I really enjoy how you explain the massing to blocking to final detail. Sometimes I find myself trying to get every detail and finish exhausting myself or exaggerate the proportions.
I am always catching myself getting caught up in detail. I believe that we all have a natural tendency to focus on detail. In our normal lives, our survival, depends on identifying specific things. Like the time of a train on a timetable, or an item on a shelf in a supermarket, or a hunter its prey etc. Trying to resist the tendency to focus on detail while drawing and painting is like a mindfulness exercise, catching your mind running away with itself. It takes practice. I know its a cliche, when artists say mysterious things like "painting is more about what you decide not to paint or what you decide to leave out" the more experience I gain the more I think this is what they're talking about. Am I making any sense?
@@SIMPLIFYDrawingandPainting great insight, ive been painting digitally myself, but im going to get some supplies and try painting on a real canvas asap, im learning a lot from your videos.
Seeing your first portrait makes me feel like I can make progress, too, and without getting hung up on all the details that usually derail me. Wonderful lesson!
0:05 It's so great to see your first oil portrait and how your painting has evolved over a decade! Pure inspiration to me! As always I love your teaching style and technique! Thanks so much! ❤️
Thank you So Much ! Finally , blocking in with darks , lights and highlights makes sense. I have read , watched , practiced for several years. It has always seemed so overwhelming. Your portraits are amazing.
I've been really struggling on getting satisfactory results in my oil portraits. This really helped me think of it a new way. I've been stressing out over fine value study and getting lost in the minutia. Thank you so much for sharing your process.
I am sooo glad I found your channel. This without a doubt, the clearest, most intelligent, informative painting channel out there. Brilliant stuff. Thankyou 👍
I've watched so many videos to try and get values to stick in my head and actually understand them. After watching your video, im finally starting to get it! Thank you!!!
Thank you Rebecca! Glad you find my videos helpful. You may like my most recent video, which is also on values: th-cam.com/video/CqIxZIQZVTY/w-d-xo.html
Wow. I've been trying to learn oil painting for a couple of months now, but having just watched your "painting edges" and "color temperature" videos I feel like there is hope. Brilliantly clear, succinct, and so right on the money, it's left me knackered. (Why am I pretending to be a British person?)
Thank you! Very glad my videos make sense. I firmly believe that with access to right information it's possible for anyone to learn to paint really lifelike paintings.
Beautiful. THANK YOU so much for this. I've been struggling with just that, and just recently discovered the romantic painters. What a fine surprise to find this channel
I have to laugh at myself because often my favorite part of a picture is one of the mid stages where the full subject is strongly implied but not rendered in detail.
Thank you Alex, you certainly have answered a question and what I have suspected about Art Schools why on here you have so many so called 'artists' promoting their work on the internet either via web sites, blogs or offering tutorials who simple can't paint or draw but state they went to art school.
I know I am super late to the SIMPLIFY bandwagon, but I am so glad I found your channel! Super useful information and I love the care you express for the students watching. Thank you for sharing your awesome content! I'll definitely be stalking your channel for guidance on how to handle my own channel. Cheers!
In the mass drawing approach we're doing here, we have concentrated on the area which is predominantly in the light. How could you adapt this method for if the subject was backlit, or backlit from 3/4 behind for example? Then, not much of the subject would be in the light. A lot of the subject would be in an ambient shadow value. In this case, would it be best to treat the entire subject (in the ambient light + directly backlit portion) as being 'in the light', and painting the backlit areas as highlights? How could this be approached? I think that since mass drawing says we should focus on large underlying masses, we should treat the fact that the subject is predominantly in shadow to be the largest mass, and then paint the backlit portions, which will be the lightest areas, as highlights. How can mass drawing be used to approach subjects that are largely in shadow in general? Thank you for your amazing lessons!
