[AliasMoze]

Tee hee. This, unfortunately, is a not-so-old pic. It's my first attemp at painting a head. This was about a twenty minute deal, seeing if I could get the values correct.
It was obviously done out of my head, no reference. I just started putting down colors.

Can a knowin' person throw me a bone and let me know what I did wrong.

Also, anyone know where I can get a model head of some sort?



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

[Lange_Pisang]

I think you should fix the ears...

[Rinaldo]

Hiya Alias, I dunno If you consider me a "knowin'" person but I had a free half hour so I thought I'd try my best.

As I understand it you do a lot of drawing non? Mostly in line?
I have the problem that I am so used to drawing in line that useing values and all that, is a major step in another direction. I am finding it VERY hard to make the transition from line. It's such a different way of going about things.
But anyway, I have no idea how to get the colours and values right. I've noticed Micke using some wierd colours like yellowy greens and dirty pinks in his stuff, so I tried using similar (the best I could get anyway) kinds of colours. Putting reflected colours/values in helps to bring it out. The cube stuff that Fred was doing is way more important than I would have thought. light bounces around a lot so you get lighter colours in your shadows a lot of the time. I try to not use black as a shaddow because it doesn't make skin look that good.
The ears need work on your pic. you probably know anatomy better than I do so I suppose you already knew that.


Anyway This is what I was able to do in about 30 min.



I hope it helps in some way. It is not all that good, and I hope someone like spooge comes in and gives us both some tips.

[Francis]

Here's my shot at it. I'm still learning the figure stuff as well as the painting stuff, so take this image with a grain of salt - I didn't post this as a "here is how it's done" kinda thing, more like a "here's how I did it this morning" kinda thing.

Anyway, hope you get something out of it.



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Francis Tsai
TeamGT Studios

[SaltyDog]

Alias, this piece suprised me a bit from seeing your other drawings. Reason being, the anatomical flaws that aren't so apparent in your other characters, I'm assuming this happened because you hopped right into painting without taking the time to work out the drawing problems first.
Once you've done that, then address the linework as solid objects (like the much alluded-to Cube studies) Since this piece is simply a straight on headshot, you can easily setup a similar shot with a mirror and a lamp in front of a mirror to get the proper lighting and color effects.
Rinaldo- The reason Micke uses that sort of color pallete is because it actually exists in the skin. If you look closely, the human skintone is not just a gradiation from light raw sienna to dark burnt umber. Both from reflected light, and from the blood under the skin, there are plenty of odd colors that come out. Unfortunately, when trying to paint these, many times are figures end up looking like they have a cross between jaundice and malaria! Anyways...approach it from a structural sense and "see" the colors..be one with your wacom.

[Francis]

What are you chuckling about?

I realized that maybe those aren't ears in your drawing, but headphones or something. At any rate, I figured that this was a painting exercise and not a head drawing exercise, as you've probably got a grip on that by now. I bet people are reacting to the drawing of the head more than the attempt to delineate values.

Either way, let's see more art, whether it's animations, animation backgrounds, life sketches or whatever.

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Francis Tsai
TeamGT Studios

[spooge demon]

I am quite the opposite. That king arthur thing I did was a drawing to start. Ugly.

There was something called an Asaro head years ago. A painter named John Asaro made these plastic heads that were life size and broken into planes. On half was more simplified. The important part is to flat shade things and keep the planes accurate with good definition between planes.

I would imagine that it would be possible to duplicate the thing in 3-d. A 3-d flat shading is pretty primitive, but it is a start.

Could one of the 3-d whizzzzes do something like this? I bet it already exists somewhere. The important part is to flat shade things and keep the planes accurate with good definition between planes.

Aliasmoze, just stick to value right now. Color can come later. Try the head without the helmet and goggles.

Remember you can roll the lighting off as it gets farther from the source. With top lighting you can assign a lesser value to the chin than you do the brow, even though they may have similar angles to the light.

Play up the difference between core and cast shadows. They are your friend.

You have a good separation between light and dark, good start. If I see mistakes made over and over, it is that there is confusion between what it in light and shadow. Decide which and make that plane in one or the other.

