48 Color studies

48 gouache copies from Traildust by James Reynolds, like Nathan Fowkes did.
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. 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