That's a good question. Under a different lighting situation the only difference is main values will be in a different order. In the case of a backlit set up you mention, you'd probably only have 3 main values, most of the subject will be in shadow, the background will probably be much lighter, and the lights on the subject will be fewer and smaller. In another situation you may find yourself with far fewer darks, like a landscape paintings, so you wouldn't need to mass in all the darks at the start, the way I did in this demo. But you still need to simplify the subject into a few large value masses, in a landscape it may be the sky, foreground and middle ground? Or a portrait with a lot of ambient light so the shadows aren't so dark, there will still be a value shift between the side of the head facing the main light source, the highlights and the plane of the head turning away from the main light source, there, there just won't be so much contrast between them. You will still have 3-5 main values. The main this is to be able to identify them, how light or dark they are or large or small they are may be different for every subject and lighting situation. For a portrait or figure in a situation where you don't have any strong shadows, I find it helps to understand the structure of the form, i.e which planes of the head are facing towards the main light source and which are facing away. I hope that explanation makes sense? This may not be entirely relevant, but here is another video where I demonstrate the same cast under two different light sources, hope that helps: th-cam.com/video/2_IT_fc1Eoo/w-d-xo.html
I kept finding something familiar in your paintings and drawings so I went to your website just check where you have studied. I see you have been to the Lavender Hill Studios :). I did a lot of Saturday courses there - loved it. Such a good atelier. Keep up the beautiful art!
@@SIMPLIFYDrawingandPainting We moved to the countryside, but we are not far from London. If I find the time for doing more courses I will definitely join.
If you establish 4 or 5 main values at the start during the block, you'll probably only need another 2 or 3 more subtle values in between them for the finished painting. And by having the main values on you palette, you can see where the subtle values fit e.g. I need to model an edge that's between the shadow and the mid tone, so I mix a value in between the two. I can see on my palette if I mix it too light i.e too close to the mid tone, or too dark i.e. too close to the shadow. I make it sound easy tho. You have to be quite strict about keeping the main values on your palette. It's easy, once you start mixing more subtle values for everything to get mixed together so end up with just one value, which then ends up all over your painting.
The Master Painter Morgan Weistling once said that most things in nature can be expressed and represented in 5 total values. A great exercise to practice is learning to mix 5 values of each color on your palette. Once you have a solid command of mixing 5 values you can began to look for these values when working from life.
I found this incredibly inspiring. Thank you for showing us your early work, i find it gives me hope. Is there an online resource to find good photos of plaster casts to practice from?
Thank you Christopher! I know of these from the Harvard museum of Art: harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/78117 Many museums offer free images of their exhibits so you may find more? I also have a few hi res photos of casts available along with my cast painting demos over on my Patreon channel. But you may want to consider buying an actual cast? Cast drawing has become more popular in recent years, so they have started to become a little more readily available and more affordable. They used to be really hard to find and a lot more expensive. You can get the cast I used for this demo here: www.decorarconarte.com/en/p/torso-de-hercules-escayola-altura-39-cm/ I've seen other places selling casts also and will find them on eBay.
Very clear 👌 thank you for sharing. How do you know which color is the right color to pick up and mix your 9 tones and values. I mean the lightest value in de shadow is the the color of that subject? Thanks so much 🙏🏻 i have problem with the making my pallete ready with the colors😄
I'm not sure I understand the question? Do you mean when working in monochrome? You will need a dark, like blue black or brown to mix all 9 values. A really good exercise for learning about the value range of different pigments and their mixtures, is doing the colour charts from Richard Schmid's book "Alla Prima". They take quite a long time to do but you'll learn loads. Here's a video from another channel about them: th-cam.com/video/BMNk_OdXc6M/w-d-xo.html
Two things that would make the viewing experience better: Remove all music. It’s unnecessary and distracting. I even thought I heard someone muttering. Show your reference photo as you depict it so that we can see why you are doing what you are doing. Thanks
Amazing work and explanation! Are there any books or instructive DVDs for us that live in other countries? Mr Tzavaras are you from Greece? Thank you for your time.
Thank you! Yes I was born in Greece but I grew up in the UK. There are some very good books, I made a video on some of my favourites: th-cam.com/video/UbN0DkSSggQ/w-d-xo.html There are a lot of good DVD's too. But they're quite expensive and although you get to see how some amazing artists work, they make it look easy so I wouldn't say they're that useful for beginners.
