/Sketchbook/peerproject/PeerProject_Spheres_mono.jpg

[Jazz]

Whoooo!! I'm back again! Apathy, your advice is just beautiful stuff! I know that's a sorta strange description, but I LOVED it! So thorough!! I'm only lost with speculars. I keep forgetting where on the sphere you see the specular part. And...what specular is. :(

I tried with the sphere again one day! I wanted to attempt to make it shiny, but I should probably do without the funky reflective shadow. Looks like I pasted it on. Dang! Got it somewhat "fluffy" on the edges, but I kept messing up the circular look! It was pretty close though, so I'm happy with that! Grrr...stupid reflective shadow. >_<

http://www.binomynd.com/Challenges/may04sphere.jpg

I tried Exercise 4!
http://www.binomynd.com/Challenges/ex04colourLight.jpg

I didn't number them...left-> right and top->bottom!! These were the thoughts I had while I did the spheres! I could be way off! :) I was rushing, I admit. These are ugly spheres! XD

1. Since the sphere reflects all colours, and the only colour in the light is blue, I just made it look blue!

2. Since the sphere doesn't even TOUCH blue, all it would have is black.

3. Since the sphere is pure blue with no hint of red, it won't pick up on the red light here! So again, it should be black!

4. I could've made the red darker, but the red would definitely be darker. I'm not sure about less saturation. Whatever red is on the ball will really love that light!

5. This one was crazy for me! But that sphere should only reflect yellow! I actually assumed that the yellow would be rather bright, too, since the light has "pure" yellow.

6. This one got me! I actually assumed that there was equal blue and yellow in the sphere. So the only thing that would reflect is the yellow. It should be about half as bright.

7. 30% for all hues in the light? Then I'm thinking that sphere would reflect a 30% grey. Well, whatever you'd call it. That's all it has! ;_;

8. Yay, I tried bonus! This one was rather tough!! Well, I did a bit of calculating in my head. Just a bit! The sphere gets 80% of the 100% blue light. So it'll be darker anyway. Also, the sphere will get 30% of red light, or 100% red reflection. So I thought it would be a sort of blue-purple, but more blue!

----

Just did the exercise 6...a!! :D

http://www.binomynd.com/Challenges/ex6mine.png

A couple times I was right on at the first! I desaturated the colours and used Curves to see if anything stood out. Well!! Some things did!! The top third, and bottom first, third and fifth! Man, they were pretty close! :D

Oh yeah, and I didn't touch the eyedropper! That's good practice for me!

[Idiot Apathy]

JazzW: What up man! Glad to see you back and in action again, and again down below!
Ex3:
Using Photoshop terms for this so you can visualize it on the color picker better perhaps,
S = Saturation B = Brightness

1: Pure red, since our lightsource has the 'maximum' amount of red and our object reflects the 'maximum' I think 100s and 100b (PS) is appropriate. Shadows, if you chose to include them, would be less B but same S. Highlights if there were any would technically be 100s 100b so perhaps you would leave some room in the full light for them.
2: Same as above, only replace the hue with 'blue'. Trying to get the idea across here.
3: Technically speaking I suppose this should be a mirror :|. But a white sphere is good too! Shadows still be grayscale, highlights even whiter if possible (probably not in this situation).
4: Ok, this I suppose would be akin to a blackhole - technically we wouldn't actually 'see' it - we'd see nothing. Remember, if you can see it it is either emitting light or reflecting light, don't forget that even shadows are visibile.
5: Should be orange right? And the shadows? Less B same sat. Not too different from steps 3 or 4.
6: This one is a bit tricky, it should of course be a shade/tint of gray - I would think 50% percent gray, but I need to think about that.
7/Optional: Oh noes, so? What is the sphere doing with sky blue? Well, that's a little bit of a vague name for a color - open for interpretation however generally I see a mix of blue and a little cyan as the hue - the saturation is fairly low and the tone very high. Very close to white, so if we are close to white that should mean we have a mixture of all colors, however we should also have more of this sky blue (blue with a lil' cyan in my case). How much more? How saturated is the sky blue you envisioned?

Notes: If it isn't at 100 s I think it is safe to say you have other hues mixed into your light. So, more hues less saturation, more of the same hue more saturation.

If it isn't at 100b I think it is safe to say you either have a weak lightsource or your object is absorbing the remainder. More tone more light, b for brightness isn't exactly the same.

Looks like you did a great job :) Let's go over your notes now;
1. hehe just keep in mind that technically it should have been full sat, but who's counting anyways? In fact if you wanted to leave room for a specular you could have fudged it and just lowered sat and tone for effect anyways you know?
2. Haha, why did it loose sat?
3. Yup, good call. Less light is less tone :)
4. Haha, looks pretty black to me :P 1 and 0 is a hard thing to distinguish.
5. Nope! Should be a nice perfect orange :) Right in the middle of red and yellow ;) So you're good.
6. good.
7. Hehe I'm not sure why no one does this, maybe I need to reread what I wrote but you are supposed to write the instructions for this sphere!

n0ireclipse: Haha, okay doke.
#1. Getting there man. Still too much blending I think. Start with two shapes, light and shadow and blend those - that's all blending is, the mixture of two shapes. From there you can add your specular and reflected light. Don't sweat not getting the tones perfect, just give it another go when you are ready :) Everything is a process and practice.
Post was not pointless! And I am glad you posted. :)

yoitisi: Color has sort of been my thing yeah :) I would love anything on shape construction, anything on perspective - especially ways to use them in practical painting etc and shadow construction I would die to know more about. :) Would be great man!

Duq: Hiya! Nice avatar haha. Glad you could join us!
Sphere looks pretty good. I think your half light could be a little more blended to help the sphere turn it's form like you'd expect. I like your values though, very good sense of lighting.

Question One: Basically what feels good yes, without a ref of course! :) The "rule" that gets thrown about a lot however is that the reflected light should be no brighter in tone than the weakest light in the full light. Basically reflected light comes from the same lightsource as what hits the full light, so it has to bounce off of a surface or multiple surfaces before reaching it's destination. It loses a lot of energy as it does this, some is absorbed and I believe some just wears out - a bit like sound waves you know? so it literally can not be as powerful. However sometimes a secondary lightsource can camouflage itself as reflected light, so make sure you know what you are looking at!

Question Two: I've seen only one method of precisely determining where the specular highlight is supposed to go and it's insanely complex. It's over here somewhere, I can't find it at the moment :\ http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/wmap.html Plenty of great information to keep you busy though!

Concerning your notes; "a medium dark value surrounded by a dark value looks very bright." You've stumbled into Simultaneous Contrast! Dundundun. I should do an exercise on that...



Ok More later, man am I ever going to get caught up?!

[Idiot Apathy]

Duq asked;

#1: How do you determine the reflected light value, just going for what feels good?

#2: And for the highlight, the highlight is created by the light that bounces of the surface towared the viewers eye, right. But I dont really have a clue how to determine the place for the highlight

---

Question One: Basically what feels good yes, without a ref of course! The "rule" that gets thrown about a lot however is that the reflected light should be no brighter in tone than the weakest light in the full light. Basically reflected light comes from the same lightsource as what hits the full light, so it has to bounce off of a surface or multiple surfaces before reaching it's destination. It loses a lot of energy as it does this, some is absorbed and I believe some just wears out - a bit like sound waves you know? so it literally can not be as powerful. However sometimes a secondary lightsource can camouflage itself as reflected light, so make sure you know what you are looking at!

Question Two: I've seen only one method of precisely determining where the specular highlight is supposed to go and it's insanely complex. It's over here somewhere, I can't find it at the moment http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/wmap.html Plenty of great information to keep you busy though!

[n0ireclipse]

I.Apathy, you put a lot of work into this, you deserve a BAJILLION GOLD STARS, or a paycheck or something...

Thankyouuu~! <33333 We all appreciate it.

