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