Tuesday, July 5, 2011
More Like Slow Paints
Goro was right, the day lit ones are much harder. This took soo long, Something like 5 hours. But damn it was a good learning experience. I referenced all sorts of stuff from photography of Italy to just looking outside my window, fun! I'm happy with the results. Onwards and upwards!
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Good job again Jonathan! It's looking really good. It is a very tough setup and 5 hours is not bad at all. You haven't even reached 100 paintings and already succeeding on those complicated setups. I'm really looking forward to your 365th painting. :P
ReplyDeleteDon't worry about making the same mistakes over and over again. That's what happens when you are learning. And you did it again. The shadow under the arch, below the roof of the background building and on the back wall are way too dark and popping forward. :)
So here are some notes.
Make sure you look at the painting in grayscale from time to time to keep track on the values. If you turn it to grayscale you will see that the values are really close to each other and you don't have clear separation between foreground and midground
Try to think more carefully about local color. The left building has a yellow highlight area but a dark blue shadow. If the wall has such a saturated local color the shadow will have some warmth to it too. So the shadow side will probably be a bit warmer.
The shadow on the highlights side of the right building doesn't make sense to me. Is it a shadow casted by another building? in that case the shadow color would be similar to the shadow color you are using on the shadow side of the building. Right now it looks like the wall and the pipe are painted with a beige color. But to keep things simple I would just remove the shadow and paint it all in light.
The ground has probably a different color from the walls of the buildings. So definitely separate the colors. Maybe add some warmth to the concrete on the ground. Also, you put a cool highlight on the ground but in this lighting setup (afternoon lighting) I'd expect the highlight to be very warm compared to the shadows. Add some yellow to the highlighted area of the concrete and you will feel the warmth of the sun.
The plants in the foreground will be all in shadow so the greens won't get as saturated and the contrast will be low too.
The shadow on the background building didn't make sense to me and is kind of leading the eye away from the center. I'd suggest to put the whole wall in shadow and just highlight the rooftop since it's angled towards the sun.
Here is another quick paintover
As usual far from perfect but it'll explain what I'm talking about.
http://www.area-56.de/temp/Sp_0081_SunnyAlley_op.jpg
I'm giving you harsh critiques cause I see that it's helping you a lot so don't get upset by reading all this. The painting you did is already really good and you can be proud of yourself. I'm just giving you some pointers for you to be able to make the next one even better.
For the next orignal paintings I'd suggest to go back to simpler subjects to be able to maintain speed. It was obviously very beneficial for you to do this study but with the right knowledge you'll be able to paint this in an hour or two.
I don't mind at all if you post my paintovers. It'll be good infromation for your fellow students too.
Thanks Goro. your painting makes a lot more sense. I can really see the depth that's missing in mine.
ReplyDeleteI really appreciate these critiques and how thorough they are. You point out so many things that I would have never caught, and after reading it, it all makes perfect sense.