So after looking at some of your other work online (thank you for sharing) I see that you are needing a process for studying and breaking down real life and references for your own personal knowledge gain. Bravo for you!
I also have an understanding for your stylistic choices and levels of confidence.
I want to tread the line between art lesson and personal critique in order to be useful for people who come across this. I wanted to answer your questions because they are questions many have had including myself and they are not easy to find the names of let alone the explanation or history. I will eventually get back to your portrait but I think I stumbled upon answering a question that I've had for many years by doing the research today.
I'm going to have to elaborate and explain some things that I have saught for a long time and I just might have found it.
Here we go.
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1 - How do I choose the Colors.
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If first you wanted to know what elements you choose for picking color digitally and feel like your getting better without color picker cheating, I tried to explain it here with this viking study critique. https://forums.cubebrush.co/t/vikings-fanart-digital-oil-style-painting/9407/4
In moments like this where you wonder what to do, Always refer back to your intention. It will help you get through the confusion of finishing your current piece. If it doesn’t fit your intention (studying light) you simply can ignore it.
But to be thorough -
This eyeliner is so close to looking like her eyelash, I would take the artistic license and change it to a dark purple or a mute blue since there is so much warm in the piece. But making changes like any choice in your own creations is reactionary, so try it and if you don’t like it try something else. Or just leave it black and say you nailed the technical excercise. But we want to make something that looks like a piece of art.
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2 - Into The Rabbit Hole
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Great creativity is born from strict limitation.
This is a lot to unpack in this simple sentence of yours. Historically painters compensate for real life physics because paint pigments have limitations and don't have the same attributes that light has. So simulating the intensity of real life light by utilizing the contrast of colors, or color relativity, next to each other, would provide the illusion of light's intensity of color in real life. And instead of paint, used the brain's overcompensation to relieve strain on the eye to create the illusion of real light.
People may disagree with your statement, but trust me I understand where you're coming from. The eyeliner may not have been the best example… But I do feel the need to elaborate why this is a thing and it gives me the opportunity to explain something very elusive in my education and very subjective in its application. Not to mention perhaps extremely advanced in art education.
We can change the color hue we paint with on forms to add "vibrancy" that doesn’t exist in a photograph, or real life, and fool people as I mentioned painters have before.
Ron Lemen made a video about it here. https://youtu.be/_vF7wdqCS8g
And he put it best. You can have a technical exercise or a work of art.
He made another video with the simplest explanation I have heard of the complicated process art students are taught to replicate real light. In this video is where I found the relationship of color strings and the rules you can set upon them when painting.
Look at these. Nice Vibrancy. Juicy color. When I first found them I thought what planet are they from? How do they do that with color? They are using the above color strings to describe forms of plains and intensity of light within the main shadow and light areas. They can limit themselves to bolster a style, or enhance an area effect to draw focus in the composition.
See how the blue devel has green blue and red in his skin tones. How the skull in the space helmet has dull purple and orange and yellow but appears to glow? The Blonde lady with purple on her face. All elements of contrast inteded to draw the eye without being over bearing, but at the same time adding vibrancy.
For a long time I always wondered things like “why that color? This looks so alive but why? I would never have chosen that color because it isn't what I see.“
Your job is you have to control the viewers interest.
To quote Stan Prokopenko, " We make these decisions to improve the visual impact of our picture."
Stan started talking about "transitions" of of plains on a video I found. He talks about it starting at 5:50 https://youtu.be/wlLU05hmXyA?t=350
And he revealed the thought process. They are using color hue, and saturation shift, to show the changing of form, and not using just value to show the changing of the form.
This bolstered my theory that Color hue, and separately, chroma(saturation) intensity gradations, or transitions, can add a natural vibration because of contrast in the viewers eye.
Like so.
But he only talks about it for like two seconds. And in other videos I found there is minimal discussion of it's application.
Until I found Marco Bucci's video this past winter, and it was the quickest way I have seen this concept explained in actual application of the practice of painting, it includes a portrait. https://youtu.be/kYtGh2xTAlg
And then they published THIS video.
Where Marco called his color vibrancy his "color trajectory", And calls these little accents of blue dots on brown hair "tension colors".
