End of 2020 and revisiting fundamentals

 

Digital Painting with Bobby Chiu: Lesson 1 

Brush Basics and getting familiar with digital painting.

This assignment was a great test of my confidence in my brush strokes and using only the hard round brush to blend without the aid of soft or smudge brushes. The biggest challenge in this assignment was that we could only use the swatches of values provided in the pdf and optimize flow and direction to achieve a nice blend of tones. This exercise also taught me the value of of just using hard round brush to maintain crisp solid edges before developing any further minor details or strokes with the transitions of values.

Further more i found this exercise to be a great warm up before getting to my painting for the day and great for exercising those muscles as well as to just experiment with brush control. Personally i discovered that I'm more confident painting diagonally or horizontally than vertically using big strokes at the beginning and slowly adding tighter transitions of detail. Broad strokes then cut into with either eraser or another value of paint to make more confident marks without worrying about edge control. Optimizing the flow of paint has really changed the way I control and move the paint around the canvas. I found that I like to stick within the 10%-20% flow range as I feel most comfortable when blending paint together also avoiding extreme value changes has helped with blending values. This has also taught me that everyone has a different level of sensitivity they are atoned to or comfortable with when painting. This assignment was very insightful and quite challenging, however I look forward to taking everything I learned from this lesson and applying it to my future work as I start to hone in my process.

I applied this technique of using one hard round brush with optimizing flow and opacity on my own studies to build my own confidents in the strokes and develop my brushwork and brush control. I learned a great deal but also found it super challenging to achieve the results I was looking for. 

Sorrolla Study: Painting Colour Comps

 

For this study I mainly wanted to focus on the colour and light composition and capturing how the artist has grouped the values. I particularly struggled applying the transition of values working straight in colour and conveying the hue shifts that's convincing and aesthetically pleasing.

Joaquín Sorolla study and exploring colours and value range

 

This Sorolla painting proved to be honestly very challenging for me to replicate his use of colour and painterly brush textures. This study gave me the opportunity to dive in and experiment a bit with the brush properties that was both enjoyable and eye opening to achieve a range of interesting effects and and quality to the surface. The dynamic colour option I particularly had fun playing with. 

Another study of Joaquin Sorrolla work.

 

Been picking away at this piece for the last 2 weeks or so. The goal with this study was to the capture and copy as much as I possibly could without relying on too many digital tricks. Experimenting with the brushes to get quality and feel of real paint. I particularly struggled with capturing the saturation around the face but overall I am pleased what I have managed to accomplish with the piece.

Getting back to greyscale painting

 

In continuing studying from Sorolla paintings, this week I committed to just painting one of his works in greyscale with the three value approach method and gradually building on top. This non destructive process allowed me to more experiment with the mixer brush without loosing the over form and structure of the piece as I was intent of where I put my first two values focusing on the light and dark shapes. I really like this process as it helps me to commit early on not get bog down trying to figure out the lighting and composition halfway through a painting. It really gets you to build a good foundation first to paint on top of and gradually build up. Next week my intention is too continue building on greyscale painting. 

October Artist Study_ Joaquín Sorolla

Recently had the urge to get back into studying master's of the past, so I decided  for the remainder of this month I would look and analyse the works of Joaquín Sorolla and his masterful paintings, in attempt to learn his approach to colour and composition and his methods of grouping values when composing a pleasing image. I feel as though I have learnt a great deal from this experience and still have a lot more to learn about the theory behind light and colour. 

What was most notable about this painting is about how the artist effectively made use of subtle hue and temperature shifts and in the wide range of colour particularly in the figures jacket as well as other surrounding areas in the piece. I also really like how he has made the distribution of his shapes with in a square image canvas which I often find difficult to work with. 

Overall I am pleased how much I was able to accomplish in the week and what I got out from this  artist. I would say the area I most struggled with was identifying the form of the subjects hands and keeping transition of values subtle yet recognisable. The other area would be sleeves where I could pick out subtle greenish grey tones and yet not make it too jarring or prominent to the viewer.

In the coming in weeks I plan to look at more of Sorolla paintings and try to see what more I can pick out from this great master. Perhaps maybe look into how he construct his values, by producing a series of black and white or greyscale studies of his painting.

Process and Approaches to painting

 

This assignment got me to explore a range of techniques and approaches to painting digitally. This was the first lesson of Sam Nielsen's lighting for story class. I fully enjoyed this exercise and experimented each process by combining a variety of steps and mixing them together to develop new approaches of painting that is both efficient and flexible leaving enough freedom for creativity.