[Idiot Apathy]

Pennington: What up Scott! Glad to finally see you in here :P
Def use more soft brushes :) I use a wide combo of hard and soft, very easy to do in PS. Painter, I can't remember if it's possible on the same brush. Sphere looks great, especially the color. The halflight could be a bit smoother or really just blend more (smooth can simply be about style). There is no hue shift as there is no interference, only one lightsource and a pure hue object - you are also right in thinking that the white background wouldn't produce a shift either. Second sphere is a blind pirate! Eyepatch but no eye on the left?! Sphere is looking much better than the last as far as blending goes. For the color to change in saturation there has to be a sort of imbalance between the color of the lightsource and the color of the sphere I think. So it wouldn't be a white light, it would have to have more light of a hue other than this particular green. Not sure if you hue shifted or not but that would happen as well.
Ex2: Heheh, interesting way to go about it. Try it with another color and try it backwards. The objective is to trust your eye more than your mind, your mind is a great trickster ;)
Ex3: Glad it was easy :P Here are the answers but first to get to your question; if something is not 100% saturation then it is receiving interfering hues. Even shadows that have less light will be 100% sat without interference. On the last one, the sky blue - I wanted people to switch gears and write the instructions! :)
Using Photoshop terms for this so you can visualize it on the color picker better perhaps,
S = Saturation B = Brightness

1: Pure red, since our lightsource has the 'maximum' amount of red and our object reflects the 'maximum' I think 100s and 100b (PS) is appropriate. Shadows, if you chose to include them, would be less B but same S. Highlights if there were any would technically be 100s 100b so perhaps you would leave some room in the full light for them.
2: Same as above, only replace the hue with 'blue'. Trying to get the idea across here.
3: Technically speaking I suppose this should be a mirror :|. But a white sphere is good too! Shadows still be grayscale, highlights even whiter if possible (probably not in this situation).
4: Ok, this I suppose would be akin to a blackhole - technically we wouldn't actually 'see' it - we'd see nothing. Remember, if you can see it it is either emitting light or reflecting light, don't forget that even shadows are visibile.
5: Should be orange right? And the shadows? Less B same sat. Not too different from steps 3 or 4.
6: This one is a bit tricky, it should of course be a shade/tint of gray - I would think 50% percent gray, but I need to think about that.
7/Optional: Oh noes, so? What is the sphere doing with sky blue? Well, that's a little bit of a vague name for a color - open for interpretation however generally I see a mix of blue and a little cyan as the hue - the saturation is fairly low and the tone very high. Very close to white, so if we are close to white that should mean we have a mixture of all colors, however we should also have more of this sky blue (blue with a lil' cyan in my case). How much more? How saturated is the sky blue you envisioned?

Notes: If it isn't at 100 s I think it is safe to say you have other hues mixed into your light. So, more hues less saturation, more of the same hue more saturation.

If it isn't at 100b I think it is safe to say you either have a weak lightsource or your object is absorbing the remainder. More tone more light, b for brightness isn't exactly the same.


Duq: Glad to see you back!
Are you saying that if you pick the same brightness that every color should "reduce" to the same value? This is not right, brightness is a digital measurement of your monitors intensity - value is very different and actually quite hard to measure on a computer apparently. Look at the same brightness and saturation yellow and compare it to the same brightness and saturation violet and tell me which is lighter. Your question about reflected light; in this case since there is no interference the saturation should stay the same (hopefully it's at 100); only the brightness would go up. Adding grey paint from the background should have reduced the saturation so it technically isn't proper, but looks fine to me.
Good job on the spheres, pretty close in value and the colored one has really nice form.



Ok, more later :)

[n0ireclipse]

Gave it another try! Whoooo..Different brush...makes things more interesting. Anyhow, still not enough variation with that stupid BLUE BALL D:<<<
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v433/n0ireclipse/colored_balls.png
GRAYSCALE'D.
freaking blue..
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v433/n0ireclipse/colored_balls_greyscaled.png

Ehm..Obviously..different light source for these two cylinders ...hum~

[indigoe]

Here are my attempts at the first 3 excercises. I'm still working on #4.
http://content.imagesocket.com/images/excercise13ea.JPG (http://imagesocket.com/view/excercise13ea.JPG)
http://content.imagesocket.com/images/excercise219b.JPG (http://imagesocket.com/view/excercise219b.JPG)
http://content.imagesocket.com/images/excercise3d3a.JPG (http://imagesocket.com/view/excercise3d3a.JPG)

[Asatira]

This summer I am going to work on getting familiar with digital painting (along side general practice), so I'm going to be checking this thread out a lot. Below are my first two attempts at exercise 1. They're both rather wonky, IMO, and not as smooth as I would like. The first one I did a lot of the gradation by using the eyedropper and painting at 50% opacity, with a softer brush; the second was done the same way, but with probably a hard brush. It's hard to draw something like this without a good ref.

http://www.org-chaos.net/temp/spheres01.jpg

Advise away!

[Idiot Apathy]

Duq: You're a machine, good job on these.
Ex3
Awesome, great job on these spheres. Here is the answerkey if you'd like to see a little more info; oh and on the last one it was my intention to have you all write the instructions for this one. Sort of switch gears and make sure you had a complete understanding you know?
Using Photoshop terms for this so you can visualize it on the color picker better perhaps,
S = Saturation B = Brightness

1: Pure red, since our lightsource has the 'maximum' amount of red and our object reflects the 'maximum' I think 100s and 100b (PS) is appropriate. Shadows, if you chose to include them, would be less B but same S. Highlights if there were any would technically be 100s 100b so perhaps you would leave some room in the full light for them.
2: Same as above, only replace the hue with 'blue'. Trying to get the idea across here.
3: Technically speaking I suppose this should be a mirror :|. But a white sphere is good too! Shadows still be grayscale, highlights even whiter if possible (probably not in this situation).
4: Ok, this I suppose would be akin to a blackhole - technically we wouldn't actually 'see' it - we'd see nothing. Remember, if you can see it it is either emitting light or reflecting light, don't forget that even shadows are visibile.
5: Should be orange right? And the shadows? Less B same sat. Not too different from steps 3 or 4.
6: This one is a bit tricky, it should of course be a shade/tint of gray - I would think 50% percent gray, but I need to think about that.
7/Optional: Oh noes, so? What is the sphere doing with sky blue? Well, that's a little bit of a vague name for a color - open for interpretation however generally I see a mix of blue and a little cyan as the hue - the saturation is fairly low and the tone very high. Very close to white, so if we are close to white that should mean we have a mixture of all colors, however we should also have more of this sky blue (blue with a lil' cyan in my case). How much more? How saturated is the sky blue you envisioned?

Notes: If it isn't at 100 s I think it is safe to say you have other hues mixed into your light. So, more hues less saturation, more of the same hue more saturation.

If it isn't at 100b I think it is safe to say you either have a weak lightsource or your object is absorbing the remainder. More tone more light, b for brightness isn't exactly the same.