Well thank you very much for your immediate answer! But are there any videos or books of yours, explaining your technique? I think it would be a great idea!!
Thank you Alex, for your inspirational videos. A question; do you base your values on a pre- mixed range, as your neighbour Zin Lim, among others, does, or are you matching the tones you see in the subject?
Pre mixing colours or values is always a good idea, because it means you much have less to think about when you start painting. If your colours are pre mixed, say you did a small colour or value study of your subject before attempting the finished painting, then you start you can focus all your attention on getting the shapes right. I tend to only do colour studies for portrait commissions or other painting I'll be spending more time on. If I'm just practising, say I'm painting a model in a life class, I tend to just mix my colours as I go along. But in either case, whether I'm pre-mixing or mixing as I go along, I start by identifying the 3 main values, like the cube in this video, the shadows, the lights and the high-lights. I find it can be problematic to think about too many different values too early on. I've seen students pre-mix about 10 different values before they start painting. I'm a strong advocate of simplifying the value system as much as possible. I think of values like sculpting. If you had a block of marble you'd start by cutting off large planes to form your sculpture before refining them and smoothing them out. Your main values are like the big planes in a sculpture, if any of that makes sense?
Yes, this definitely works with acrylics. The difference with acrylics, is they dry much faster so you cannot blend the paint in the same way you can with oils. But the rule about values applies to any medium, paint, charcoal etc, as it has to do with how we actually see the world, not just the materials we're working with.
I bought the cast in this video from a company in Europe: www.decorarconarte.com/epages/61552482.sf/es_ES/?ObjectPath=/Shops/61552482/Products/Figura-Escayola-Torso-Hercules-IT110-2
SergioU -Gee....the three sides look square to me. Does it really matter if it is a perfect cube? The principle is the same: light strikes the planes with different intensity
This video is great at showing how to limit values to render form. But I am confused about one thing: This use of value is very different from the one used to map out the masses on the whole canvas right? What Andrew Loomis refers in his books as to 'Value pattern' or 'Tonal organization' gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2012/06/loomiss-scheme-for-tonal-organization.html For example, Imagine I were the paint the still image of min 5:00 from this video. Following his advice, it will clearly fall into the fourth pattern: The BG would be the black, the easel would be the dark grey, you would be the light grey and your plaster statue would be the white. That leaves me with a really narrow value range to still represent Light, Halftones, Shadow and Reflected light on the statue, isn it? Or that isnt the goal anymore? Thanks a lot in advance and for your invaluable educational videos!
The 5 main values I'm referring to this video is more applicable to portrait of figure painting, when modelling a particular object like a head or a torso. On a head we have shadows, lights, highlights and a mid tone for the transitions in-between the shadows and the lights in order to round the form. Then we have the cast shadows or dark accents. The background could be similar in value to any one of those values. In the demonstration in this video the background is the same as the same value as the cast shadows, but in another painting the background could be the same as the lights or a mid tone. Now, the value system James Gurney is referring to applies to the composition of a whole scene, like a landscape or a figure/figures in an interior. When attempting to paint a scene from nature, a landscape or a still life, it is really important to establish the overall value pattern, identifying 3-5 main values and positioning them correctly on the canvas. The placement and design of this value pattern will be really important for the composition and it should be the first thing you think about when starting a painting. If we apply this principle to the painting of the cast I did in my video, this is just one object so it has a really simple overall value pattern. We just 3 main values, the light part of the statue, the shadow on the statue and the background. In fact, because this set up has quite a lot of contra and the shadows and the background are fairly close to each other, we could probably simplify the overall value pattern into just two main values, the light parts of the statue and all the darks. This is how I started this painting, when I massed the shadows and the background as a unified dark. Then, all the other values I mention in this video, the highlights, mid-tones and cast shadows become subtle value shifts in between the main values. Does this make sense?
i watch many painting videos, you are one of the few that really know what they are talking about, in my opinion. thanks
Yeah I know right?? It's like I discovered the Graal of painting tutorials!
