furry arts discussion > traditional and digital artwork
A Rat's journey in oil painting.
cause the rat:
Welcome back to the everything that can go wrong has gone that way thread! I'm now doing my best to spend a good hour on painting a day. Still concentrating on techniques. The four basics I'm working on now.
Cast studies. Creating 3D forums with light and shadow. Doing this with paint and not a pencil.
Drawing. With brushes and paint.
Value. Continuing value studies. I want to be able to use complimentary colors within a field color and not change the over all value. Keeping the illusion of form intact.
And finally Master Studies. Copying paintings you like is a great way to learn how they did it.
Right now I'm concentrating on cast studies. Doing two small studies next to each other. Doing two studies allows me to see what I did on the first attempt. Then make improvements on the second. Scrape both off and start a new set. I've kept my first set but haven't looked at them sense. The difference between them are night and day. I'll give myself a month or more before I look back. Once I get to a comfortable place with these I plan on doing a different study each day.
Sorry about the delay folks. Life happens when you plan on doing something else.
cause the rat:
Just wanted to give everyone still reading this a link to the best book on cast studies. 'Charles Bargue and Jean-Leon Gerome: Drawing Course' . Vincent Van Gogh and John Singer Sargent studied form this book. This book is free from the Internet Archive. Or you could pay up to $70 for it on Amazon.
https://archive.org/details/C.BargueDrawingCourse/page/n1/mode/2up
Cast studies
Decided to have some fun. Every object is nothing more than a collection of smaller shapes. You can divide any complex object into three values of shapes. Light, mid and dark. Look at your hand. Now start picking out the three values as individual shapes. Try to make these shapes as large as possible. These shapes can be broken down into smaller shapes. The more you break these shapes down the more realistic your rendering becomes. But it all starts out with the three value shapes. I have a yearly subscription to Croquis Cafe site on Vimeo. They have a feature called 'fast sketch'. You can set the timer to 15, 30, 45 seconds. One, 2,3,5 or ten minutes for each artist pose. Made all my pose selections and set the timer for 15 seconds. Hit start. As the pictures of models flew by I chose a single body part. Arm, leg, torso, neck. Whatever caught my attention first. Instead of drawing an outline I drew the shapes that made up the area itself. I did this with a pencil. The more i did this the easier it was to find the three values that made up the over all shape. And the better I got at it. By rendering these three value shapes I was actually getting the over all shape. Without starting with an outline. Eventually slowing the timer to one minute to get larger areas of the model. Still keeping the shapes down to three values.
So I know what your asking. "Why are you using a pencil"? Fifteen seconds is just enough time to load a brush and bring it up to the canvas. And it usually takes more than one stroke with a brush to get a completed line. A 'W' with a brush takes four strokes. Compared to one stroke with a pencil. Using a brush would give me more time to think than I wanted . Working fast is a way to force yourself to see the shapes that make up the object. When I go to do the actual cast shadings I'll do that with the brush.
cause the rat:
I want to explain why I did this. When doing cast studies using the folds of draped material I found myself looking at the entire object. Not at the shapes that made the object up. I knew I had to break that habit. After spending some time with this I can now instantly look at any complex object and see the value shapes that make it up. Well worth the effort. Time to pick up the brush and start the cast studies all over again.
It's very important to be true to yourself when learning a new skill. Getting good information from trusted sources helps. Unfortunately for every good source on the web there are 99 total disasters. As you watch me fall on my face I hope not only to inspire you but continue to be a source of good information. I'm not above correcting myself and apologizing for being wrong.
cause the rat:
Reading threw this free book I learned why the original teacher chose casts and statues for these studies. Two words for my fellow furrys. 'Animal Statues'. Find pictures of them in white or marble. They have already been simplified in form. The form will be as easy to follow as a ball. If your new to this, like i am, do small areas first. Don't overwhelm yourself by trying to do the entire thing at once. Do the eye, jaw, mouth or nose. Like the original studies take as much time to get both the shape and shading correct. This isn't an exercise that can be rushed.
As far as taking measurements and getting proportions the video below is the best I've found.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-PWjlah7dw
This guy has a unique take on painting realistic.
cause the rat:
An update. A place to follow my progress. And I need to move this thread to the proper section of this forum.
Still waiting for the printer cartridges to arrive.
I plan on using my thread at Wetcanvast as a blog. With pics. If you want to watch I'll be at the link below.
https://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/topic/restarting-with-studies-2/
If you can't get in with the link go to Wetcanvas/ forums / oil painting and look for a thread called Restarting with studies by wet rat.
Because this thread isn't about finished art I'll be starting a new one in the Artwork Techniques and Tutorials section of this forum.
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