Ex4: Again, fantastic job. Only qualm is with the 6th sphere and your green shadow. Here it reads as a local color - a two toned sphere. Your shadows will not differ so much without either a secondary lightsource or reflected light ok? Here is the key for a closer look :)
1: Well, it should be a blue sphere of course - the 'white' sphere isn't going to absorb much of any color so all you have in the source is blue - you get blue! Highlight? Blue! You can't make it white as the source isn't white :P If you wanted to 'cheat' a little perhaps you might go a little to cyan.
2: Lightsource only has blue - sphere eats all blue, sphere isn't visible - pure black! Probably not all that likely to see this in the real world though.
3: Hrm hrm, red light? Object only reflects blue? It's pure black again! Woo! I keep hearing that if you shine say a blue light on a banana you'll get a black banana, I need to try that.
4: Reflects just a little bit of the source light and nothing else - which is red, so the value will be pretty 'weak' - now, saturation? Is there any 'interference' from other hues? Nope, this should be 100% saturation I do believe.
5: Hrm hrm, it's like a math problem! Eep. If the object is going to eat everything but yellow then your red is gone, we are left with only yellow and thus we see a yellow sphere.
6: Ok, like a story problem or something; red is out of the equation - green will eat that right up. Now, depending on the purity of the green - let's say it's a pure green it should reflect all yellow as green can be made up of yellow and blue. So I do believe you'll get yourself a yellow sphere this time around; nice and vibrant like.
7: Not too sure if it's as simple/exact as this - but I would think this would be about a 30% gray (0 being black).
8/Bonus: Let's see, it's written like a nasty story problem so I decided to solve it like one.
Lightsource has just for easy talking perposes - 30 of each hue except blue of which it has 100.
Object reflects 80% of all hues except red, of which it reflects 100%.
So, what's being reflected is composed of 80 Blue 30 Red and 30 of all others.
So, I think it's safe to say the 30 percent of all other hues is really only going to weaken the purity of our main hue - which is 80 blue 30 red. I suck at math, so lets just say it's going to be just under a third red mixed with blue - so kind of close to blue-violet. Blue-violet, dulled down by the amount of blue, blue vs red, and dulled by the 30% of the other hues. So I dunno, uhh uhh... 40sat and uh 90b? :\ Ok, let's just say it's going to be a very light and dull blue violet? Math is dumb...
Yeah, not exactly the best way of doing things. Just a generalization.

Cavematty: My pleasure man, glad you could join us. Hahaha about it being boring :) I know it's some thick stuff, heavy wording and all. But I really do hope it can help some people learn - and to me learning is about as fun as it gets; sounds corny... but it's true. The exercise from ppv1 is much the same as v2 - but read over the new instructions just in case :)
Ex.1; Great idea trying it with two balls on the same grey sphere. I like that a lot. Good job noticing that different hues have different tonal differences. Somethings to consider; saturation also affects tone. Ways to avoid using white to brighten things without losing intensity involve hue shifting. Warms becoming warmer, cools cooler. A red to orange, a blue to cyan. That sort of thing. Great job on these. I do think you are blending a bit too much. See the sphere instructions on this volume to help with that, (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1016341&postcount=2) but basically you should create two shapes - full light and shadow and blend in between those. With color you will probably want to create a middlestep to keep your color vibrant. Cheers!

JazzW: Welcome back man :) Speculars ... think of speculars as a more complete and direct reflection of the lightsource. Indeed in many cases it's quite like a mirror. Go grab some shiny metal cookware. Want a cool experiment? You need two people for this. Put the shiny metal pan or whatever you have down and then find the other persons face reflected on the surface. Now, without moving put your finger there and what the other person saw previously was your face in the same spot :) Imagine that your are still the viewer in the situation of this sphere - but the other person was the lightsource. Does that help? The sphere is pretty good, shadow is especially nice though the edges could be a little softer. There isn't such a thing as a reflective shadow, only reflective light. It would get darker where you have it but it would blend much more into the sphere. As far as construction, go over this exercise; http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1016341&postcount=2 .
Ex4: Real good, pretty much right on. Check the key for a little more info :)
1: Well, it should be a blue sphere of course - the 'white' sphere isn't going to absorb much of any color so all you have in the source is blue - you get blue! Highlight? Blue! You can't make it white as the source isn't white :P If you wanted to 'cheat' a little perhaps you might go a little to cyan.
2: Lightsource only has blue - sphere eats all blue, sphere isn't visible - pure black! Probably not all that likely to see this in the real world though.
3: Hrm hrm, red light? Object only reflects blue? It's pure black again! Woo! I keep hearing that if you shine say a blue light on a banana you'll get a black banana, I need to try that.
4: Reflects just a little bit of the source light and nothing else - which is red, so the value will be pretty 'weak' - now, saturation? Is there any 'interference' from other hues? Nope, this should be 100% saturation I do believe.
5: Hrm hrm, it's like a math problem! Eep. If the object is going to eat everything but yellow then your red is gone, we are left with only yellow and thus we see a yellow sphere.
6: Ok, like a story problem or something; red is out of the equation - green will eat that right up. Now, depending on the purity of the green - let's say it's a pure green it should reflect all yellow as green can be made up of yellow and blue. So I do believe you'll get yourself a yellow sphere this time around; nice and vibrant like.
7: Not too sure if it's as simple/exact as this - but I would think this would be about a 30% gray (0 being black).
8/Bonus: Let's see, it's written like a nasty story problem so I decided to solve it like one.
Lightsource has just for easy talking perposes - 30 of each hue except blue of which it has 100.
Object reflects 80% of all hues except red, of which it reflects 100%.
So, what's being reflected is composed of 80 Blue 30 Red and 30 of all others.
So, I think it's safe to say the 30 percent of all other hues is really only going to weaken the purity of our main hue - which is 80 blue 30 red. I suck at math, so lets just say it's going to be just under a third red mixed with blue - so kind of close to blue-violet. Blue-violet, dulled down by the amount of blue, blue vs red, and dulled by the 30% of the other hues. So I dunno, uhh uhh... 40sat and uh 90b? :\ Ok, let's just say it's going to be a very light and dull blue violet? Math is dumb...
Yeah, not exactly the best way of doing things. Just a generalization.

ex.6: Good man, looks pretty good. I'm not sure using curves is the way to check, that can change colors as well I believe. If you just use the eyedropper to check the swatch against what you painted that should be perfect. Anyways- looks great :) Cheers!

n0irclipse: It's my pleasure man. Art in a lot of ways is kind of a selfish life persuit I think, it's important to me to be able to help out in some way and I hope I am :) Cheers!




Ok! Almost caught up! :D

Added a new link to the mainpage:
Dr. David Briggs: Further Reading
http://djcbriggs.googlepages.com/
Fantastic collection of knowledge, go here and learn.

[Smarty]

Wow i just discovered these and started them from the last peer project. Im gonna try and catch up to the lastest batch pretty soon. heres the first 2

http://i9.tinypic.com/4y5mxld.jpg
1st attempt has a too intense highlight, far bigger range than my greyscale. 2nd attempt, looks duller but is closer in value, specular not as bright though.

http://i14.tinypic.com/6bj48wx.jpg
had hard time messing about with different coloured shadows andended up with some kinda boring simply darker tones. Is this right? Blue shadow is too warm aswell i tihnk. tried adding cyan light from scene.

[Smarty]

prject 3
http://i14.tinypic.com/4zoc3yf.jpg

I really enjoyed doing this. The first is my favorite and probably the simplest to do. The second i used the lighting conditions from my photo as referance, which i actually found harder. The last one I was starting to ruh like most people who did this, I found it really hard to describe form when a cast shadow is being cast over half of the object, sort of just looks like a wierd sillouhette.

[Nquyet]

Hope I'm not too late...
Ok! Here's exercise 1(used sepia instead of gray):
http://img70.imageshack.us/img70/3519/46xz2.jpg

[Nquyet]

Aaand exercise 2:
http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/4031/46bli4.jpg

Dunno why I used all those girly colors...

Comparison (used previous exercise's sphere):
http://img74.imageshack.us/img74/6402/46compmf9.jpg

[dischord]

I have been doing lots of perspective studies lately and thought it would be fun to try to see if I can figure out the specular highlight position on a sphere. I am pretty sure I have gotten it right....

http://www.darkestdays.net/CA/specular_highlight2.jpg

I hope someone finds it useful. Personally I think I'd rather just guess. I'm sure you quickly learn how to do it correctly with enough practice.

I need to participate in this thing again soon. Maybe after I'm done with a CV and when I stop being such a lazy arse.

