Natalie - Art School Journey

Lightning_Flower 2023-09-11 21:53:36 UTC #21

I am now on Term 2: Week 2 of ART School, and the lessons and exercises are getting more challenging! So far I am doing well with studying the human head, but I am facing some difficulty with the "Photoshop for Digital Production B" assignments.

Blending different colors or blending dark and light tones are not new to me, but in Photoshop, blending does not feel the same.

This above screenshot depicts a blending method that uses Photoshop's Mixer Brush Tool. The results are...sketchy. No pun intended. It did a pretty good job blending the two colors together, but look closely at the results. Where did those sharp, unnatural strokes come from?

Now this is Marc's method featured above using the default Hard Round Pressure Opacity Brush. It works, but it's not smooth. I found this method to be the most difficult. Color picking and brushing and color picking and brushing...it took a long while to get to this result. I can't imaging working on a large scale project and having to blend each section one at a time like this.

Finally, this is the method that uses Marc's Smudge Brush and the Photoshop smudge tool. I liked this method better than the previous methods, but the smudge brush seems to allow me to stretch the colors a small distance. If I try to smudge one color over to the other with a longer distance, it ends up looking scratched on. You can see how tight the blended colors are in the center. I'm not sure how I would achieve blending a color all the way across the subject I'm painting.

I'll keep practicing and working through the assignments as best as I can. Maybe I'll figure all this out along the way, but if anyone has any suggestions or tips I would greatly appreciate it!

cobalt_kat 2023-09-13 09:22:23 UTC #22

This is just my two cents, and I could very well be wrong, but the scratchy/sharp stroke effect might have to do with the processing power of your device. When I would run Photoshop on my old laptop, it did every sort of shenanigans since the software simply stretched it too thin. Color banding, brush lag, things like that.

snakker 2023-09-15 00:29:57 UTC #23

I feel you, procreate for my money has the best smudging I have ever tried. I think tue trick is to use large to small brushes ehen blending with alt clicking and if using the smudge tool you have to modify - customize the brush a lot to make it work how you want

Lightning_Flower 2023-09-28 20:52:51 UTC #24

Ugh! I'm horrified by this! I really did try my best too.

I've been getting busier and busier lately. It's hard to find the time to practice art. I'm on Week 3 of Term 2 right now, but I don't think I'll be able to practice all my current assignments in a mere week. I will need a lot more time to practice drawing the head and all of its different features.

snakker 2023-09-28 21:07:02 UTC #25

Keep at it and take your time

Don’t rush

Inkpendude 2023-09-29 15:21:40 UTC #26

Yes! I went through that same pain haha, trust me it gets better the more you know and the more you practice and fail. You can actually see a bit of my progress and you can see how ugly some of my heads were. now at least they are decent.

Keep going!

matthewwemes 2023-09-29 20:24:29 UTC #27

nothing to be horrified by on this, the proportions and placement of all the features are roughly correct, and that's something lots of people struggle with

I'm pretty sure I have yet to see anyone sticking strictly to the schedule, I see it as more of guidelines to help stay focused and on track.

Inkpendude 2023-09-29 20:35:25 UTC #28

Also not everyone can dedicate the same amount of time to this, so in the end is best to make your own Schedule, based on the course or based on your goals and time that you have

Lightning_Flower 2023-10-16 00:23:40 UTC #29

Still on Week 3 of Term 2. I've just completed the portrait study assignment. I'm not impressed with my shading, but I hope in time I will get better at this technique. I am aware about the advantages of using "the full range of values," but I didn't implement that in this assignment very well.

But guess what? My proportions seem correct at least! I feel like I'm getting better at this!

