Day 8 - Back To Basics #1 (Shapes)

I didn't manage to fall asleep until 3am this morning, but in my defense, I wasn't stalling or using technology. I just failed to sleep (and that's probably a result of the endless sleep procrastination cycles I subjected myself to over the years) :-(

In any case, no point dwelling on failures when I'm in the process of correcting them.

I decided that today's method will be to review parts of the material and exercises I learned while attending an Imaginism workshop years ago. I'll be going over my notes about

• planes
• light & shadows
• how to render basic shapes

and I'll be blogging in the meantime. So let's go.

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I've reviewed these notes a million times over the years, but for some reason, I always end up forgetting some of the most important points.

Warning!

If you have no interest or experience in how to paint light and shadow, I suggest you skip the following list. Don't read it or you'll get bored and confused. I don't want to lose you!!  Just go ahead and scroll down to my horrible exercise-paintings.

If you are interested, however, and my list ends up confusing you in any way, go ahead and send me a note or ask a question in the comments. I'll gladly help.

So, back to my list.

• Every plane contains lighter and darker sides. The variation from light to dark (or dark to light) should be either hard or soft (edges). Lighter sides are usually harder, and dark ones are softer because they are further away from the light. Anything further away from light is softer— Even shadows that are further away are blurry, while closer ones are sharp.
   
• Light planes are lit directly by the light source, and the closer a side of the plane is to the light source, the brighter it is compared to the other sides. Shadow planes, even though in the shadows, are still lit, but the source is reflected-light. The same rule applies in shadow planes— the closer a side is to a reflected-lightsource, the brighter.
  
  

  

  So the darkest edge is A, because A is furthest away from the original- and the reflected-lightsource
  Second darkest is B, because it's also far away from the reflected-lightsource but closer to the original-lightsource
  C is the brightest of all 4 because it's closest to both lightsources
  D is lighter than A and B because it's closer to the reflected-lightsource, but darker than C because it's further away from the original-lightsource

• Every object is a light-source (because it reflects light).
   
• Reflected light can never be lighter than the original light-source itself.
   
• Every form-shadow is perpendicular to the direction of the lightsource.
   
• The cast-shadow, however, is parallel to the direction of the lightsource, but then breaks to the angle of the surface it is cast on.
   
• The size of the shadow is based on the size of the lightsource. The hardness-softness of the shadow is based on the distance.
  
  
   
• To render a simple shape
• Start with background
• Draw silhouette
• Without being careful:
• Fill shape with it's two estimated light/shadow values (or you can fill the whole thing with the second darkest value first)
• Meanwhile, decide what the shape of the object that is casting the reflected-light is, as well as the shape of the source-light.
• Cast shadow & occlusion
• Core shadow if it's a sphere (located where light turns into dark)
• Here you can slow down and be careful
• Add variation within the planes—darker vs lighter sides
• Reflected light
• Edges (hard vs soft)
• Highlights
• Rim lights and brighter rims
• Reflection on ground and/or reflection of surface on the shape itself

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My Horrible Exercises 

The shittiness of these sketches take me back to the good old scrub days. I know I'll improve again if I keep at it, so it's just to keep at it. Look at the crudeness of those brush-dabs though :-(

PS. These shape exercises were painted off a reference.

Shitty Cube 1 - Got it very wrong

Shitty Cube 2 - Still got it wrong but the cube's values were a lot more accurate

Shitty Sphere 1 - At least dabbing got better D-:

So, this was more tiring than I thought, I decided to stop after the third painting. Today's achievement list is missing one sketch. To be fair though, it wasn't a requirement to paint more than three renders even at the workshop. I just aimed too high today.

So overall, I'm good.

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Today's Sense-of-Achievement To-Do List was:

• Pick today's method (10:30 - 10:45)
• Review notes from Imaginism Workshop:
• Planes, Light & Shadow  (10:45 - 11:15)
• Rendering basic shapes  (11:30 - 13:00)
• Paint exercises— 4 basic shape renders  (14:00 - 17:20)
   
• Blogging  (I blogged every 30 min in between reviews/paintings)
• today's method  
• about my notes
• my resulting renders
• proofreading