[vANON]

i had a few hours to kill and.. aww.. wrong thread. >:D

hope i'm not intruding by posting the images here anyways. would love some critique even though it's not part of the current projects.

http://img510.imageshack.us/img510/2442/conceptartorgcoloringdb6.jpg

edit: oh, forgot to add. this thread is fantastic! :rendered:
keep posting Everyone

[vANON]

here it is, exercise #3
this was kinda fun, challenging :)

anywho, my notes are in the image. is it readable?
http://img90.imageshack.us/img90/6759/thepeerprojectv2exercisty4.jpg

[funfetus]

Oh, man -- I wish I would've found this thread sooner. Now I'm way behind.

IdiotApathy -- you're the man for dedicating so much time and effort to help out your fellow artists.

Okay, exercises 1 and 2:

Exercise 1
http://funfetus.com/ppv2/1.jpg
First thing I notice is that I'm not confident in determining the shape of the form shadow. In particular, how much it kinda creeps around the outside edges...is it more of a C or a ( ?

I've repainted this thing twice now. Started with a hard brush, then switched to a soft one, which I almost never use in general.

I feel like the full light may be a bit too big, but I'm not really sure. I don't want to let the half-light creep up too much, and I also want to limit the basic values.

Realized that my cast shadow was very much for a side-lit type situation, and my form shadow was more of a front-side (diagonal?) type shadow, so I repainted the sphere again.

Exercise 2
http://funfetus.com/ppv2/2.jpg
http://funfetus.com/ppv2/2a.jpg
Not much to say on this one, except that it's hard. Adding color really throws off my perception of values. I did pump up the saturation a bit in the half-light area, reasoning being that it's not washed out by being directly in the light, and now dimmed by being too shadowed. I think I remember this being true, and it seems right to me.

....aaaaaand, lo and behold, total failure. :) It really looked close to me in color. Oh well, that's how we learn, eh? It looks like the only part I was close on was the reflected light.

[funfetus]

http://funfetus.com/ppv2/3.jpg

Step three-- every hue except for red? Then it should be totally red, but I think the shadows will still apply normally. I'm not really sure if there can be a highlight -- higlights are usually something like white, which means there would be other hues in it. So, an extra bright red spot? I'm gonna say probably not, but that's just a guess.

Step four -- exactly the same, except with blue, I think.

Step five -- reflecting everything. It's still going to have normal shadows, because, even though it's reflecting everything, it can only reflect as much as it receives, meaning none at all on the side facing away from the light source, etc. But it'll reflect all hues, so it's white. With gray shadows. I guess the full-light part of this sphere is just one giant highlight.

Step 6 -- if it reflects nothing,it's just a black blob, right? We can only see something when light reflects off it. This one was easy to paint. :)

Step 7 -- absorbing every hue except red and yellow. That ought to make it orange, yes? Come to think of it, that would have to mean the range between red and yellow, right? It couldn't be reflecting EXACTLY red and EXACTLY yellow, and leaving out what's in-between, could it? I'm not really sure how that stuff works. I wasn't quite sure how to pick exactly the right hues on this one. I settled for the RGB color picker (I usually use HSV), and saw that when I turn red and green all the way up, it's yellow, so turning green halfway up ought to be right in-between red and yellow, which ought to be what I'm looking for. Also, the shadows on this one look really gross. I'd probably blend it toward a red in the sahdows normally, but I'm not sure that's correct.

Step 8 -- Absorbing 50% and reflecting 50% of all hues. That ought to make the brightest part of the sphere at 50% gray.

Step 9 -- Sky blue? If I remember correctly, the sky is blue because the atmosphere scatters the shorter wavelengths of light -- the shortest being blue, and the longest being red. So the sphere should be reflecting all or most of the blue, and gradually less and less as we move down the spectrum toward red. And, as I guessed, setting my RGB sliders to full blue, 2/3 green and 1/3 red produces a nice skyish blue -- maybe a bit dark and oversaturated, actually. So, maybe the atmosphere doesn't scatter ALL of the blue -- that makes sense. So I'll desaturate the whole thing a bit.

[dischord]

Last time I did this I failed quite badly, but now I'm finally starting to understand how the value stuff works. I figured it out with a bad headache as well. I'm so proud of myself :P

http://www.darkestdays.net/CA/sphere02.jpg

[Sung-jae Kim]

Hey, really appreciate you running this :D

These are my attempts at exercise 1-3

Exercise 1
http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g179/Sung-jae_Kim/Peer%20Project/Exercise001.jpg
Exercise 2
http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g179/Sung-jae_Kim/Peer%20Project/Exercise002.jpg
http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g179/Sung-jae_Kim/Peer%20Project/Exercise002pt2.jpg
Exercise 3
Changed the light source for the first and last sphere after seeing some examples.
http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g179/Sung-jae_Kim/Peer%20Project/Exercise003.jpg

Thanks for your time :D

[lennon]

I can't attach a file. I don't know why, but in this thread, it doesn't give me the option. Is there a reason for this?

[Idiot Apathy]

Lennon: I believe attachments are turned off for this entire section. I think it interferes with the creation of polls for the weekly activities (can't repost attachments you know). Give imageshack a try or sign up for photobucket etc. Cheers!

n0ireclipse: Getting there! You should try them side by side and the same size; a toned background will help your perception as well (try it on 50% gray perhaps). Also, you called them cylinders! They are spheres! :)

indigoe: Looking good, first sphere has some nice volume to it. Something you may want to consider is exterior edge strength. Generally rounded objects will have a bit softer edges as we are actually seeing the plane wrap around and disappear. Imagine a cut out circle next to a sphere, or better yet - find these two objects in life :)
#2: great, very close! A little bit darker on the blue one, but no worry. If you want more practice try a few different hues, yellow and violet are nice and tricky ;)
#3: Great! I think 5 should be a little more intense perhaps. I wanted everyone to switch gears and write the instructions for #7 so if you have the time please do. Below is the "key" maybe something in there worth reading.
Using Photoshop terms for this so you can visualize it on the color picker better perhaps,
S = Saturation B = Brightness

1: Pure red, since our lightsource has the 'maximum' amount of red and our object reflects the 'maximum' I think 100s and 100b (PS) is appropriate. Shadows, if you chose to include them, would be less B but same S. Highlights if there were any would technically be 100s 100b so perhaps you would leave some room in the full light for them.
2: Same as above, only replace the hue with 'blue'. Trying to get the idea across here.
3: Technically speaking I suppose this should be a mirror :|. But a white sphere is good too! Shadows still be grayscale, highlights even whiter if possible (probably not in this situation).
4: Ok, this I suppose would be akin to a blackhole - technically we wouldn't actually 'see' it - we'd see nothing. Remember, if you can see it it is either emitting light or reflecting light, don't forget that even shadows are visibile.
5: Should be orange right? And the shadows? Less B same sat. Not too different from steps 3 or 4.
6: This one is a bit tricky, it should of course be a shade/tint of gray - I would think 50% percent gray, but I need to think about that.
7/Optional: Oh noes, so? What is the sphere doing with sky blue? Well, that's a little bit of a vague name for a color - open for interpretation however generally I see a mix of blue and a little cyan as the hue - the saturation is fairly low and the tone very high. Very close to white, so if we are close to white that should mean we have a mixture of all colors, however we should also have more of this sky blue (blue with a lil' cyan in my case). How much more? How saturated is the sky blue you envisioned?

Notes: If it isn't at 100 s I think it is safe to say you have other hues mixed into your light. So, more hues less saturation, more of the same hue more saturation.

If it isn't at 100b I think it is safe to say you either have a weak lightsource or your object is absorbing the remainder. More tone more light, b for brightness isn't exactly the same.