That's so true
I really enjoy how you explain the massing to blocking to final detail. Sometimes I find myself trying to get every detail and finish exhausting myself or exaggerate the proportions.
I am always catching myself getting caught up in detail. I believe that we all have a natural tendency to focus on detail. In our normal lives, our survival, depends on identifying specific things. Like the time of a train on a timetable, or an item on a shelf in a supermarket, or a hunter its prey etc. Trying to resist the tendency to focus on detail while drawing and painting is like a mindfulness exercise, catching your mind running away with itself. It takes practice. I know its a cliche, when artists say mysterious things like "painting is more about what you decide not to paint or what you decide to leave out" the more experience I gain the more I think this is what they're talking about. Am I making any sense?
@@SIMPLIFYDrawingandPainting great insight, ive been painting digitally myself, but im going to get some supplies and try painting on a real canvas asap, im learning a lot from your videos.
@@internaut4257 Thanks Joseph. Glad you find my videos helpful. Good luck with it!
Seeing your first portrait makes me feel like I can make progress, too, and without getting hung up on all the details that usually derail me. Wonderful lesson!
0:05 It's so great to see your first oil portrait and how your painting has evolved over a decade! Pure inspiration to me! As always I love your teaching style and technique! Thanks so much! ❤️
Thank you So Much ! Finally , blocking in with darks , lights and highlights makes sense. I have read , watched , practiced for several years. It has always seemed so overwhelming. Your portraits are amazing.
Thank you Carol!
Brilliant, concise to the point no waffle just clear explanations and great work... cheers
Values, values and values again... and of course edges! Thank you so much for the presentation, refreshing as always!
I loved how you showed your first oil painting and a recent one.
I've been really struggling on getting satisfactory results in my oil portraits. This really helped me think of it a new way. I've been stressing out over fine value study and getting lost in the minutia. Thank you so much for sharing your process.
I am sooo glad I found your channel. This without a doubt, the clearest, most intelligent, informative painting channel out there. Brilliant stuff. Thankyou 👍
Thank you very much!
So excellent. I really want to try to paint with such a bold, rapid, and expressive style.
This is amazing advice thank you!
Not only competent, but also generous! Thank you very much!
I've watched so many videos to try and get values to stick in my head and actually understand them. After watching your video, im finally starting to get it! Thank you!!!
Thank you Rebecca! Glad you find my videos helpful. You may like my most recent video, which is also on values:
th-cam.com/video/CqIxZIQZVTY/w-d-xo.html
Thanks for the video and the reminder to keep trying to simplify and start with the fewest number of values first. 👍
I reckon this is one my most important videos (I guess it says so in the title). Glad you liked it.
thank you! have a lovely day!
Thanks for the teaching sharing, its clearly indicate the main thing in observing shapes and shading
Wow. I've been trying to learn oil painting for a couple of months now, but having just watched your "painting edges" and "color temperature" videos I feel like there is hope. Brilliantly clear, succinct, and so right on the money, it's left me knackered. (Why am I pretending to be a British person?)
Thank you! Very glad my videos make sense. I firmly believe that with access to right information it's possible for anyone to learn to paint really lifelike paintings.
Just jump in to it my friend and never ever ever ever....give up.
This is a great teaching
Simplifying shapes and value. Nice demo.
I keep coming back to this video when i lose my way with painting which is quite often! Thank you Alex 🙂
I still think this is one of my best videos. I pretty much repeat this in most of my other videos.
Another thought provoking video Alex. Thank you very much - I hope you carry on producing more.
Really helpful and clear - thanks! Off to view more...
Consistent quality, theory, and instruction!.
Beautiful. THANK YOU so much for this. I've been struggling with just that, and just recently discovered the romantic painters. What a fine surprise to find this channel
You give me hope
thank you so much!!
This is absolutely phenomenal. SO helpful and just what I was looking for. Thank you for posting this!
Thanks Jeff! Glad it was helpful.
Excellent.
You're my hero
Great videos, keep 'em coming!
