[deleted]

2016-06-22 17:21

[deleted]

Uncomfortable

2016-07-02 17:51

I can't really speak to the thumbnail studies (since I don't have the actual reference you used) but I've got a lot of notes for your compositions. Before you look at them, I want to make clear the point that this is a very nice start. There's all kinds of issues and problems, but there's supposed to be.

http://i.imgur.com/yxzcWcg.png

Here's the issues I saw that were repeated:

• Lots of very horizontal or parallel lines that echo each other, leading to a very static composition

• Some examples of symmetry, in some cases horizontal, other cases vertical - if something significant's positioned dead center, it splits your canvas into two equal halves, which by definition is going to be boring and stale

• Tangents - in the left column, second from the top, you've got a couple of these - you don't want things to line up perfectly, or even worse, be really close to lining up perfectly. It creates a lot of stress and will make people uncomfortable. If you make a joke about my username I will cut you.

I really like the third from the top on the left side (I put a star next to it), I think it's got potential due to its framing and balance. It could benefit from having a secondary and perhaps tertiary focal point, to help guide the eye through the scene to perhaps push a narrative. But it's a great starting point. My only issue there might be that the character and stone are kinda vertically centred.

I also think the bottom right could be very successful if the angle of that bridge were reversed. As it is, it's another echoed parallel line, whereas if it were reversed, you'd have a pleasant zigzag cutting through the piece, leading the eye through it. It might then fall off on the bottom right of the composition, but we could then throw in some other superforeground element there to cap that off.

Anyway, I strongly encourage you to do more of these - they give you the opportunity to make a lot of mistakes in a fairly compressed timeline, showing you what does and doesn't work. At first it can be quite difficult to see the mistakes on your own, but with time and practice (and perhaps with a few more critiques) you'll start to see them yourself.

I'm unsure if you've seen these before, but I've got a few other videos that show me thinking through some compositional problems, though they don't have much in the way of relevant commentary. They do have cool music though.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7uoFOpNiJQ

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zndiKGCBvEU

Anyway, feel free to move onto the next lesson. I have no badge to offer to your flair for these though!

Uncomfortable

2016-08-28 01:36

The important thing to keep in mind is that you are not special, nor are you different from anyone else. The only thing that separates you from an artist you might admire, is the time and effort put into developing that ability. It's not something that you simply have.

When I started painting, my compositions were godawful. Whenever I tried to do black and white thumbnails, nine times out of ten it would be terrible. It wasn't until I started building up those underlying skills - building a sense for form, perspective, etc. that I was able to focus more on composition itself. Right now it's like trying to walk with heavy weights chained to your legs, one for every skill you have yet to develop, one for every concept you have yet to fully grasp. With practice, you start to first understand those things on a conscious level - then you start to understand them on a subconscious level, where you don't actually have to actively think about it. That's when your compositions will start to feel more natural, when complex scenes will be a little more within your grasp.

That is a long ways off, so in all likelihood, you'll be greating a lot of garbage til then. But there's nothing wrong with creating garbage, it's part of the process to become comfortable with failure.

As for your question, yes - lessons 1 and 2 are required, and honestly you'd be doing yourself a disservice if you didn't complete the dynamic sketching lessons as well. Is there a particular reason you don't want to complete them before jumping into this content?

Uncomfortable

2016-08-29 19:44

Nice work, but one thing I want to draw your attention to is how in my example, I'm not necessarily attributing one value to a whole object, but rather letting the values bleed across objects. What you've got now is a good start to define what the darkest values will be for any given object (or more accurately, any given level of depth). The next step would be to take the next value up and start cutting in with lighter shapes.

Aaaalso, laying them out vertically's probably a better idea considering how web pages are designed to scroll down rather than across. And thanks for the heads up about the website link! Someone else had pointed out to me that the thread had been locked, and I felt like it was really early, but never double checked. Almost ended up posting a new thread entirely, the only thing stopping me being the feeling that it just wasn't... right.