Asatira:
Good! A bit wonky yes hehe. I would advise using a larger brush to get your overall shape or block-in done. I really advise against using manual opacity, if you have a tablet I think it is much more natural and produces better results to put both opacity and flow to pen pressure and only change manual flow if you need more control. Using the eyedropper is good, but remember that for this sphere you really only need two shapes and a blend inbetween. The two shapes are the full light and the shadow and the blend is the halflight. Think of day and night as these two shapes and dawn and dusk as the halflight. Cheers! Hope to see more soon!

Smartkyle: Great! A bit brighter on the colored though. Squint at it and you can see it a bit clearer. I think you are overblending as well, try the first exercise in this volume for sphere construction :)
#2: Hey, real nice! Much much closer.
#3: Looking pretty good. Shadows on the blue appear as if you've added a lot of red to them, making a nice violet. This is perhaps a bit stylistic, so not necesarrily "wrong" but not accurate either. Remember that with shadows it's as "simple" as knowing what your local color is and what colors of light are reaching into the shadow. On your edges you've gone much to cyan I think, true these edges would more than likely appear brighter - but as you have them now they are reading as highly reflective - as mirrors really. The cast shadow from the blue block upon the red should also be the same color as the rest of the red blocks shadows. Anyways, great go at this complicated set up! Cheers! Oh another post?
#4: Very nice. the second one is great! They could all use just a little more rounding - they feel a little flat on the cup part is all. I think you would also do well to spend a few minutes towards the end cleaning and polishing your shapes, edges and strokes :) Cheers!

Nguyet: Nope, no such thing as late - unless of course you are me and don't reply until weeks later. Anyhow, looking good! Nice form on the sphere and proper construction. Reflected light may perhaps be a little bright.
#2 Haha, nothing wrong with girly colors :P Looks pretty good. I think you will have an easier time if you do the two spheres side by side. Speculars are perhaps a little high up and too close to the edge.

Dischord: Haha, wild! man ... so complicated! I'll add this up to the front page, thanks!

vANON: Haha, what's with that intro? No sir, intrude away! Spheres overall lookg great, very round - though I think you are making it a bit hard on yourself and overblending. In truth you only need 2 shapes and a blend inbetween. You can work out the nuances from there if you desire. Your colored sphere is much darker, do a few more and perhaps with different hues if you have the time :)
#2: Looks great I think. Edges could be a little more precise perhaps. Colors and shadows are looking pretty good. I am a bit confused as the direction of your lightsource - the cast shadows are saying top right but the shadows on the blocks themselves are saying top left. If it's calculating reflected light that's made the "backs" of these blocks so light you've gone much too bright! Anyways, really nice - keep it up! Cheers!
#3: Oop, you're back with another post! Good job on these. I don't think your #7 would hue shift at all in this situation, should be about the same as your #3 and 4 only orange. Where is your sky blue and the instructions for it? Check #3 above in the post to Indigoe for the "key" to this exercise. Cheers!

funfetus: It's my pleasure, it feels good to help out and I believe it's a very important thing to do in life :) Anyways, you're not behind - no set dates or anything here. Indeed I think I put up the first 3 or 4 exercises right away.
#1: With sunlight your sphere basically be divided into two equal hemi-spheres. So the line created would be your halflight and the other two shapes would be your full light and form shadow :) With artifical light it's usually a whole different story, but let's worry about that later (hmm I would write up some exercises for that...) Anyhow, overall sphere looks great. Nice simple and efficent shapes and good form.
#2: Ahhh, violet - you picked probably one of the most deceptive colors. Squint down further and further and see if you can tell the difference. Once my eyes are almost shut it becomes pretty clear. Spheres look good, shadows don't match the lighting on the sphere I don't think though. Oh, by the way - some of the best successes are failures. Learning from your mistakes is about as important as it gets. You are now well aware of the inherent value of different colors no? Cheers!


PhewwwwWwww, so much to catch up on... more later!

[lennon]

Proyect 6: Color Matching
It was quite difficult to me. In the future I'll make the first ones, it's just that I was tempted to try this one.
I show in the drawing the differnce between both hues.


The reference:
http://www.morguefile.com/archive/?display=67822&

My try:
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=155856&stc=1&d=1182250260

[Jazz]

Hi, Apathy and everyone!

I haven't touched the lessons in a while, and so I'm a tad embarrassed to just show a couple studies...from weeks ago. But I'd better put them up now. :)

I'm still trying to figure out the sphere. I did that sphere lesson again, and decided to try the light on a very different angle.
http://www.binomynd.com/Challenges/may31sphere.jpg

I miss around five of these by a little! The brightness SEEMED right on, especially for the yellow hue. But numbers do not lie!
http://www.binomynd.com/Challenges/ex6btemplate.png

[Number_6]

Okay, so I'm finally joining in. Here's project one.

http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/7348/spheredm0.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

I started out by picking some colours to use as a pallete and stuck with them, more or less. I found the 'point' the sphere was resting on, and projected lines from that to use for locating the shadow, similar to what was shown in the shadow tutorials in this thread. I wasn't able to figure out how much of the shadow to show at the front half of the sphere though. Once I got the colours down, I just blended them together to get a smoother look.

EDIT: Here, I did project 2.
http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/3975/spheresfy4.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/8158/spheres2wn4.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

I didn't construct the coloured sphere the way I did the grayscale one. I just eyballed it. I'm still having some trouble figuring out the shadows and need to research it a bit more. Looks like I was way off for value of the colour.

EDIT again: Project 3
http://img111.imageshack.us/img111/7775/spheres3zi5.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

I didn't put much effort into the speculars and shadows, just guessing it. I decided the 50/50 sphere should be orange, the non-reflective sphere should be completely black, and the all hues sphere grey. I didn't think much about the colours I was using, instead just picking what looked right. For the completely reflective sphere, I looked at some similar drawings and tutorials and found that they all had high-contrast areas in common, and a dark area near the bottom followed by a really bright area just above it before going to a midtone and then the highlight.

[funfetus]

Exercise four!

http://funfetus.com/ppv2/4.jpg

So, first of all, I'm assuming these are all theoretical "perfect" colors, because nothing in real life ONLY reflects one color, and so on...

Sphere 1 -- White sphere, blue light. Sphere should appear blue, because, while the white sphere reflects all light, the only light it has to reflect is blue.

Sphere 2 -- Pure blue light, sphere reflects all colors except blue. Then it should be pure black, like a black hole.

Sphere 3 -- Pure red lightsource, pure blue sphere. This one IS tricky. I'm trying to think in terms of like a darkroom. I really can't imagine this one being the theoretical black hole. God, it's driving me crazy. What I'm seeing in my head is a sphere that looks like its local color is black, but under a red light. Okay, I'm tapping out on this one -- I'm going with a dark grayscale, and then hiding under my pillow and crying.

Sphere 4 -- Pure red lightsource, object reflects only a little bit of red. So it should just appear very dark, and not very saturated. I hate you, Idiot Apathy. But I love you.

Sphere 5 -- Pure red and yellow lightsource, object only reflects yellow. I think this one is sort of a trick question. The same thing happens to the red as happens to every color except yellow when an object is viewed in white light, which contains all colors. So, I'm going pure yellow. And man is that ugly.

Sphere 6 -- Pure red and yellow lightsource, green object? It can only reflect the yellow, because yellow is contained in green...I think. So, I'm thinking it's a dark, even nastier than the last one yellow, because it's only reflecting a portion of the yellow it's getting.

Sphere 7 -- Lightsource contains only 30% of all hues. Is this even possible? Gray light? I'm seeing this as simply a dim white light. Object reflects all colors equally, but is not a mirror. This is making me realize that I don't know the difference beween a white object, and a mirror. Don't they both reflect all colors equally? Probably not. Argh. So anyway, this should be a dim gray sphere.

Optional Sphere 8 -- "This time the lightsource contains all hues but is not white, let's say all the hues except blue are at 30% of their capacity and blue is at 100%. Our object reflects 80% of all hues except red, of which it reflects all red it recieves. So if our lightsource was instead perfectly white you could say our object was probably a dull red."