I have to laugh at myself because often my favorite part of a picture is one of the mid stages where the full subject is strongly implied but not rendered in detail.
Thank you Alex, you certainly have answered a question and what I have suspected about Art Schools why on here you have so many so called 'artists' promoting their work on the internet either via web sites, blogs or offering tutorials who simple can't paint or draw but state they went to art school.
thank you
This is gold! You need to start a Patreon page
Great information. It was really helpful. Thanks.
Thanks for sharing your painting knowledge.
You're the best artist That's more than great😍😍
I know I am super late to the SIMPLIFY bandwagon, but I am so glad I found your channel! Super useful information and I love the care you express for the students watching. Thank you for sharing your awesome content! I'll definitely be stalking your channel for guidance on how to handle my own channel. Cheers!
Thank you Kellyn!
Sooooooooooooooooooooooo wonderful work
Thank you
Thank you so much sir.
In the mass drawing approach we're doing here, we have concentrated on the area which is predominantly in the light. How could you adapt this method for if the subject was backlit, or backlit from 3/4 behind for example? Then, not much of the subject would be in the light. A lot of the subject would be in an ambient shadow value.
In this case, would it be best to treat the entire subject (in the ambient light + directly backlit portion) as being 'in the light', and painting the backlit areas as highlights?
How could this be approached? I think that since mass drawing says we should focus on large underlying masses, we should treat the fact that the subject is predominantly in shadow to be the largest mass, and then paint the backlit portions, which will be the lightest areas, as highlights.
How can mass drawing be used to approach subjects that are largely in shadow in general?
Thank you for your amazing lessons!
That's a good question. Under a different lighting situation the only difference is main values will be in a different order. In the case of a backlit set up you mention, you'd probably only have 3 main values, most of the subject will be in shadow, the background will probably be much lighter, and the lights on the subject will be fewer and smaller. In another situation you may find yourself with far fewer darks, like a landscape paintings, so you wouldn't need to mass in all the darks at the start, the way I did in this demo. But you still need to simplify the subject into a few large value masses, in a landscape it may be the sky, foreground and middle ground? Or a portrait with a lot of ambient light so the shadows aren't so dark, there will still be a value shift between the side of the head facing the main light source, the highlights and the plane of the head turning away from the main light source, there, there just won't be so much contrast between them. You will still have 3-5 main values. The main this is to be able to identify them, how light or dark they are or large or small they are may be different for every subject and lighting situation. For a portrait or figure in a situation where you don't have any strong shadows, I find it helps to understand the structure of the form, i.e which planes of the head are facing towards the main light source and which are facing away. I hope that explanation makes sense?
This may not be entirely relevant, but here is another video where I demonstrate the same cast under two different light sources, hope that helps:
th-cam.com/video/2_IT_fc1Eoo/w-d-xo.html
I kept finding something familiar in your paintings and drawings so I went to your website just check where you have studied. I see you have been to the Lavender Hill Studios :). I did a lot of Saturday courses there - loved it. Such a good atelier. Keep up the beautiful art!
Are you still in London? Perhaps you should check out my classes?
@@SIMPLIFYDrawingandPainting We moved to the countryside, but we are not far from London. If I find the time for doing more courses I will definitely join.
@@vllad74 Whereabouts I live in Sussex?
@@SIMPLIFYDrawingandPainting Are you close to East Grinstead? We live there.
@@SIMPLIFYDrawingandPainting Btw do you do courses in any other place or just London?
Very good explaination with great demo. Appreciate your work Sir ! :)
Thanks for teach... your channel is great, i learn :)
Thanks Nicole
Good vid.... you didn’t discuss how to get those subtle values mixed on ur pallet
If you establish 4 or 5 main values at the start during the block, you'll probably only need another 2 or 3 more subtle values in between them for the finished painting. And by having the main values on you palette, you can see where the subtle values fit e.g. I need to model an edge that's between the shadow and the mid tone, so I mix a value in between the two. I can see on my palette if I mix it too light i.e too close to the mid tone, or too dark i.e. too close to the shadow. I make it sound easy tho. You have to be quite strict about keeping the main values on your palette. It's easy, once you start mixing more subtle values for everything to get mixed together so end up with just one value, which then ends up all over your painting.