The other really big problem I have seen is too much contrast WITHIN THE DARK OR THE LIGHT. I have talked about this before, but I am not sure if I was clear.

If you make your dark value a 3, and your light value a 7, good. Now how do you model form from there? By too much contrast I mean that the values stray too far from these basic values that you used to block in with.

Within the dark, stay very close, 2.5 to 3.5

You can go a little wider in the light, say 6 to 8.

The sin is to go up to a 5 in the shadow and down to a 5 in the light. MUD.

Another sin is the will to shininess. I know the feeling. You are working along on your head and you don't know how to make it better. So you start working up the highlights, even with that damn dodge tool. Highlights are seldom as bright as you think they are, and are a product of reflectivity. So once again, you have large value range in the light side. What is the symptom of this? Your forms look bulbous and roughly spherical. How many cheeks have you seen that look like chrome spheres? Stop the madness!

To sum up, you don�t need a lot of value change to show form well. A good separation between light and dark, with good and accurate light and dark shapes, play up core and cast shadow edges, and you are almost there. If you get these right, you will be amazed how little �licking� is required.
and

[AliasMoze]

Francis, thanks. I've been meaning to post some drawings but never get around to it. I practice right now is concentrated on painting. So, for the time being it looks like I'll be posting crappy paintings. Hopefully they'll get less and less crappy as time goes by

Spooge, thanks! That's exactly what I was looking for. These value "formulas" give me a tough time. I've been really slow to get it. My cubes have just recently started looking good, so I decided to try some heads. It took forever for me to grasp the idea of "light and dark." Too many years working against me.

Anyway, I'm working on it. I'm gonna try to find a low-poly 3D head somewhere. Anybody got one? Once the biggest two values are there, I think I can figure it out.

[Binke]

hm, I have hard time doing anything decent when I am linedrawing. I prefer defining a object with values, rather then with a line. That's why I take charcoil over pencil any day!

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http://binke.gamesquad.net

[Fred Flick Stone]

Spooge, I have the Asaro head and am modelling it out with Anticz currently. We are going to do a simultaneous tutorial in 2D and 3D using the head. I think it is most imprtant to have as a tool for all artists...good to know you agree with this guys philosophies. Were you attending ACCD when he taught there?

[AliasMoze]

Fred, do you happen to know where I can get an Asaro head for myself? Are they expensive? Thanks, as always; haven't seen you around too much lately.

I am, as usual, quite interested in advice on this kind of thing. You've taught it, so you see allot of the same mistakes people make.

[Fred Flick Stone]

Alias-hello. Sorry I haven't replied sooner. I made it a point that over the last few days I would "rarely" look at the computer, till I got some art completed. This forum sucks up a lot more time than I ever anticipate.


I have modelled up a head in blk/wht to show the change of planes, based on your light source. I want to stare at my image for a while longer to improve it, possibly with the Asaro model with me. I have it at home, I am srta guessing from studying it so much.

But from what spooge says, separate those values as much as possible. Separate the light from the dark. Model in planes first, then flesh them out, till you see the reason faces are the colors(values, hues) they appear to be in reality. Every value is based on a plane, that plane is either directly lit, or indirectly lit, or abscent of light. The light side, the core shadow, and the reflective light. Reflective light occurs because of the light passing beyond the object viewed, and bouncing back from whatever surfaces are closest to that object. The core shadow is the abrupt change of light to dark, usually has its own set of bounce light rules, but more often than not, with a direct spot light as you have lighting the army head, the core will "appear" alomst black.
THe light side has modelling in it too, but they do not compete with any reflective values on the shadow side.

THere is also a lateral gradation of value, or as Spooge put it in Wacomonkeys thread, a Z value transition. From back to front, the values change again according to planes, and by the fact that the object is moving away from the direct light source.

If you can be a bit patient, I will do a planes of the head in tone tutorial, not in lines, so you can see where the "ideal" breakdown of the head is. The head is basically a complex cube, six major sides. But each of the features have planes and sides to them according to their position on the skull, i.e. the eye sockets recede, the nose and ears protrude, etc.