Holy craaap! Okay, it's reflecting all of the red it's getting, 80% of the everything else it's getting, but that's all 30% except for the 100% of blue. God. Okay. So, it should reflect 80% of 30% of everything but red and blue. That's...carry the one...24% of all hues except red and blue, 30% of red, and 80% of blue. So we have a not-incredibly-highly saturated blue, leaning a bit toward violet, on account of reflecting more red than the other hues.

[Adi.]

heya all :)
hi apathy!

I just found this thread and thought i would have a go.. attempted the first two exercises.. the second one was more helpfull, took me a few goes to get the colour version close to the grayscale. Do you have any tips for colouring grayscale images in photoshop.. iv bin rendering in grayscale lately and then trying to colour :painting: ... and the results aint always pretty :eyeloss:

http://i169.photobucket.com/albums/u211/ArtOfAdi/Adi_Exercises.jpg

[Ampersand]

Hello everyone! I hope it's not too late to join in. :^^;: I've been lurking around for a while and am a bit scared to post anywhere, but this seems like a good place to start. I've never tried exercises like these before and so far they've been fascinating. :)

Exercise One

Spent a lot longer on this than I probably needed to, since I was angsting over the cast shadow and how bright to make the highlights. In the end I tried out Idiot Apathy's method of judging the cast shadow, and it turned out much better and quite a bit bigger than I'd expected. I think I could have gone darker with the form shadow and made it more defined, but I was getting the idea. :)

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c261/AmpersandTR/ConceptArt/exercise1.jpg

Exercise Two

I tried not to dwell on this one as long as the first exercise. I was quite surprised by how comparatively dark and dull the right-hand sphere looked in greyscale. Looking at it now it's more obvious to me how dark it was in terms of tone.

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c261/AmpersandTR/ConceptArt/exercise2.jpg

Exercise Three

1. Absorbing all hues except for red = reflecting red = red sphere
2. Same as above, but resulting in a blue sphere
3. Absorbing nothing but reflecting everything = white sphere
4. Absorbing everything but reflecting nothing = black sphere
5. Reflecting red+yellow = orange sphere
6. 50/50 absorption and reflection = grey sphere
7. The sphere is absorbing all colours except sky blue, which it reflects, thus appearing blue. :)

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c261/AmpersandTR/ConceptArt/exercise3.jpg

Exercise Four

1. At first I made the sphere a far lighter shade of blue, then darkened it. I'm still not 100% sure if I've done it right.
2. Since the sphere wouldn't reflect the colour of the only available light source, it would appear black.
3. Again, it would appear black since it can't reflect the blue light.
4. A harder one...I assume it would appear pinkish.
5. Since the object only reflects yellow, the red wouldn't be visible.
6. This one blew my mind a bit, especially since I was confusing myself by thinking of how the colours would mix in terms of blending rather than of light. I think I know the answer from reading the thread, but I couldn't come up with it on my own so I'll leave it. :^^;:
7. Since the light source is weak the sphere would look quite dark.

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c261/AmpersandTR/ConceptArt/exercise4.jpg

That's me done for now, I hope I can catch up yet. This is a great thread, rarely have I learned so much in one sitting. :)

[Sarxous]

Exercise Two? ( Wasn't this the first exercise in the previous thread? )

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v153/glitch888/Prac.jpg
I didn't do a great job but practice makes perfect eh?

[funfetus]

Exercises 6a & 6b:

http://funfetus.com/ppv2/ex6template.jpg

Most of these were surprisingly easy. Am I doing it right? I'm picking a color, painting it into the space, and if it's not right, I'm adjusting it a little bit until it is right. By "right", I mean the little box disappears because it's the same color as the square. That's the right way, right? The second box in the second row gave me more trouble than most of the rest -- I'm not sure why. The zero sat one also gave me fits -- I could swear I was still seeing that little box no matter what I picked, but when I finally checked, I saw that I got 0 hue no matter what I picked when it was a 0 sat. That's what I'd expect, of course, but I'd swear I could see that thing... So, it looks like I got to within 2 (degrees?) on all of them. I honestly can't see any difference. Can anyone? Everyone but me?

http://funfetus.com/ppv2/ex6btemplate.jpg

The first 3 were easy, but this 4th one is throwing me. 66% seems too dark, but 67% seems too light. That can't be possible, can it? Hm...I guess maybe it can. There are 128 levels of brightness in 24 bit color, right? So couldn't 1 percentage point actually be one of two brightness levels? That's craziness. But really -- you can't do 128 with 100 even steps. So, I don't know what to do. Eh.
Number 5? This is NOT 58 hue. Closest I'm able to get is 127/58/55.
I think the color you're picking being in such a tiny box, surrounded by light gray tends to make it look darker than the bigger box of color I'm trying to match it to... So it looks like I got each of these spot on, except that cursed number 5. I got that one 1 off on both brightness and hue. Seems that brightness is easier than hue to see slight variations in.

[Utum]

@ IA - Thanks for creating the vol 1 and this one. I don't know if any of these is still alive, I'll try posting my exercises. I have not colored much digitally (or otherwise for that matter). The three attempts I made you can see in my sketchbook, are done with photoshop and very basic techniques.

I tried to do the first exercise with painter. The problem I find is that it seems very difficult to achieve a good blending of the colors used for the different tones (light, midtones and shadows). The result always looks unnatural. I suppose i have to practice more to get better results...

This one i did with the bristle brush.

http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k196/eduveas/drawings/theball.jpg

I tried the watercolors also but the blending was even worse i think (or maybe this is how its supposed to look like hehe)

http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k196/eduveas/drawings/secondball.jpg

I must appologize, since I should know the mechanics of brushes, media etc. in order to achieve better results. I am trying to learn while doing, and dedicating as much time as i can. I appreciate all coments and will post the other exercises soon

[funfetus]

I tried to do the first exercise with painter. The problem I find is that it seems very difficult to achieve a good blending of the colors used for the different tones (light, midtones and shadows). The result always looks unnatural. I suppose i have to practice more to get better results...
--

Practice will always get you better results. :) BUT -- I use Painter also, and I think one of the problems people have with Painter is that they get all bogged down in all the brushes, and a lot of the brushes aren't very good for "workhorse" kinda stuff. Something like this, you're probably much better off sticking with a simple hard round brush. I actually created a new empty brush library, and just make whatever brushes I feel that I need from scratch -- only way for me to not get bogged down playing with everything. Most of the time, I just use a simple hard, round, variable opacity brush similar to Photoshop's. I only break out the bristles when I feel I need them specifically.


Okay, anyway --
Project One Beta:
http://funfetus.com/ppv2/head.jpg

Not a lot of notes for this. I probably should've picked a simpler object. I probably didn't do enough on the "plastic" one. The metal one gave me fits. I already knew I didn't know how to do this stuff, but I didn't know how much I don't know. I had to look at a lot of reference, which feels like cheating, but I guess it's just learning. I don't know -- I feel like I'm taking a test when I do these, and I'm looking at the next kid's paper. :) Anyway, it seems to me that the key with chrome-y metal is to have an environment to reflect. If you don't have one in the image, just have one in your head. Then, you have to wrap that reflection around the surface. Prom's "mental ray tracing" analogy gets truer every day.

[Utum]

you are right funfe', but that's also one of the reasons to try painter. Next time i will try the airbrush with the most normal settings i can find (that would make no much difference with photoshop, although my understanding of lighting in ps is no better hehe).