Lightning_Flower 2023-10-22 01:05:34 UTC #30

The last assignment for Week 3 was to draw 5 character heads from imagination. I was able to finish 4, and I believe I've improved a little! I did realize, by the end of this, I'm going to have to study even more human heads from real photos.

snakker 2023-10-25 23:52:02 UTC #31

It's tough, but you're doing an alright job at it. I feel learning the skull and the planes of the head help a ton, getting different viewpoints from various artists also helps to further your understanding of what's important

Proportions look alright overall, where I feel you may be having more difficulty is in the 3D form of the head and its features. When in doubt, try making contour lines either horizontally or vertically. For example, a vertical contour of the midline when you compare to a profile view can help you see if your features are in the right perspective, and horizontal ones help a lot with things like the eyes. It happens all too often, we focus on getting the details well drawn but don't realize that we have two or three perspectives in one portrait

As an example, on the last head, try drawing entirely the ellipse of the brow line through the skull sphere, note the eyes are kind of on a horizontal rather than wrapping around the sphere and placed accordingly, the lids have no thickness/overlap and the nose is facing us while showing a side plane at the same time

There's nothing wrong with re-iterating the same face and angle or erasing/fixing the same one to further enforce what you're learning. I struggled a lot at first and I still feel I need to learn a lot more before my heads are any good from imagination X_X

cheers!

Pattu_w 2023-10-26 11:43:24 UTC #32

As @snakker said, my best piece of feedback is regarding ellipses and the 3D mindset. The ellipse doesn't hit the edge of the sphere on a straight angle, but wraps around it (Save from the orthographic front view).

I suck at words so i did i little example to illustrate what i meant.

I remember that i did hundreds of circles with ellipses inside on the very beginning of the course, and to this day i still struggle to make a "perfect" circle, nothing that my old friend Ctrl + Z doesn't fix tho lol

Lightning_Flower 2023-10-27 15:57:30 UTC #33

Something I struggle with, no matter how much I practice, are those basic 3D spheres. Whenever I try to draw them, I get a flat circle with a flower pattern slapped on. Despite undoing and redrawing, it never comes out right. I end up moving on and later wonder why everything looks wrong.

I already started the next week's assignments on more perspective stuff, but it seems I am still not ready to proceed as I am completely missing some basic 3D skills that I'm probably going to end up needing for the 3-point, 4-point, and 5-point (good gracious, does it ever stop?!) perspective drawings. I'm gonna go back and get this MASTERED before moving on.

Thanks for the help, @Pattu_w and @snakker! Back to the grind now...

Lightning_Flower 2023-10-31 21:22:29 UTC #34

So here's what's been happening lately. I have this notebook that I use for both school and for writing other important stuff down. I just opened that, and for these past few days, I've just been drawing circles with those contour lines that give the circle the appearance of a sphere. I've filled pages with these drawings now. Up until now, they've been looking a lot better, and I think I understand them now. Today, I decided to test myself and create an animation of a rotating sphere.

I think I will continue to use this and try to build the face and the facial features--using basic shapes (e.g. a simple rectangular block for the nose)--on each frame. So far, does this look correct or do I need to keep practicing the 3D sphere more?

The animation was done in Clip Studio Paint. I tried Photoshop's animation feature and I didn't really like it.

Pattu_w 2023-10-31 23:14:10 UTC #35

Hell yeah, this looks awesome! It looks like you got it, always good practice to keep doing these from time to time but i feel like those can be done along side your other studies

To my eyes there's no need to 100% master all of those concepts to keep moving forward, but do keep them in mind. Really great job on those tho!

snakker 2023-10-31 23:24:49 UTC #36

Great job on the sphere!

mitsuki-youko 2023-11-01 00:09:22 UTC #37

EYYY this animation looks great! and yea photoshop's animation capabilities are meh and onion screen is hard to use. which is why i got CSP cus otherwise i'd draw in photoshop and animate in krita and i wanted it all in one place tho krita's pretty awesome for being free!

Lightning_Flower 2023-11-05 19:04:57 UTC #38

I've got a lot of practice and hard work to do when it comes to perspective, but here's how it's looking for right now. Hopefully one day I can look back at these drawings and know that I'm a thousand times better at perspective then ever before.

I'm a little bit discouraged at how long I've been doing art and how quickly I'm being humbled right now...but...I WON'T give up!

mitsuki-youko 2023-11-05 23:08:48 UTC #39

these look really good! esp that 2nd one which has a good sense of depth

snakker 2023-11-06 01:52:08 UTC #40

That's a cool ethereal feel you gave that last one like the castle is a part of a dream, that smooth brush stroking following the vanishing point really helps sell it and being able to see the top of the wall clearly illustrates we are right above it and gives it a solid feel. the less detailed back wall also adds depth

cheers!