I hope this helps a bit, as I have been rushed. The image took about ten minutes to model, over your army man, but I don't have too much time to get into it. I have a wedding party to attend now. Write back if you want that tutorial, and I will get right to it. Maybe post it tomorrow, or Monday morning. My day tomorrow consists of plein aire painting, and sculpting the human form, anatomy first, then fleshing it over. I am looking forward to getting my hands dirty...

Good luck...

[Fred Flick Stone]

Unfortunately, John Asaro has become a lazy art success down here in Encinitas, and no longer teaches, nor does he any longer sell those things. His distribution ran out, and he gave it up. Said it was too much of a hassle. I think success has gone to his brain a bit. He still paints amazingly, but hes gotten lazy.

And yeah, I have been trying to do a bit more work to get ahead so I have more time to do art to post here. My time is getting sucked out of me...glad to see you posting other stuff again...

[AliasMoze]

Thanks, Fred. Can't wait to see what else you come up with.
I apologize to those who helped and couldn't get past the drawing. I should have done it carefully. And I always rag on people for the same thing.

Fred, what I'm working on now are lots of head moldings and different kinds of breakdowns in shape. I'm going to try lighting the same simple model with different light sources and shading it in. Should be educational. Thanks again

[samdragon]

Hey Alias, I can post some pages from Loomis's creative illustration book if you want some more info, he has some awesome examples and theories about Tone and different painting techniques. Or better yet, I would like to see Fred or Spooge do an example of "big tone" approach or the "soft" approach.
hint hint

I can't wait to get back and start posting some of my stuff for critiques and what not, I'll be more than happy to swap some ideas with ya Alias.

[AliasMoze]

Samdragon,
Bring it on! The more ways it's explained, the better. I love Loomis. Don't have that book yet. So please post it.

Can't wait to see some more stuff from you. Yeah, this painting stuff is hard, but lately some of it has started to sink in. I'd be glad to share ideas if you are working along the same lines.

[SaltyDog]

Alias...it just occurred to me that you thought I was picking apart your drawing without addressing the issue at hand (i.e. shading and color)
What my intent was to say that through proper anatomical drawing (knowing where planes begin and end) help in the later phases of how the light plays against the surface. Anyway..sorry about the confusion. And the big boys have already stepped in to help. So I'll bow out
Oh..btw. I know you can draw like a mofo! That's why I was caught off guard!

[spooge demon]

How many of my own rules can I break....

Yo Adrian! Sorry, that's just what came out of my brain right then.

[AliasMoze]

Salty, no man. I respect you and appreciate the help. I realize my error in trying to do a head without a good drawing. Even Mozeman, my bro, slapped me around for it. You were right to crit the drawing first

Spooge, you rock. I've spent the day pouring over every scrap of info I can find on this subject. Lots of things to learn and lots of common suggestions about light vs. shade. I love your sketch. I notice your cast shadows are a click darker than your core shadow. Hmmm...

[Farwalker]

Another rockin thread!

Learning a ton from everyone
Spooge, awesome stuff. Love how the dark shadows draw me to his wicked looking eye wear. What lies behind them...

Don't worry Alias my twin bro keeps a watchful eye on me also
Alias it would be cool to see a new version of your painting posted again from what you have learned from the board and on your own.

Keep it up Moze!



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www.gamingvault.com

[AliasMoze]

Salty, yeah. That's what the tee hee is for. I'm not here to impress anybody; I genuinely need help shading heads.

Rinaldo, I suspect that those funky colors Micke is using in a local area are all of the same value. The values are my problem. Yeah, I have trouble going from line to tone. It bogs me down. In a drawing, I can define a plane with a couple quick lines. In tone, it takes forever seemingly.

Thanks everyone. I'm kind of chuckling. I'll fix it and get back to you.


[This message has been edited by AliasMoze (edited August 12, 2000).]

[This message has been edited by AliasMoze (edited August 12, 2000).]

[samdragon]

Alias,
yeah, i'm still learning this painting stuff allways will be. And what you're doing right now is the exact same chapter i'm reading. So it fits in perfectly.
If it's ok, I'll start a new thread and post some of Loomis's stuff in it. I don't want to put too much stuff up, just enough to complement what Spooge and Fred are doing.
I'll try to post the image and text later on in the day.
I'll see if I can dig up anything in those "famous artists" books too. man those things are old