Anyways, i found a way to blend the pastels in corel. This is done with Square Hard Pastel 40. Color the ball without playing attention to blending, just add darker tones (by selecting from the picker). Then change lower the Resat setting on top till near 0. This makes the pastel add little color, and in change spreads the color that is on the canvas. With Resat set to a low value, now go again over the edges where darker tones meet lighter tones, and the pastel will blend the too colors.

http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k196/eduveas/drawings/ball-pastels.jpg

[funfetus]

Don't get me wrong, Painter's brushes are awesome. I just find that, for me at least, most of them aren't something I'd want to do the majority of my work with, and that I tend to get stuck playing around with them. But your mileage may vary, of course. :)

There are a lot of blending brushes in Painter, that all work in slightly different ways. If you don't want to use separate brushes for painting and for blending, you can set up a brush where the resaturation and bleed are controlled by pressure, so that when you press hard it lays down color, but when you press lightly, it blends -- or anything in-between. You might want to check out the oil pastels. They do something similar, and they're some of my favorite brushes.

[Chiko]

Hey man, this is a great idea for a thread here.
I'm going to push myself to try and do all these exercises, since I know I very not good at shading.

so here's the first exercise, I spent a little bit trying to do different lighting arrangements for the spheres. I dunno if I did it well or not, some critiques would be most appreciated!

[cakeypigdog]

well, i do wish i knew about this earlier! Mr apathy my respect for you grows daily. This is a fine fine idea!

i have started doing these as luncgtime activities with a couple of other chaps from work. Here is my lesson 1 result.

The thing i struggled with most is the cast shadow on the lit side of the sphere: the point where it begins from the sphere edge. I think it should perhaps be a combination of a hard edge cast fom the spheres egde and a soft diffuse from the general shadow cast by the sphere.... will go and research.

I will also use a more hand painted technique from now on: the airbruh is something i dont use a lot but i just couldnt help but have a play with it here.

once again. wonderful idea mr apathy: i will be back for more!

[cakeypigdog]

excersize 2.

i had 2 goes at this as my first was a disaster (just did not pay attention to the task at hand!)
I did have a play with the hue and saturation on my colour: i put ost saturation in the terminator, reduced saturation and made a cooler hue in my shadow side. made a warmer, brighter hue in my light side. for my bounce light in the shadow side i used a very desaturated version of the spheres omplimentary colour (almost grey).
had fun and was shocked at how wrong i got it first go!

[Ampersand]

Exercise 6 [edit - whoops, I mean Project One! :tihi:]

This was good fun, though I underestimated the difficulties of shading a metallic surface. Most of the reflections seem to come from nowhere. I think I could have made the highlights stronger on the little guy in the middle, too - or just picked a simpler subject. I neglected to take many notes while doing this exercise, sorry. :[

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c261/AmpersandTR/ConceptArt/exercise6.jpg

[cakeypigdog]

hi peeps,
i have done excersize 3.
The absorb all and reflect all were tricky. i am off to read up on where i have gone wrong.

my skyblue object notes: i decided to cast a yellow tinted light on the sky blue sphere and to give it a very soft surface.

I generally played with surface types across the spheres in the excersise. My half and half sphere i attempted to make slightly peal like but failed!

[funfetus]

Exercise 6

This was good fun, though I underestimated the difficulties of shading a metallic surface. Most of the reflections seem to come from nowhere.

That's true, when you're doing a metallic object sitting in a void, like when you're doing these exercises. There seems to be a sort of shorthand to painting metallic surfaces (Blue top, brown bottom, black blob in the middle?). Shiny metal reflects the environment, but twists it around so much on its own surface that you don't really notice unless you look for it. When you're painting metal and you don't have an environment in your image, you kinda have to just imagine one, and work from there.

[Ampersand]

Thanks for the tip funfetus, I'll keep that in mind. :)

Exercise 6A - the real one this time, I mistook the last task for Exercise 6. :^^;:

I had a few separate attempts at this one. At first I was so far out it's not even funny. :$

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c261/AmpersandTR/ConceptArt/exercise6a1.png

Several tries later, this is the closest I could get them. I'm still seeing a yellow box in the first square and it's driving me a bit mad.

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c261/AmpersandTR/ConceptArt/exercise6a3.png

Exercise 6B

I had more difficulty with this part than the last one. I was surprised by how poor my perception was - I kept choosing swatches that were waaay too bright. I got them quite close after a lot of trial and error, but not perfect. I've just noticed I got at least three of the bottom row wrong - still too light. My eyes, they burn! :S

I'm not sure if the fifth box was a mistake or a trick question, but I don't think it's humanly possible to do, so I left it. :D

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c261/AmpersandTR/ConceptArt/exercise6b.png

[cakeypigdog]

this exercise killed me! after exercise 3 i kind of realized i was not being precise enough- i eyeballed it all rather than thinking about the mathematical values. (with the thought that pure colous virtually never occur in real life?)

anyway here is 4 but it is an awful lot of guess work i am off to read up on what it should have looked like!

[Frey]

My results for exercise one: I didn't take notes because I am non-smart.

[Miracula]

Time to join!
I tried to do the first two exercises but... well, it's harder than it looks like.
While doing it I figured out that I HATE SHADOWS! They only exist to drive artists into madness.
The first task looks quite okay - for the first try (I like the red light on the floor). But the second is really tricky!
My idea was to choose the red color and then - for the grayscale - just to reduce satuation to zero. Bad idea! :^^;: The result shows how wrong I went.
I'll try again - this time only with my eyes ... :S

[Miracula]

Yeah - I did it!
This time the greyscaled spheres look quite similar, don't they?
Time for exercise three :xpld:

cakeypigdog: I like your spheres very much. They're looking very realistic and how you're playing with the surfaces is amazing! Go on!

[Miracula]

No feedback? Critics? Is this thread dead???
Ha - I don't care. I'll practise untill somebody recognizes it :tihi:

Okay, the green sphere is task one the second try. It looks much better now, especially with the yellow reflection from the ground.
Exercise three looks a bit confusing.... well, I hope I'm right with it. The 4th sphere was tricky because - in threory - there can't exist any light... but in reality?! No black hole I guess :rendered:
Task four was to much thinking :x
Here I don't see the difference between a pure blue sphere with white light and a white one with blue light. Is there any?
Most difficult was the bonus sphere - I was really calculating :^^;: .... hope I was right.

Despite of that I'm getting much better and faster in drawing spheres. Amazing, isn't it? :P

[moki]

I finally registered here just for this project... you can feel honored if you like ;)

Lets start at the beginning:
http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff252/mogul-/1-1.jpg
I used a fairly big, soft, brush with 30% opacity for the shading... the biggest problem, I see at the moment is, that I didn't use the full range of values in the colored one. The darkest parts are not black and the highlights are not as white as in the greyscale-orb.

...more to follow :)

[edit]

Proceeding with the exercises... I'm not very happy with this one, because the shadow on the cyan object seems wrong. I did this at 1am, so there will probably another try.
http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff252/mogul-/2-2.jpg

[Miracula]

Hey Moki, welcome!
Now, I'm not alone any more - hehe :teeth:
Have you done exercise 3 and 4? They are funny :wink:
If you want to see more great beginner stuff about digital painting you can visit the tread "Digital Painting in PS" (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=47859&page=40) - it's really helful!

And noooooooooow: Project 1 beta
I copied Prometheus|ANJ's character for this exercise.... Well, I'm not satisfied, but for the first time drawing metall it's not too bad, I think.

[Idiot Apathy]

Sorry guys, I will try and hammer out some replies this weekend.
I don't have to be the only one to reply you know, feel free to help each other out :) You can get just about as much out of a discussion as you can painting.

