[akh]

ok, im working on this painting of a guy that i took a picture of in chicago.. but im kinda at a loss here on how to crop it to make the best composition. heres the orig skecth:

full size
keeping the rule of thirds in mind, this is what i thought it should be, but it doesnt look really strong of an image... or is it just a bad sketch?

hehe, hope someone can help... if someone can show how they would crop it, that would be great. thanks!


[This message has been edited by akh (edited July 23, 2000).]

[akh]

oh, heres the photo if it helps any... hmm the perspective looks wrong now that i look at it. hehe, and one more thing. how can i make his head look like its tilted up more? i think its the glasses that i drew that made it look messed up, but i cant seem to get it right. thanks in advance =)


[This message has been edited by akh (edited July 23, 2000).]

[akh]

this was sent to me by dave gordon.. and by the way, thanks =) looks cool... think ill give it a shot. what do you other peeps think?

[dgordon]

I'm going to have to read up on the UBB Code, so i can get images up. But like I said in the email I'm no expert. That is how I would crop it..

[AliasMoze]

akh,
Well, I think the angle of the bench is a little weak. If I were you, I would adjust the drawing so that the bench is straight.

From there I'd keep the guy in the lower 2/3 of the frame.

that's my opinion.

------------------
AliasMoze
:) :) :) :)
"That activates my hilarity unit."

[Fred Flick Stone]

I did this in about 10 minutes. I went looking for big blocks of value and hue, the kept whiddling away at it.
I did a different treatment with the bench and background because in the photo they weren't all that appealing to me. Stick with just a few colors throughout the whole image to keep a harmony in the image.

If you are planning on doing this in photoshop, you have a bit more flexibility to stray out of your lines and find pleasing shapes. Don't get too caught up in staying within your defined lines, it will give the image a nicer spontaneous feeling.

Post again at the next stage in this picture to see the development...

[akh]

thanks for all the response guys! it helps a lot to get other people's opnions.
and Fred... woah. it blows my mind that you were able to block all that in 10 minutes. but then again, i guess im a little frustrated. i just got my wacom, and its hard to make a change from real airbrushing and painting to the puter. I was originally gonna do this in acrylics (cause i need better paintings for my portfolio to show colleges =)... but the image you created really inspired me to give it a shot in photoshop. hehe, like dgordon, i started using the airbrush, and couldnt figure out the paint brush. and i'll definitaly change the bench. it just looks too awkward with it extending out of the picture. the way you made it makes the painting much more complete.
hehe, sorry for rambling, but thanks a lot

[Fred Flick Stone]

Photoshop is fun for sketching. It feels like scribbling neurotically to get a result. I can feel the pressure of the brush tool sometimes, but its not worth it to get to caught up in the exactness or in feeling the pressure of the tip of the pen. I only wish I could paint this fast and loose with real paint. The only drawback to photoshop, you can't take the technique with you back to paints, but it sure is a fast painting program once you free your self up from hanging up in the shapes.

Before Spooge did his silhouette treatment the other day on another thread, I would get hung up on shapes in photoshop. It is very different than paint and I have to treat it that way. I started this frog before I got into the silhouette treatment, and you can see it is wway too uptight. It has about an hour and a half invested in it. Too long for my liking. I am not going to finish it now, I don't like where it is going. But you can see the difference a little advice can give, even if you aren't directly recieving it. AAAAhhhhh the forum. Thanks spooge for starting to show me a light...

[This message has been edited by Fred Flick Stone (edited July 23, 2000).]

[This message has been edited by Fred Flick Stone (edited July 23, 2000).]

[akh]

cool painting... could you please tell me the thread where spooge talked about silhouette treatment? i tried searching, but couldnt find much... id like to learn more on that. hehe, and i havent been checking the forums as frequently as i used to, which is a huuuge mistake with all this good (and not to mention free) advice again, thanks for your time

[Fred Flick Stone]

THe thread is Gladiator Pic help pleas...by Shadow X...
his advice is near the bottom of the3 thread...

[dgordon]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Fred Flick Stone:
[Photoshop is fun for sketching. It feels like scribbling neurotically to get a result.]

That is how I like to work; and know exactly what you mean. But when it comes to forcing your self to work on a piece. You end up focusing on the details. Which leads to a "stale" or "tight" image. That is what I see in my images.(more so with the ones i've done in PS).

As for doing anything else on the "frog". I wouldn't even consider trying to work out the "stiffness" of it. I say keep, so you see where you were. If anything do another image totally. "then again, we are talking digital files". Just don't save over it...hahaa

I'm going to have to check out that thread too...

-thanks-

[Tinusch]

Oh my freaking god, Fred... That is incredible. That painting totally blew me away, and that was before I read that it only took you 10 minutes. That is amazing. How do you begin an image like that? Do you just lay down solid blocks of color and then work with different shades on top of them?

[This message has been edited by Tinusch (edited July 23, 2000).]

