25 Master Color Studies

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25 Master studies that took me a lot longer than it should have. I got very very tired doing these. They were done over one week in between a 30+hr a week job and a life. I originally woke up very excited but by the time I was done, it felt like drudgery, which is good, which means I got what this exercise is supposed to do; it's time to move on.

Original image was 13.2x19 @220 dpi, and usually not zoomed in more than 50%. I did not color pick from the original image, but I would sometimes color pick within the rough color I established. It was easier and faster to establish color by eye and was a great confidence booster (I can see!!).

These are by no means perfect and juggling drawing AND color at the same time caused me to lose some accuracy. As long as big shapes are in place and the value was reasonably accurate, things came along nicely.

How did I know I was done? I essentially stopped (read: gave up) when I felt all the basic hues, values and placement were there. Also, I HAD to know what was going on in the copy. There's a reason each of these master paintings work so well from far away, despite detail, or simplicity, or whatever, they WORK, and tapping into that in an economic way was so important. (not that I succeeded so well at the economy bit).

Focusing a lot on occlusion again. To me, it's the thing that establishes the illusion of an object's weight and a reflection of the type of light in the image. Also used a lot of funky texture brushes to imply detail and inject information. Being able to decisively establish shapes on top of random texture was great, it created hierarchy within the composition (provided the edges and values were ok). 

Below, you can see I did these in basically two steps, which helped speed things up. I did all the first versions together at the same time, and did not take them to finish one at a time. I didn't give a crap about them at first, I just wanted to show the kind of hue-ether of the picture (like if you're extremely myopic and forgot yer glasses) and work into it from there. I also used clipping masks for neatness. Download the .psd template for this exercise if you like (about 28mb).

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Next is some imagination stuff where I will apply as much as I can. To me, this is a big showdown as I will be tackling stuff I've been afraid of (mainly big questions like "what do you really want to do?"  and eventually, "WHO ARE YOU?"), but I've prepared as much as someone could, and it'll be a battle, but one I know is in the right direction.

Again, useful links for you:
Library of Brushes to share: http://www.pandemoniumart.net/brushes/
Amazeballs Brush Presets by Sam Nielson: http://artsammich.blogspot.com/2013/03/photoshop-brushes_11.html
Shaddy's brushes with explanation (for someone starting from scratch): http://www.shaddyconceptart.com/download
Zedig's packs 1 and 2 (not included in 1st link): http://zedig.deviantart.com/art/My-brushes-346476394 and http://zedig.deviantart.com/art/Brushpack-numbah-two-373428542

See the post of my master value studies.

48 Color studies

48 gouache copies from Traildust by James Reynolds,
like Noah Bradley has done, and Nathan Fowkes before him.
Each copy is under the size of a business card (the blue and pink painting are 6x6).

I did these last year for my own ongoing personal improvement project. I am combining this with assignments from Noah Bradley's Art Camp. Now that I don't have any more stockpiled work acting as a buff, time to really tear it up!

50 value studies
3 full color master studies

3 finished Master color studies

Detail after Anders Zorn's "Self Portrait in Red", Photoshop

 Detail after Anders Zorn's "Peasant Girl (Floda Kullan)", Photoshop

Detail after Jules Bastien Lepage's "Sir Henry Irving", Photoshop

You should know that I didn't do these overnight, They each done over 3-4 days when I could squeeze them in, not at the same time as the 50 master studies. But since I had previously done the work, I will show it along the master studies. 

50 master value studies

48 color studies

50 value master studies

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I did this over the course of one week, and also I have a 30+ hr pt time job. So I did as much as I could, I'm only human. If I didn't have to sleep or take breaks, or maintain healthy relationships,  I wouldn't.

So I learned (most are pretty duh)

-Huge Brush whenever possible (Ala James Gurney's BLAST rule) -this can also serve to tone up or down large areas

-usually a "white" in neutral daylight in a painting is probably 2-3 value (10 being black)--save the 0 for something else. Speaking of value, there's a lot of variation between 2-3... like 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, etc. More than I guessed.

-implying DETAIL and artificially injecting information (texture brushes, see below)!

-......which goes hand in hand with manipulating OCCLUSION (here is a brief explan, from Gurney)

-which goes with creating decisive EDGEWORK to define, separate, and bring order/hirearchy to areas. This was something I always overlooked, thinking that just butting values up against each other and hoping the inherent/accidental transition between them was good enough, but it's really an active step during the process.

-and some PHOTOSHOP stuff: I could have saved myself some trouble by creating a CLIPPING MASK (did not know until the last study, courtesy of Shaddy's vid. I had created another layer full of carefully placed white boundaries to prevent my drawings going outside where I wanted)

This is kind of the p90 of art studying, and I did this to start tearing myself down to rebuild much stronger. I had some major breakthroughs on my 12th, 22nd and 35-40 drawing (I basically worked top to bottom on the left column, then worked the middle and right columns simultaneously top to bottom, sometimes I had 4 or 5 i was working on at a time-- which disabled my eyes from being lazy and enabled much more big decision making).

I worked about the size of the large image linked in the caption, which was about 50-66% zoomed in. Whole piece was about 8x20" @ 220dpi.

I think also being able to see your color in black and white at the same time unlocks a lot of secrets (duh). I realize I was always guessing.

After that it was keeping my head in the game for the finish. And still this is just the beginning...

Library of Brushes to share: http://www.pandemoniumart.net/brushes/
Amazeballs Brush Presets by Sam Nielson: http://artsammich.blogspot.com/2013/03/photoshop-brushes_11.html
Shaddy's brushes with explanation (for someone starting from scratch): http://www.shaddyconceptart.com/download
Zedig's packs 1 and 2 (not included in 1st link): http://zedig.deviantart.com/art/My-brushes-346476394 and http://zedig.deviantart.com/art/Brushpack-numbah-two-373428542

48 color studies
3 full color master studies

tao yuen sketch

sketch for today~ another of Tao Yuen..perspective practice, with the trays especially

taoyuen