[Idiot Apathy]

funfetus: sorry, took me awhile to get back to ya. 1. yup, red as red gets. Shadows will be pure red just less value. Highlight in this situation probably wouldn't show up, but in a real situation I think it's safe to say it would go towards whatever color your lightsource may be. Here if our object was really shiny there would be a nice concentrated white highlight. You could also play around a bit stylistically and use orange or yellow as your highlight here. 2. yup! 3. Good reasoning! Hurrah! 4. Ooo yeah! Good reasoning again! 5. Hrm, you lost me. Turing red and green all the way up? Oh right, rgb sliders ok. :O Anyhow, I suppose the object would reflect the whole range between red and yellow ... but by saying it reflects both of these I was hoping you'd get the result of a pure orange. Well done. Shadows are because the temperature is off a bit, you could do red or change the saturation according to the environment. mm orange is a nice color. 6: *high five* I'm bringing the highfive back by the way. 7. WOOooO, well done! *hands you a cookie* See the end of this post for the "answer key"

dischord: the only failure is one you don't learn from homey. Values look real good. Sphere could use better modeling however, have you done exercise one? Define your light side, shadow and core shadow. Reflected light indicates more of a beveled button sort of shape as well as the specular highlight. Specular highlights depend not only on the position of the lightsource but the position of the viewers eye. Grab some shiny stuff and check it out, move around it - and hey any excuse to gather shiny things is a good excuse. *high five*

sun-jae kim: My pleasure! Thanks for joining in. Good work on these dude. Ex1: I would say you are using manual opacity? I think you will be much happier setting your brush up to use opacity and flow set to your tablet's pen pressure. I also think that your shadow is perhaps too big for sunlight. It should for the most part be just about hemispheres - half shadow and half light and a blend in between those. Anyhow, *highfive*. ex2: Nice, values are pretty close! Core shadow is quite a bit darker and you've neglected the reflected light just a tad. Modeling of the sphere is much better than ex1 and so are the colors. I like that highlight! ex3. Where are your notes? :( D: Modeling is getting better here too. Seems like a ton of brushwork though. You might try varying your brush hardness to help you blend. 1. red, yup. 2. blue, yup. 3. white, yup. 4. black, yup. Highlight is fine, makes it like an 8 ball, shiny coat over top and all. 5. orange, yup. (I'd have more to say if you had notes! :() 6: Yup. 7: The point of this one was to write the instructions in the same format I was doing. See the end of this post for the "answer key" to ex3. Cheers!

lennon: Hrm, was this from the peer project volume one? Been so long... :O Anyhow, looks good. Colors seem pretty accurate. I do wish your strokes were blended more, smoother. You might try setting your brushes up with flow and opacity to your tablets pen pressure and not using manual opacity. Manual flow can be nice for more blending control though. cheers.

JazzW: Hurroh. Being embarrassed is for loooooosers. So quit it. #1: Dude! *high five* sweet angle and some nice gradations - particularly on the cast shadow. I think if you were a perfectionist the sphere could use a little oomph in the full light by way of more saturation. Specular I think should sit jsut a little further back as well. Real nice job though man! #2: Phew, man I can't see the difference. Sometimes if the brightness seems right on it can be hue, every hue has an inherent value. Yellow is really bright, violet not so much. Anyhow, sweet stuff!

HOLY CRAP! I'd forgotten how long this takes. I'll try and do more catchup tomorrow.




Using Photoshop terms for this so you can visualize it on the color picker better perhaps,
S = Saturation B = Brightness

1: Pure red, since our lightsource has the 'maximum' amount of red and our object reflects the 'maximum' I think 100s and 100b (PS) is appropriate. Shadows, if you chose to include them, would be less B but same S. Highlights if there were any would technically be 100s 100b so perhaps you would leave some room in the full light for them.
2: Same as above, only replace the hue with 'blue'. Trying to get the idea across here.
3: Technically speaking I suppose this should be a mirror :|. But a white sphere is good too! Shadows still be grayscale, highlights even whiter if possible (probably not in this situation).
4: Ok, this I suppose would be akin to a blackhole - technically we wouldn't actually 'see' it - we'd see nothing. Remember, if you can see it it is either emitting light or reflecting light, don't forget that even shadows are visibile.
5: Should be orange right? And the shadows? Less B same sat. Not too different from steps 3 or 4.
6: This one is a bit tricky, it should of course be a shade/tint of gray - I would think 50% percent gray, but I need to think about that.
7/Optional: Oh noes, so? What is the sphere doing with sky blue? Well, that's a little bit of a vague name for a color - open for interpretation however generally I see a mix of blue and a little cyan as the hue - the saturation is fairly low and the tone very high. Very close to white, so if we are close to white that should mean we have a mixture of all colors, however we should also have more of this sky blue (blue with a lil' cyan in my case). How much more? How saturated is the sky blue you envisioned?

Notes: If it isn't at 100 s I think it is safe to say you have other hues mixed into your light. So, more hues less saturation, more of the same hue more saturation.

If it isn't at 100b I think it is safe to say you either have a weak lightsource or your object is absorbing the remainder. More tone more light, b for brightness isn't exactly the same.

[MattGamer]

I don't know if I have done this before or not. It was fun after reading Tom's posts on using it simple three strokes with a soft brush, etc. Though spending a much wasted half hour working on the shades with a small brush, I am static about using this less brush technique.

Chairs...

[MattGamer]

Numba' three gangstas. Here's my notes:

Red: For the red I filled in a dark red so that I could get a better illusion of depth. I used a soft edge brush to create the side the light shone on.

Blue: I did the same thing with the blue.

White: Uh, I cheated and found out it was a white sphere. I thought I was going to be making a mirrored surface sphere, but was wrong.

Black: I cheated again. Black? Common! Ha ha.

Orange: The orange one threw me. I thought I had to draw the color that didn't have yellow or red. But then realised that yellow and red mixed created the color I needed.

Grey: I cheated and used Texahol to figure out what to do on this step. :/ Grey of coarse!

Sky Blue: I love cyan color and knew right away how to achieve this. Put the slider in the cyan area and start out dark to light.

[Pedro Cardoso]

hello, sorry for the late starting, but just know i could start using my tablet... so here goes... those are still from the volume one( sorry again, i didn't realize that it was dead...) and if it is better for you guys i will start volume 2 right know... i will post these so you guys can take a look at my "work"
it is not the best, and maybe the worst, thats wy i'm here!
http://i178.photobucket.com/albums/w244/Sardinha24/Valueandcoloringstudy.jpg
http://i178.photobucket.com/albums/w244/Sardinha24/Valueandcolouringstudycopy.jpg

thanks for the help!
you are the bests i've ever saw!!
later!

oh... i almost forgot... can someone give me a step by step of how to make a signature in the forum??
thx!

[Dan_Grr]

Oi Pedro, bem vindo ao concept art.

If you'd like to link your sketchbook url in your signature, go to Quick Links>Edit Signature, and then copy&paste (Ctr+C to copy, Ctrl+V to paste) this into the box (including the [] symbols):

Pedro's Sketchbook

You will get this result:

Pedro's Sketchbook (url=http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=102483)


Instead of "Pedro's Sketchbook", you can name it anything you want, even add colour to it, like I did. Images are not allowed into signatures in this forum.

Hope this helps.

[Earendil]

Really like what you've set up here Idiot_Apathy! Here's the first exercise, and my first colored sphere. I wasn't quite sure about bounce/ambient lighting, so I'm probably going to study those tutorials a little more.

I chose purple because I thought it might make the combination of ambient/bounce lighting more interesting. Same reason I chose a kind of brownish for the "table" the sphere is resting on.

Picked the base color for the sphere, then chose variants with the same saturation, just darker values. In most of my recent studies, I'm avoiding 100% black/dark values because I have a hard time rendering midtones in just about everything. I see the darks and lights, but have a harder time with the in between stuff, so nowadays the values are about 25% light, 85% dark, or some variation thereof.

Another thing I'm trying to practice is using a hard brush for all my painting. I get a fuzzy look if I continuously use a soft brush, so this time, I didn't use a soft brush until the very end to kind of blend the values of the sphere together a little better.

I was aiming for that billiard ball kind of look, however, even with a hard brush I noticed my edges were still kind of loose.

EDIT: Added 2nd Exercise

[m0uS3r]

my first one here :D