[akh]

mooowahahaha... this is me at 30 minutes i just had to try this... i really like this technique of blocking in with the paintbrush instead of using the airbrush. i think its a lot more productive
(looking at freds, thank god this is only the second time using my wacom... ive gots a long way to go =)


[This message has been edited by akh (edited July 23, 2000).]

[Fred Flick Stone]

Here is a block in painting step by step to show the process. This one took about 30 minutes because of the saves. I still dont think I did the proper number of saves.
But, I get the big shape working, then block in general hues. Then mold, or scribble, and continuing to do so till the image is fairly close to what I want to see...

Hope this helps a bit...

[Fred Flick Stone]

Akh-dont block in all the colors right away. Go simple to detailed. Right now you are also using a bit too much white in the image. Try using color for as long as you can, and as a last resort, lighten with white, it tends to bleach out the image, making it look fairly flat...

[akh]

just outta curiosity... whats wrong with being tight? i get that a lot from teachers, that i focus too much on the details. i like to focus on them because i like to make paintings realistic. To me, it looks more impressive when its more realistic... just wondering.
now is blocking in with the paintbrush only to make someting sketchy? or do you just take it a step further (like blurring and zooming in and putting in the details) to make an image more realistic and complete?

[Fred Flick Stone]

There is nothing wrong with being tight so long as you know what that means. It is the difference in Vallejo and Sargent. Both are fairly tight, but Sargent knew when to stop. YOu can't create a great image that sucks you into a particular spot if every particular spot has an equal amount of emphasis in it. The fingernails are as rendered as the eye, as the leaves on the ground etc. Too much can overkill an image. That is why great art is so charming. The artist was skilled enough to indicate a lot with very little, and he did it with simplicity, and taking into the fact that there should only really be one center of attention if you know what you are doing with your imagery.

Looser painting is great for us, the artists, but for sales to a client, they want to see photographic unfortunately. But even then, you can still pull off a fairly loose peice and get enough detail in it not to overkill the image...

[spooge demon]

Looks cool Fred. Glad that shape thing helped out. One thing I might suggest is to still work with flat color and shapes, but make the value and color more accurate from the start. That way you will not fight that black and white and glazing will be much more effective.

Ahk, Get rid of the white, and have the confidence in your drawing to overlap shapes as you draw them. Those smudgy, hazy shapes do you know good. A confident strong shape is better than a tentative one, EVEN if it wrong!

[Tinusch]

Fred: Do you create a palette before starting the pic, or do you choose each color manually as you go along?

[Fred Flick Stone]

Tinusch-I guess from working with color for so long, I kinda know what the colors are going to be matched up with. If I start with a particular bright value of a specific color, I try not to let any other colors get as bright, or there becomes this crazy color shifting thing that occurs in the image.
What I do do though is limit how many colors I use. And if a specific color is in the image only once, but is an important color, I will find a couple other areas to use that color so it doesn't become a beacon in the image...

[Farwalker]

Great step by step painting Fred

Again, thanks for taking the time to show us how your paintings take shape.

I love the loose style. So much more interesting to look at.

---- www.gamingvault.com

[akh]

cool. thanks a bunch guys... i really learned a lot from this and it helps out sooo much; better than any art class i've ever taken! =)

[SushiMaster]

Okie I've been trying this fred-craig technique, and actually it's turned out better than I expected (I guess I still lack the couple dozen or so years of drawing experience to get it right :-P), but one thing in particular bugs me:

You seem to be using hard-edged paintbrush brushes, with opacity sensitivity on, and possibly size sensitivity. You also seem to be doing it all on one layer, hence, for instance, the overlap of the sea blue on the body in one of the frames. My problem with this is that my strokes are not amazingly accurate especially when they're pretty wide, so I get overlap too... but with opacity-sensitive brushes, if you have already done any work at all on (in that case) the belly, it's really hard to fix it up without making it look like a big obvious mess...?

So, I'm sort of wondering, how do you cope with strokes which cross over from one colour to another when they shouldn't? Also, I assume to do the shading you pick a lighter colour, again with an opacity sensitivity, for the highlight, and a darker for the colour. The sensitivity on the opacity allows you to get more subtle shading it... I think... am I right?

Daniel

[dgordon]

Fred,
I really appreciate that step by step... I am going to figure out how to post images on the board so, I could get some idea of the perception of other people. But thanks for the step by step again.. in this thread answered most of my questions I had with "blocking"..
-thanks-

[Fred Flick Stone]

Sushi, I let the strokes overlap. Here, not in paint. I have never let myself get loose and sloppy, and I see that there are some advantages to it.
You can save each area as a layer, i.e. the background is one layer, and the girl and sand another. I used to be heavily into layers, but I am finding it is just easier to build it all on one layer. Again, use the flexibilty of the program.If you find that it is hard for you to correct something because of it all occupying the same space do whatever it takes to make things easier on you. A couple other ways to fix the problem you might be having is to save out multiple iterations of the image, so you can cut and paste peices as they need to be done so. Also, you can lasso select just the area that is needed for change, and just work within your selection.
Hope this helps a bit...