Great reply and to the point. Thanks so much.
The Master Painter Morgan Weistling once said that most things in nature can be expressed and represented in 5 total values. A great exercise to practice is learning to mix 5 values of each color on your palette. Once you have a solid command of mixing 5 values you can began to look for these values when working from life.
He wasn't the first artist to say so. I picked it up from Carolus Duran.
Great ❤❤👍👍👍
Thank you!
Nice
I found this really useful.
I found this incredibly inspiring. Thank you for showing us your early work, i find it gives me hope. Is there an online resource to find good photos of plaster casts to practice from?
Thank you Christopher! I know of these from the Harvard museum of Art:
harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/78117
Many museums offer free images of their exhibits so you may find more? I also have a few hi res photos of casts available along with my cast painting demos over on my Patreon channel. But you may want to consider buying an actual cast? Cast drawing has become more popular in recent years, so they have started to become a little more readily available and more affordable. They used to be really hard to find and a lot more expensive. You can get the cast I used for this demo here:
www.decorarconarte.com/en/p/torso-de-hercules-escayola-altura-39-cm/
I've seen other places selling casts also and will find them on eBay.
@@SIMPLIFYDrawingandPainting Thank you so much!
Such sensible information given simply. Who is the beautiful man w droughts hat with a feather in it? I feel as if I know him.
Birdy
His name is Mark, sadly he passed away recently. He lived in Sussex.
Very clear 👌 thank you for sharing. How do you know which color is the right color to pick up and mix your 9 tones and values. I mean the lightest value in de shadow is the the color of that subject? Thanks so much 🙏🏻 i have problem with the making my pallete ready with the colors😄
I'm not sure I understand the question? Do you mean when working in monochrome? You will need a dark, like blue black or brown to mix all 9 values.
A really good exercise for learning about the value range of different pigments and their mixtures, is doing the colour charts from Richard Schmid's book "Alla Prima". They take quite a long time to do but you'll learn loads. Here's a video from another channel about them:
th-cam.com/video/BMNk_OdXc6M/w-d-xo.html
Two things that would make the viewing experience better:
Remove all music. It’s unnecessary and distracting. I even thought I heard someone muttering.
Show your reference photo as you depict it so that we can see why you are doing what you are doing.
Thanks
Amazing work and explanation! Are there any books or instructive DVDs for us that live in other countries? Mr Tzavaras are you from Greece? Thank you for your time.
Thank you! Yes I was born in Greece but I grew up in the UK. There are some very good books, I made a video on some of my favourites:
th-cam.com/video/UbN0DkSSggQ/w-d-xo.html
There are a lot of good DVD's too. But they're quite expensive and although you get to see how some amazing artists work, they make it look easy so I wouldn't say they're that useful for beginners.
Well thank you very much for your immediate answer! But are there any videos or books of yours, explaining your technique? I think it would be a great idea!!
haha. I'm quite ready to right a book yet. But I am planning to do some full length demos in real time and some online courses. Stay tuned
We'll be waiting!!! Thank you and many greetings from Greece!!
This is excellent. What color paints did you use?
Michael Harding Titanium White and Raw Umber.
Thank you Alex, for your inspirational videos. A question; do you base your values on a pre- mixed range, as your neighbour Zin Lim, among others, does, or are you matching the tones you see in the subject?
Pre mixing colours or values is always a good idea, because it means you much have less to think about when you start painting. If your colours are pre mixed, say you did a small colour or value study of your subject before attempting the finished painting, then you start you can focus all your attention on getting the shapes right.
I tend to only do colour studies for portrait commissions or other painting I'll be spending more time on. If I'm just practising, say I'm painting a model in a life class, I tend to just mix my colours as I go along.