But stylistically he will use them to create "transitions" of plains like Proko states in his video and also sometimes just dapple tensions of color like the blue in the hair in his video. https://youtu.be/FtQA9_vtREU
So which is it? Strict transitions, or fun dappling?
When I was in school, the only explanation I ever heard regarding this concept was, "you want there to be bits of your entire paintings colors mixed in slightly everywhere, because light bounces." That was it, that was all I ever got.....How the hell am I supposed to apply that and been only taught value for two years. It is an enormous gear shift in your brain.
When drawing with only values you are encouraged to use no more than 2 values for a NOTAN. And no more than 4 to 5 values to make strong composition. You organize form shadow shapes, and their plain transitions of 'black and white'.
Okay so stick with me here. It's the first time I've ever written this.
Value turns form, but also is the top of the food chain for how you organize different 'elements' in a picture. 'Elements' meaning the background, the character, the drapery, and the shadow shapes of each.
With colors,
in my observations,
As long as you follow your value groupings hierarchy,
3d forms can be emphasized by hue, and saturation changes and not just value.
Turning form with only saturation or color hue , creates a contrast of color and not a contrast of value, which when practiced, and because of color relationship theory, adds dancing vibrancy and interest, without changing the value hierarchy of the composition as a whole.
This, and the examples provided above, however complex, are simply extreme variations that adhere to the first color strings pallete method that Ron Lemen explains as 'warm to cool'.
The theories stylistic choices To achieve this affect of vibrancy seems you can adhere to transitions of form plains, or daub points of color tension or both.
I looked for this information, and for the 'why' we people would paint hue variety, why it looks so good, and how its supposed to be applied a few times over the years and came up empty handed or lack luster information. This is the first time I have been able to put a few things together to explain something this complicated this clearly and apply it in a demo.
I can only assume that the painters of history as I first mentioned used it to bolster representations of reality because of their limitations. But also stylistic choices for their focal points in their paintings.
Thank you for inspiring me to take this ride and find this answer
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3 - Value Range
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Theres a lot in this statement that makes me want to ask more questions.
"Plasticy/Dont look good with gradient map due to too much/lack of constrast"
I'm gonna break this down.
Plasticy - looks shiny or fake
Dont look good with gradient map due to too much (happens more often) /lack of contrast -
o.0 -- uh-- what?
Dont use a gradient map right now applying the theories. Drop that. I dont know what your talking about exactly. I see plenty of people use gradient maps effectively in their work but they are just a tool to get where they want quicker. If you dont like the effect then stop. And until you replicate the theories without thinking about it only then use gradient maps to change things quickly of you want. Its juat a tool. There are no tool rules.
"Look, I can probably use the color picker, but I feel dirty when I do so, I feel like I've cheated."
Then dont. Create a pallet area. Blur your eyes and average the grouping of color and value of an area, match it as best you can, and block out your portrait shadow shapes with that. Like in the Viking critique listed above.
Start with a NOTAN. Watch this video by Dorien Iten he was a teacher of mine as well as Ron Lemen. Put Dorien on fastforward if you have too. He can put you to sleep. He taught me everything about sight size cast drawing, what I see and understanding values and arranging them. There is a semester worth of lessons right here in an hour. The language the process the whole shabang. https://youtu.be/ZTRYW7Lmdb4
Also watch this video by Marco Bucci if you dont want to watch the hour long dorien Iten one. https://youtu.be/BTYGWfiZnMA
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4 - How deep does one's understanding of light physics have to go?
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We kind of touched on this a little bit down the rabbit hole chapter.
You need to know enough to control compositions. And make illusions that people will pay you for. Or until you are satisfied.
Yes, focusing on all that is not making the paintings better, great you understand how light works and whatever and why it looks a certain way in a photograph but you aren't making a piece of art or studying how to compose a picture. You dont have a job at a hadron collider...
You are correct, focusing on that is screwing you up. All it ever did for me was make me say, "oh thats why." Maybe it would apply to a photography class more. But then how to I tell a story with certain colors and compositions that dont exist became more important and that's what I wanted to know how to do. A technical achievement or a work of art. You get to choose.