But in either case, whether I'm pre-mixing or mixing as I go along, I start by identifying the 3 main values, like the cube in this video, the shadows, the lights and the high-lights. I find it can be problematic to think about too many different values too early on. I've seen students pre-mix about 10 different values before they start painting. I'm a strong advocate of simplifying the value system as much as possible.
I think of values like sculpting. If you had a block of marble you'd start by cutting off large planes to form your sculpture before refining them and smoothing them out. Your main values are like the big planes in a sculpture, if any of that makes sense?
Πολύ ωραίος!!
ευχαριστώ!
Oh my god.
Sub'd. This is very helpful
Hello, is there any place where to find simpler exercises to work on values? Thank you
You could try this one:
th-cam.com/video/Sm9hCGY6k6k/w-d-xo.html
Thanks Alex. o/
I would love to take lessons from you , is that possible? Do you teach? Thanks 🙏🏻
Before Lockdown I was teaching regular classes in London. Hopefully they will back up and running in September. Where do you live?
is the same technique used with acrylic paints?
Yes, this definitely works with acrylics. The difference with acrylics, is they dry much faster so you cannot blend the paint in the same way you can with oils. But the rule about values applies to any medium, paint, charcoal etc, as it has to do with how we actually see the world, not just the materials we're working with.
@@SIMPLIFYDrawingandPainting thanks will try look for the values
Alex where did you buy the plaster cast you used?, is there a place in the UK, that sells the plaster casts you use.
I bought the cast in this video from a company in Europe:
www.decorarconarte.com/epages/61552482.sf/es_ES/?ObjectPath=/Shops/61552482/Products/Figura-Escayola-Torso-Hercules-IT110-2
I don't know, mate. I kinda like the first portrait more than the latter.
1:31 The cube is deformed. Two faces are not square.
Anyway, great tutorial. Thank you.
SergioU -Gee....the three sides look square to me. Does it really matter if it is a perfect cube? The principle is the same: light strikes the planes with different intensity
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻😍
Hi Sir
Your video audio is echoing.
Please fix your vocals as they are very echoey. Great video otherwise!
not very useful tbh...
This video is great at showing how to limit values to render form. But I am confused about one thing:
This use of value is very different from the one used to map out the masses on the whole canvas right? What Andrew Loomis refers in his books as to 'Value pattern' or 'Tonal organization' gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2012/06/loomiss-scheme-for-tonal-organization.html
For example, Imagine I were the paint the still image of min 5:00 from this video.
Following his advice, it will clearly fall into the fourth pattern: The BG would be the black, the easel would be the dark grey, you would be the light grey and your plaster statue would be the white.
That leaves me with a really narrow value range to still represent Light, Halftones, Shadow and Reflected light on the statue, isn it? Or that isnt the goal anymore?
Thanks a lot in advance and for your invaluable educational videos!
The 5 main values I'm referring to this video is more applicable to portrait of figure painting, when modelling a particular object like a head or a torso. On a head we have shadows, lights, highlights and a mid tone for the transitions in-between the shadows and the lights in order to round the form. Then we have the cast shadows or dark accents. The background could be similar in value to any one of those values. In the demonstration in this video the background is the same as the same value as the cast shadows, but in another painting the background could be the same as the lights or a mid tone. Now, the value system James Gurney is referring to applies to the composition of a whole scene, like a landscape or a figure/figures in an interior. When attempting to paint a scene from nature, a landscape or a still life, it is really important to establish the overall value pattern, identifying 3-5 main values and positioning them correctly on the canvas. The placement and design of this value pattern will be really important for the composition and it should be the first thing you think about when starting a painting. If we apply this principle to the painting of the cast I did in my video, this is just one object so it has a really simple overall value pattern. We just 3 main values, the light part of the statue, the shadow on the statue and the background. In fact, because this set up has quite a lot of contra and the shadows and the background are fairly close to each other, we could probably simplify the overall value pattern into just two main values, the light parts of the statue and all the darks. This is how I started this painting, when I massed the shadows and the background as a unified dark. Then, all the other values I mention in this video, the highlights, mid-tones and cast shadows become subtle value shifts in between the main values. Does this make sense?